Are grandkids really that grand?

August 25, 2024 3:38 PM

Since forever I have heard people gush over the joy

that grandchildren bring. Like over the top joy. Can this be true? Or is it something that s Grandparent would be expected to say. To be clear, I am a 78 year old gay man. Came out in the 70s. Never married. Always lived in apts. that had few children in them. I like children of course, just never had a lot of interaction with them...aside from nephews when they were growing up. So elder mefites, is it true that they bring unbridled joy into your lives?

posted by Czjewel to Human Relations (29 answers total)

Nothing is universally true. I mean, I'm not a father let alone a grandfather but can imagine both possible happiness and tears, just like anything else.
posted by Alensin at 3:48 PM on August 25

I’m old, never had kids.

It is a source of unending amazement to me how overwhelmingly wonderful I find YouTube videos of toddlers to be, these days.
posted by jamjam at 3:53 PM on August 25 [2 favorites]

My kids are too young to have grandkids, yet. But I will say that I expect that if they exist they will be a source of great joy especially when babies and toddlers, mostly because you get to enjoy the fun parts and then GIVE THEM BACK to their parents for the unpleasant parts like having them wake up at 4:30 in the morning.
posted by true at 4:22 PM on August 25 [9 favorites]

I don’t have grandkids yet - my oldest child is 19 - but having observed my kids’ relationships to their grandparents and also kind of projecting…I feel like it’s going to be a double joy in that I have so much love for my kids that is also balanced by work - I have to be sure they do homework, learn how to clean and cook, become responsible, get them to school etc. The idea of both getting to see them be kind and gentle parents (which I predict from how they are with friends and our puppy and cats) and having more kids to love while not directly having to be sure they grow up “right” is extremely appealing.

In other words I think part of the joy will come from having been through the fire and appreciating the relationships that resulted - but not having to go through the fire again.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:25 PM on August 25 [11 favorites]

I like children of course, just never had a lot of interaction with them...aside from nephews when they were growing up.

It depends on everyone's personalities, you know? And the amount of time you get to spend together, and other things. Some of us get that kind of joy from nieces, nephews, friends' kids...
posted by trig at 4:50 PM on August 25 [6 favorites]

I don’t think it’s guaranteed that having grandchildren will bring someone joy. Did you like being a parent? That probably helps.

I love being a dad. I really looked forward to being a grandparent. I now have a Grandson who is a year and a half old. The only bummer is that he lives too far away for me to see him often. We see him on our phones regularly and there are visits on holidays but it’s not the same. My wife and I wanted him in our lives daily and that’s just not in the cards.
posted by spudsilo at 4:52 PM on August 25

Yeah I think the consensus view I've heard on being a grandparent is that it's like having kids again but only the good parts. You can leave the hard physical labor and the difficult choices and the schedule coordination and the arguments about value and finances to the actual parents, and you just get to hang out with children who love you unconditionally, exactly as much as you want.
posted by potrzebie at 6:26 PM on August 25 [4 favorites]

I think a lot of the people gushing about how fun grandkids are, are making those comparisons to the memory of having raised kids first. Like potzebie says above - your grandkids are cute and adorable and fun and sweet and you get to have a whole hell of a lot of fun with them.....and then they go home so you don't have to do the boring stressful mundane bits where you're trying to get them to go to sleep or brush their teeth or eat more than just one bite of their spinach or whatever.
Maiden aunts and bachelor uncles have the same perks.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:36 PM on August 25 [2 favorites]

I can't imagine not having them.
Of course, I'm raising one of them; not really what I expected to be doing, but I wouldn't choose anything different in the given circumstances.
----------------
The best grandparent MY children had? (Among bio and bonuses, grand and great-grands, that added up to more than a dozen during the early years...)

He was their STEPgrandpa, sort of.
He'd been married (and divorced) three times from their father's adoptive mom, after she and his adoptive dad split. (The adoptive dad was his biological uncle.)
Their father had NEVER had a good relationship with this man.
And yet he was there for my kids, loved them dearly, and actually helped me homeschool them during the early years. I couldn't have done it without his help; I was a very low-income single parent.

Really shitty thing? Out of all those grandparents, they lost him first.
I talked for ten minutes at his funeral about what he meant to us... and I don't talk in front of people, at all. I've never spoken at any other service, and don't anticipate doing so in the future.
It's been eleven years and we still miss him like crazy.
posted by stormyteal at 7:03 PM on August 25 [5 favorites]

I have four grandkids ranging in age from 1-7. I can honestly say it is the greatest joy of my life. It happened to me much earlier in life than I expected which has turned out to be a blessing because I still have the energy to be active with all of them.

