As a macroeconomist, I was taught to find truth and insight in numbers. I no longer buy that. In studying the Bible, I discovered that the source of true wisdom lies in its stories of ordinary people confronting extraordinary challenges. But habits die hard.
My wife and I are blessed with 18 grandchildren. To write a column on the enormous changes that have occurred in grandparenting, I retrogressed to digging up data – but in what follows, I pay penitence with some illustrative personal stories.
I am doubly blessed because my wife, a school psychologist, worked for many years with children, parents, and teachers in school settings and has enlightened me with her amazing ability to love, understand, and instantly communicate with children of all ages.
Approximately 1.5 million Israelis are grandparents. One in every six Israeli families is multi-generational, with three generations living together.
In the early days of Israel, many young people had grandparents who had perished in the Holocaust. Today, as life expectancy exceeds 80 years, most children have four living grandparents – and in cases of divorce, six.
Often, family units in one dwelling include three generations. This is true of the US as well. One-fifth of Americans live in three-generation families, up from half that in 1980.
Grandparenting has changed – dramatically
Some 15 years ago, in their chapter in a book on intergenerational relations, psychologists Edna Katznelson and Amiram Raviv noted the transition in parenting from “authoritative” to “democratic”.
“The generation of grandparents who raised children less democratically and more authoritatively often struggle to find common ground with their children [on childrearing] and hence prefer to be less involved, to avoid conflict,” they note.
A common-sense approach is for grandparents to forgo disciplining their visiting grandchildren – leave that to Mom and Dad – but to establish basic ground rules for behavior. Even small children quickly get the idea and adapt.
As a grandfather, I personally embrace the cheerleader paradigm. I praise our grandchildren for their drawings, dances, and music, even when they fall short of Picasso and Beethoven. As a researcher of creativity, I find that “go for it” handily beats “no, not good enough” as a motivator.
Modern parents usually opt for truth in place of praise [“It’s a tough world out there; get them ready for it”]. In this, as in all aspects of grandparenting, Abba Eban diplomacy is called for.
Parents rule. Grandparents are just…cool.
Today, social media dominate.
Media play a key role in grandparenting. Spending time with screen devices takes up a great deal of the time that children spend with grandparents. As a result, grandparents find themselves increasingly mediating media use.
Facebook, the first real social media, was launched in 2004. Hence, for two-thirds of my and my wife’s grandparenting years, digital media have been both a boon and a problem. Boon because they regularly connect us to three grandchildren abroad and to many here in Israel. Problem because we compete for attention with the media and struggle to limit plasma time as per parental orders.
“I try to pull the younger ones away from their technology,” noted one grandmother in a US Good Housekeeping survey, “and then it’s together time. It’s either Chutes and Ladders or Dominoes or making cards or cooking in the kitchen. It’s those times I really feel like a grandmother.”
The median age of becoming a grandparent for the first time is 50.
Our 18 grandchildren are aged one through 31. We first became grandparents at the national statistical median age for first-time grandparents, around 50. We have enjoyed three decades of meals, games, sleepovers, talks, soccer, outings, shopping, walks, jogs, camping, and birthdays with our grandkids. We are in good health and have energy to (almost) match that of the young ones.
They are what we live for, I often say – and mean it.
About two-thirds of Israeli grandparents regularly help care for grandchildren. And about 78% of grandparents have regular weekly contact with their grandchildren.
[Former Jerusalem Report editor] Tamar Uriel-Beeri, recounted: “Although I lived far from my grandparents for a good portion of my childhood, they had an immense impact on how I see the world. My grandmother from my South American side insisted I learn Spanish. Although I remember very little of it now, those little moments of her Chilean influence on me are permanently ingrained in my mind.
“My grandparents on the other side, the side that the Holocaust heavily impacted, were a constant reminder of where we came from and how much we have progressed. One of my first memories is my French grandfather teaching me to say, “Petit pain au chocolat s’il vous plaît!” [“Chocolate roll, please!”].”
