Today's Grandparents are More Involved Than Ever in Their Grandchildren's Lives
For children today, grandparents offer fun, comfort, safety, and wisdom. Today’s grandparents are more involved in the lives of their grandchildren than they’ve been for generations. Unlike grandparents during the late 20th century, today’s grandparents are much more likely to play an active role in the daily lives of their grandchildren, including dealing with such daily minutiae as having toddler car seats in their own vehicles, and keeping strollers, cribs, and highchairs in their own homes due to the fact that they often participate in the daily care and raising of their grandchildren.
According to Scientific American, grandparents were rarely a part of life for the earliest humans. Wide-range studies across Europe and Asia show that living beyond age 30 was very rare for prehistoric humans who tended to give birth around age 15, and then die typically around 15 years later, when their own children were of age to begin giving birth. Interestingly, it was by the Upper Paleolithic period in human history when people began living long enough to experience grandparenthood, that humans experienced an explosion in art, writing, and other cultural advances. Research tells us that this is because having involved grandparents meant stories and histories of social connections and culture were able to be passed down to new generations, and those new generations had more time for leisure activities partly due to the help and resources of surviving grandparents.
Having surviving and involved grandparents also helped to increase the human population by elders contributing economic and social resources to their children, which then allowed them to increase the number of children they bore, and the number that survived past childhood.
Changing Roles of Grandparents
History tells us that well into the early 20th century, it was common for households to contain at least one grandparent, most often a widowed grandmother. This dynamic meant less stress, depression, and exhaustion for young mothers because they had household help and could share some of the responsibilities of parenting with an involved grandparent. In fact, 17 different studies have resulted in what’s now known as “The Grandmother Hypothesis,” which shows that having an involved grandparent in the home—particularly a grandmother—lead to increased resources for grandchildren, increased survival rates, and overall longer life expectancy for humans in general.
During the second half of the 20th century, grandparents began to have a lesser role in most households, with a trend toward grown children moving further away from parents and raising their children independent of daily grandparent involvement.
The Grander Role of Today’s Grandparents
Today, grandparents are seeing a resurgence of importance in family dynamics. This is because many families now have both parents working outside the home, meaning grandparents are more relied upon for active roles such as picking up children from school, and caring for children during the day when parents are at work.
Research shows that this trend of having more involved grandparents can greatly benefit families. According to Psychology Today, studies show that adult grandchildren who were close to their grandparents while growing up are less likely to suffer from depression. Interestingly, studies show even greater benefits for grandparents who are involved in the daily lives of their grandchildren, with less depression and even increasing life expectancy.
A 2014 study highlighted the tremendous benefits children receive through support from multiple involved family members during their childhood, and when those supportive individuals are grandparents who bring years of child-raising experience with them, the benefits to the health and well-being of all family members is beyond measure.
Resources— Fatherly, FAQS, SageJournals, USNewsHealth
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