I suppose there is some truth to the theory that it provides all the joy of parenting without the heavy responsibility. We’ve had overnights with all of them at one point or another, though, so I’ve done my share of diaper changes, feeding, waking up in the middle of the night, and, recently, an emergency room visit (turned out to be nothing major thankfully), so I’ve never totally bought into the “and you get to hand them back the second things get rough” theory at least based on my experience. It does help knowing there is always an end in sight.

Maybe it won’t be as fun when they start to get a little older and hit the “ugh, grown ups” stage, but for now nothing quite hits like having a little kid light up at the mere sight of you. We had our youngest granddaughter here for a few weekends over the last couple of months and it was always depressing when she left. House was way too quiet.
posted by The Gooch at 9:52 PM on August 25 [5 favorites]

Yes it can be true. Just like it can also be not true. I've been reading Dear Prudence long enough to see letters from people whose parents/in-laws are not interested in the letter writer's kids. I don't think you'll get many answers here saying "yeah, I'm not very interested in my grandkids."
posted by foxjacket at 10:02 PM on August 25 [3 favorites]

I have met a grandmother who regretted having CHILDREN as her children were so incapable that she had responsibility for her grandchildren, none of whom were ever likely to be able to look after themselves.

That was a gut punch.

I have children, youngest 20, oldest 33 - no grandchildren.

Maybe my attitude will change when the first grandchild arrives - but I did not particularly enjoy the nappies/toddler/child stages at all. I like my children much more now than I ever did before. And they should all be reasonably competent parents.

So totally looking forward to discussing share portfolios and world politics with my grandchildren, but count me out until then.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 1:49 AM on August 26 [1 favorite]

My dad and his wife have three grandkids thru my stepsister and I talk a lot to my dad about them.

My dad and stepmom love and adore the grandkids, but in limited doses. My dad is disabled and can't keep up with the energy of three kids under 10. They love the kids very very much and show me lots of photos and tell me lots of cute stories but they are also both clearly exhausted after babysitting and have told me verbatim that they think three kids is too many for the family dynmic. The kids are all super smart and super funny and love to get into things. My parents intentionally schedule vacations at times when they know my stepsister and her husband are likely to ask them to do multi-day stays with the kids.
posted by Summers at 3:25 AM on August 26

I think for some people, there's a hidden factor: grandchildren give a person a role at a time in life when other roles are starting to fall away, perhaps especially for women.
posted by eirias at 4:30 AM on August 26 [10 favorites]

really wonderful. I am close to my children and love being their parent, but watching them become parents? And getting invited to be one of the people that loves their children? It's like all the good stuff squared. Even when I've been the primary caregiver for several days, it's still a holiday event vs. parenting. I am actively parenting the youngest of my kids at the same time and a day spent with that kid is about 300% more stressful because I'm thinking long-term about responsibilities and discipline, but with the grandkids, it's just right now focused joy.

I am about twenty years younger than most grandparents in my area, but those I know say the same thing. The only grandparents I know who don't enjoy their grandchildren are semi-estranged and angry with their adult children for Valid Reasons on both sides.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:26 AM on August 26 [3 favorites]

We have two grandkids, and a third on the way. Personally, the joy (if you want to put it that way) of grandkids is to see their own innocent joy and discovery of the world. Everything is new to them, and they aren’t jaded and tired the way adults are.

It’s also a bit bittersweet in that you realize you were probably like them at one time, but were ground down by life.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:29 AM on August 26 [3 favorites]

It's just going to depend on the person. My own extended family contains a couple of grandparents who are having the time of their lives being "parents again but without any of the hard stuff," and a couple who have pretty much entirely peaced out of grandparenting because they don't actually like kids very much and already did all that once and don't feel any need to do it again outside of holidays. And one who basically considers her grandchild to be a prop in her endless performance of what a great person she is and how photogenic her life is, so she likes the grandkid well enough as long as the kid doesn't ask much of her and poses for photos and doesn't get fingerprints on anything that might have to be cleaned.
posted by Stacey at 5:47 AM on August 26 [1 favorite]

Kids are this miracle of going from "what is vision" to "I have hands, and feet I can chew on" to "I can walk" to "the world works this way" to "no it doesn't" to "language is this" to "language is that" to "I can do that" to "I can do this". This is a lot of work; you don't really have time to get good at raising kids while raising kids. Either you only get a few "tries" at it, or (if you have more) you end up exhausted by the numbers of kids to raise.

