Are grandparents becoming the hidden backbone of modern family life, and why do we still underestimate their role?

Let me take the second question first.  Grandparents are underestimated because ageism remains an acceptable bias.  Older people are viewed as ineffective, rigidly set in their ways and as draining rather than contributing to society.  They are assumed to have a narrow range of interests and time on their hands.  But half of all grandparents are under the age of 65 and still in paid employment while also providing childcare for grandchildren.  So here I turn to your first question, ‘Are grandparents becoming the backbone of the modern family?’   Attributing to them the role of backbone of the modern family is perhaps inappropriately sidelining parents, but they are quietly fuelling the careers of parent.

Today in the UK, one third of all working mothers rely on grandparents for childcare, and this represents significant contributions to the quality of family life and to parents’ careers and therefore to the wider UK economy.  They are more like the hip joint of family life.  We could function without it working well, but with more pain and greater restrictions.

As families change and people live longer, has the meaning of 'being a grandparent' been completely rewritten?

I hope so!  This generation of grandparents is unlike any other.  They are older in years than their own grandparents were at the same stage of grandparenting, but they are nonetheless, generally, healthier and more active. Many are still working but even those who are retired may still be driven by personal ambitions to achieve more and do more. They were part of the generation that spearheaded shifts in gender roles, resisting the expectation that women’s sphere of work should prioritise the domestic sphere.  They see - often before new mothers themselves do - persistent challenges for women in combining motherhood and demanding careers.  They are primed to help with childcare because they themselves often struggled to balance family and work, and they want to minimise the sacrifices of their own adult children. 

Is grandparenting today more emotionally demanding than it was a generation ago?

The emotional pull of being a grandparent seems to have a very long history.  In early modern human societies grandmothers’ work in foraging for food was crucial to the survival of younger generations.  Less fertile and still fit, they could provide their grandchildren with enough calories to support their growing bodies and brains.  As cultures change, the role of grandparent changes, but the attachment to our grandchildren is as basic to who we are as our attachment to our children.  

What are the costs and benefits to grandparents of providing childcare?

The costs to grandparents of offering childcare come in many forms.  There are sometimes travel costs involved when they don’t live nearby.  There are sometimes costs to their own careers, when they must take time off to cover for the parents.  But when I asked grandparents about the costs, they spoke about the relative costs. It would be more expensive for the grandchildren to come to them.  It would be more damaging to parents in mid-career to have to forego an opportunity than for them to limit their own work at their career stage.  There are also significant benefits to offering childcare.  Not only do people of any age generally enjoy contributing to family wellbeing, but older people who spend time with grandchildren have been found to be at lower risk of dementia and have more flexible problem-solving skills.

What do multi-generational families argue about most, and what do those tensions reveal about power, love and expectation?

Often ‘multi-generational’ is used to describe homes inhabited by three generations or more.  But families are multi-generational in many ways.  Families where grandparents who live nearby and have frequent, perhaps daily, interactions with parents and grandchildren function as multi-generational.  

The issues of contention involve child discipline: usually grandparents are more lenient, but some grandparents despair at the gentle parenting approach taken by the parents.  Tensions over money sometimes arise: grandparents who help their children with buying a house or other expenses sometimes bristle at what they see as the parents’ extravagant spending on other things.  There can also be tensions about gratitude (Do you appreciate how much I’m doing for you?) and over which set of grandparents - maternal or paternal - get the most access to grandchildren.  Respect, love, appreciation, inclusion remain hot topics in any family configuration.

If society truly recognised the value of grandparents, what would we need to rethink about work, care and ageing?

If society truly recognised the value of grandparents, then grandparents would have legal rights for access to their grandchildren.  Grandparents say the pain of being excluded from a grandchild’s life is persistent and raw.  They can apply to the court for permission to apply for access, but it would be preferable if there were a presumption of access that could only be curtailed if a parent could show good reason.  

And though the UK government in some cases offers financial support to grandparents who regularly care for grandchildren, the rising retirement age suggests that the costs to grandparents of providing childcare will also rise by reducing their current income (when they cut back their work to provide childcare) and their future pension income. And because so many grandparents offer support in the very early days of parenthood, they too could be offered a version of parental leave.