Some 65 years ago, in Regina, Saskatchewan, I grew up knowing well only my paternal grandmother, Mima Rivka. A slip of a woman she was, under five feet tall, with a crooked leg from an untreated fracture. She was widowed when my grandfather died in Pittsburgh in 1918 in the influenza epidemic, after struggling to earn money to bring his family to the US from Bessarabia (Moldova today).
Mima Rivka raised five children in her village, earning pennies by rising before dawn with my father, the eldest, and buying produce from farmers to sell in the marketplace. My father, still a teenager, made the difficult voyage to Canada, worked hard, and brought his family over. I learned Yiddish from Mima Rivka, and we often played cards.
In her lifetime, alas, I never truly appreciated what this tiny spunky woman had achieved through pure grit, nor heard her tell her story. Later, older and wiser, I found that the memory of her spunk served me well when I battled for tenure at the Technion and, through persistence, overcame repeated rejections.
Grandchildren induce change in grandparents – not just vice versa. Some 80% of grandparents report good, or very good, health, even though many have chronic conditions (such as hypertension and diabetes).
I find that as our grandchildren learn how to become grownups, they inspire us grandparents to abandon the stereotype of decrepit elderly and to embrace energy, renewal, and vitality. The energy, hope, and vigor small children radiate are infectious. I recall visiting my parents in a retirement village in Florida and feeling saddened by the total lack of beautiful young faces, their noise and laughter.
“There is an alliance of growth and change together [between grandparents and grandchildren],” notes Alejandro Klein in the Journal of Population Aging. “From this reality, a new and fundamental relationship is being consolidated…”
The phenomenon of four-generation families has become more prevalent in Israel, reaching relatively high percentages in the oldest age groups.
Said Uriel-Beeri: “My son is having a far more Israeli experience, seeing his grandparents at least once a week, being picked up from daycare by them regularly, and so on. Incidentally, he also knows several of his great-grandparents. The impact of our lives getting longer on the experience in early childhood is miraculous. I wish I had known my great-grandparents as my son is getting to know his so lovingly.”
My wife and I have five amazing great-grandchildren, from infants to age five. Our secret: Two of our granddaughters and a grandson are religiously observant and followed the tradition of marrying early.
Research studies attest that “…the role of great-grandparents is essential for maintaining family unity and conveying family history.” Our extended family is diverse in religious and political views. As great-grandparents, we constantly affirm that the unity of our loving family comes above all. In this perhaps, we greatly admire the family glue typical among diverse Sephardi families and try hard to embrace this sterling value.
Grandparenting can be demanding and stressful
We grandparents offer high-quality, loving, trusted childcare at a time when it is expensive and often hard to find. In some cases, this can be hard on us. As a recent study on the US website Vox notes, “The demands of intensive grandparenting fall disproportionately on grandmothers, who can struggle to balance their own needs with those of their grandkids.”
The cost of daycare for infants in the US can range from $400 to $1,500 per month. A survey showed that three-quarters of parents pay 10% of their income for center-based infant care, and half spend over 20%. The high cost – and often low quality – of daycare sometimes cause parents to draft grandparents for this task.
In Israel, daycare costs from NIS 2,500 ($675) to NIS 4,000 ($1,000) per month,which is equally burdensome. Moreover, it is not state regulated, with poorly trained childcare workers paid abysmal wages, leading to some shocking instances of child abuse. As a result, grandparents often are called upon to help.
Former US president Jimmy Carter, a man of boundless warmth and humanity, once observed that “…because grandparents are usually free to love and guide and befriend the young without having to take daily responsibility for them, they can often reach out past pride and fear of failure and close the gap between generations.”
He got it right. Children are investment. Grandchildren are consumption. We grandparents get to enjoy them for a day or an afternoon, and then pack them off to their parents.
In the West, birth rates have plummeted to below replacement. Israel is a blessed exception. Our children are gifting us with grandchildren. Perhaps we should thank them for this more often.■
The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion. He blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com