Being a grandparent means you pretty much finished raising a kid, and you get to experience it again from scratch. Not all of the moments maybe, but at least some of the highlights. Maybe you can even skip some of the "hard" parts (the exhaustion of raising a kid) by having your kid do it. Your kid. The one you remember the moment she figured out those funny looking things are her feet that she can put in her mouth and chew on whenever she wants. Now this fully functional human being capable of having their own kids and raising them.

Quite possibly you aren't responsible for everything. You just get to be there, and love them, and care for them, and spoil them rotten - because grandparents are permitted, in our society, to spoil grandkids (at least a little bit). When a parent lets a kid do X, they take it as X is always allowed; when a grandparent does, it clearly can be a grandparent only thing, or a special occasion thing.

Is this joy? Depends. Do you find it amazing that you are allowed to, nay encouraged to, be selfless in your love towards this little person who is both hilariously incompetent and amazingly miraculous? To some that sounds like a horrible thing, to others it is liberating.

Plus, most people find babies and toddlers with their huge eyes and heads cute.

Now, there are downsides. Your kid could raise kids that aren't pleasant to be around. Now you get to feel responsible for your kids failures (in raising grandkids), and your grandkids failures (in being unpleasant). I know of at least one grandparent who finds the different grandkid families ... very different experiences.

So you'll also get some self selection. As a grandparent, you often get to pick if you spend time with grandkids: so you spend more time with grandkids you want to spend time with, and less with grandkids you don't. Meanwhile, abandoning your own children is much more frowned upon; a grandparent who only sees their grandkids 1-2 times a month is not alarming, a parent is.
posted by NotAYakk at 7:09 AM on August 26 [1 favorite]

I guess if you believe you're leaving the world a better place for your children and grandchildren, you can be happy about your hostages to fortune. I have five granddaughters, and it's fucking terrifying.

Four of them are old enough to have children of their own. I will not rejoice if one of them calls to say, "You're going to be a great grandma."
posted by BlueHorse at 9:40 AM on August 26 [4 favorites]

My parents are obsessed with my kid, but some of my friends have parents who can barely be cajoled into visiting their grandchildren. It varies, like most things.
posted by Ragged Richard at 11:24 AM on August 26

I love my kids, I love my grandkid. That said, due to circumstances, my grandchild is more in my life than I had planned: she and her mother, my daughter, live with me. My friends gush about how lucky I am and I try to keep that truth in mind but honestly? I did not have raising another child on my bingo card as I entered my sixties. It would probably be different if I was retired or maybe if I had a partner or definitely if they had their own place, but as it is I get tired. Toddlers are a LOT. She turned 3 in July and is a joy and a delight and also is testing her boundaries, which is developmentally appropriate and to be expected and, well, yeah. If you are a parent you too remember those fun filled moments when you forgot to let them soap their hands themselves leading to a full meltdown in the bathroom leading to a bumped head leading to even more howls and, anyway, I have heard those stories about how great it is to be a grandparent too. I was hoping for more of the "hand them back to Mom" part and less of the "if you do not want to wash your hands before we leave the house I will wash them for you" part, but, such is life. I guess we always want what we don't have.

I am trying to be the best parent I can be this third time around. I'm the extra parent, but dad does not live with us and is not really a functional adult and mom is very busy and stressed, so I think maybe I'm an important parent.
And I would be heartbroken if they moved back across the country, which they might do and I hope they do not. I think I am a somewhat better parent now than I was thirty some years ago. I know now how fleeting these years are and I'm more willing to turn my full attention my grandchild's way. I'm looking forward to more nature walks as she gets older, more time spent together and more art projects. We have fun together and we love each other very much.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:52 PM on August 26 [11 favorites]

I have six of them and three years ago I moved to be closer to them. They're a delight and then they go home and I need a nap. I'm proud of my three sons who have all turned out to be much better dads than theirs was. But I've always been a kid person. I have an old friend who is, like you, a gay man in his late seventies. He's always been kid person too. I suppose any adult can become a kid person at any age, it just takes the right circumstances.
posted by mareli at 6:57 PM on August 26 [2 favorites]

I'm not a grandparent, and am unlikely to become one at the rate my unmarried, unattached adult sons are going. But I have theories and observations.

What at least one person above said I think is very true...you get the joys of children while being able to hand them back. My mother, who was extremely reluctant to admit that she was old enough to become a grandmother, and warned us she wasn't going to be babysitting on a whim, enjoyed her grandsons very much and did babysit as long as she had plenty of warning and the freedom to say "no."

In addition to being able to give them back, I think a lot of grandparents have reached the point in life where much of the stress and anxiety of the world -- including child-rearing -- have passed by, or at least been reduced. There are certain joys that are present in growing older, and from what I've seen grandparenting is part of that. There is a lot to be said to being seen as a wise elder, whether it's by younger adults or by children. I know that, growing up, I had a completely different regard and relationship with my grandparents than with my parents, and the reverse was true as well.

Of course nothing here is universal. Everyone's mileage will vary.
posted by lhauser at 7:11 PM on August 26

I have three sisters, and only one of us has a child. My parents have effectively zero relationship with her. If you talked to either of them, their grandchild would be maybe 38th on their lists of things to talk about.

She's a perfectly fine child, they are just (in a very benevolent way) not interested in a 4th round of childness.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:29 PM on August 26

FWIW, my parents don't really like small children. My mom hated her one attempt at teaching a weeklong summer camp of early elementary kids. They don't enjoy small children brought along by other guests. I suspect they would gamely attempt to like an infant grandchild, but we're unlikely to find out.

They do like middle school age and older kids, and it wasn't apparent to me that they weren't fans of little kids until I was grown enough to not take it personally.
posted by momus_window at 2:18 PM on August 27

Then there are those grandparents who are clearly in it for the competition.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:39 PM on August 27 [1 favorite]

I think Americans especially are typically divorced from perspective about childrearing and have little parenting support, so the experience of being a parent sucks. Once you have seen a kid or three turn out okay, and with built in support, it’s much easier to enjoy being around kids. I have a teenager and being around little kids is so much more fun with all of that perspective and much less anxiety.
posted by knobknosher at 2:16 PM on August 29 [1 favorite]

Mygothlaundry, I so hear you. My oldest daughter with three, divorced from a shitheel who didn't support or help raise his kids, lived with us while getting her technical degree. She then moved to Boise. I made the 45-mile drive five days a week for three years until she started WFH. Even after that, I was pretty involved in raising the kids, but it was rough when they were young, because I really tried to honor her decisions in childrearing--which were not my decisions or choices! But her kids, her rules. Even now, we're still pretty involved with the two youngest, who live at home, and I would be so so pushing to get them launched into a better job for the one, and ANY job for the other. Mom is more laid back--she figures it will happen in the fullness of time.

At the time my kids were teens, I couldn't wait till they graduated from high school and were out on their own. They were always welcome back if they needed to come, but I expected them to be independent as adults, and that's what they were with a tiny bit of help here and there. But for me to then be raising three littles afterwards was not ... exactly what I had planned.

Like I say, I worry about my granddaughters and what will happen in their future. Heck, I worry about my daughters--they're 51 and 44, and who knows what will happen by the time they're in their 70s--the half centennial.

I'm with knobknosher that there's little--or practically NO--parenting support. If you're in the upper echelon (you might not feel like it, but you truly are!) you can have necessaries like:
good insurance for prenatal care and support,
instruction on breastfeeding and raising children,
maternal/parental leave,
good and affordable childcare,
affordable medical and dental care,
access to counseling,
good local schools,
support in gaining IEPs for kids who need them,
school lunches if needed,
ability to get kids into affordable afterschool programs and ways to get them there.
We fail new parents in so many ways!

A young parent* with no higher education, working minimum wage without the strong support of a family has little or no hope of ever getting ahead, and no hope of raising a child that will have a better life--probably will be worse off.
*(usually a single mom but it's rough on the dads, too)

And in the trenches, non-parents won't have anything but criticism and distain for other people's spawn/crotch goblins/crib lizards/brats. Other parents won't help each other, and there is so much judgement being allotted. 'Those other parents' are giving their children too much screen time and helicoptering/hovering, or they're letting their kids run wild in the streets and not keeping them safe; they're either controlling or they're neglectful.... Parents can't win.

I really hate to see people smoking, or publicly yelling at/hitting their kids, but I don't think those are evil people, just people who need education and maybe are under a lot of pressure in their lives. Wouldn't it be better to offer help instead of judgement?

Yes, some people should never have had kids. But maybe if good sex education was provided to all kids, if free condoms were in a bowl at the entrance to schools, if all birth control was free and available to women without restriction, and if free mifepristone and misoprostol or if necessary, inexpensive abortion was accessible as woman's personal choice, there would be a lot fewer people who had no skills or desire to raise a child accidently having one.
posted by BlueHorse at 4:35 PM on August 31 [2 favorites]

Here's a Dear Prudence letter where the letter writer is not all that interested in their grandkids: https://slate.com/advice/2024/09/grandparent-guilt-obligations-family-advice-dear-prudence.html?pay=1725990406973&support_journalism=please

You can use 12ft.io to get past the paywall.
posted by foxjacket at 10:49 AM on September 10