Friday, May 11, 2007 at 12:12am
Grandparents to the rescue
Column: Interesting Times
Gush. Gush. Gush. Eyes glowing, a cheek-to-cheek grin — these are just the most noticeable characteristics of grandmothers. For most parents, all is forgiven when the grandchild arrives. Teen-age car accidents: forgotten with the first cry of the third generation. Misspent youth and rude behavior: subsumed in the first grasp of that tiny finger of the grandchild.
Pictures? We send pictures — from the first hour after birth to the end of their 20s. We follow their school activities, praise good grades and plan vacations around theirs. Some even sport car bumper stickers: "Ask me about my grandchildren." But one doesn't have to ask; we manage to bring up their names, their cute sayings, and their activities even when not asked.
According to the most recent 2000 Census Bureau statistics, 2.4 million of the nation's families are maintained by grandparents who have one or more of their grandchildren living with them — an increase of 400,000 (19 percent) since 1990. These families comprise 7 percent of all families with children under 18.
All in all, 2.3 million grandparent-maintained families contain a grandmother and 1.4 million have a grandfather. The grandfathers are more likely than the grandmothers to be employed (66 percent compared with 51 percent) and to own their home (81 percent compared with 69 percent) but less likely to be poor (12 percent and 23 percent). Of the grandparents who maintain homes for their grandchildren, 55 percent of grandmothers and 47 percent of grandfathers are not yet age 55. Additionally, 19 percent of grandmothers and 15 percent of grandfathers are under age 45.
Georgia, a friend from church, is not listed in those statistics, but she and her husband, Jim, fly to Los Angeles eight or nine times a year to spend a week or two babysitting their 3-year-old grandson while his college professor parents are off on archaeological digs. The statistics don't count grandparents who provide day care while a parent or parents work.
What is about the third — and sometimes fourth - generation that evokes such devotion? Is it love for the daughter or son, or as a recent New York Times article describes:
"Must be exceptionally stable yet ridiculously responsive to the needs of those around you; must be willing to trail after your loved ones, cleaning up their messes and compensating for their deficiencies and selfishness; must work twice as hard as everybody else; must accept blame for a long list of the world's illnesses; must have a knack for shaping young minds while in no way neglecting the less glamorous tissues below; must have a high tolerance for babble and repetition; and must agree, when asked, to shut up, fade into the background and pretend you don't exist.
"As it happens, the above precis refers not only to the noble profession of motherhood, to which we all owe our lives and guilt complexes. It is also a decent character sketch of the chromosome that allows a human or any other mammal to become a mother in the first place: the X chromosome."
There is something so pure about the spirit of most grandparents, so unselfish, so far-reaching in its vision, that grandparental love, tried as it might be at times, may be a religious experience. A silent and powerful grandmother movement is going around the Internet now. Or as the Bible says: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" (James 1:27).
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Lynne Bundesen
Pictures? We send pictures — from the first hour after birth to the end of their 20s. We follow their school activities, praise good grades and plan vacations around theirs. Some even sport car bumper stickers: "Ask me about my grandchildren." But one doesn't have to ask; we manage to bring up their names, their cute sayings, and their activities even when not asked.
According to the most recent 2000 Census Bureau statistics, 2.4 million of the nation's families are maintained by grandparents who have one or more of their grandchildren living with them — an increase of 400,000 (19 percent) since 1990. These families comprise 7 percent of all families with children under 18.
All in all, 2.3 million grandparent-maintained families contain a grandmother and 1.4 million have a grandfather. The grandfathers are more likely than the grandmothers to be employed (66 percent compared with 51 percent) and to own their home (81 percent compared with 69 percent) but less likely to be poor (12 percent and 23 percent). Of the grandparents who maintain homes for their grandchildren, 55 percent of grandmothers and 47 percent of grandfathers are not yet age 55. Additionally, 19 percent of grandmothers and 15 percent of grandfathers are under age 45.
Georgia, a friend from church, is not listed in those statistics, but she and her husband, Jim, fly to Los Angeles eight or nine times a year to spend a week or two babysitting their 3-year-old grandson while his college professor parents are off on archaeological digs. The statistics don't count grandparents who provide day care while a parent or parents work.
What is about the third — and sometimes fourth - generation that evokes such devotion? Is it love for the daughter or son, or as a recent New York Times article describes:
"Must be exceptionally stable yet ridiculously responsive to the needs of those around you; must be willing to trail after your loved ones, cleaning up their messes and compensating for their deficiencies and selfishness; must work twice as hard as everybody else; must accept blame for a long list of the world's illnesses; must have a knack for shaping young minds while in no way neglecting the less glamorous tissues below; must have a high tolerance for babble and repetition; and must agree, when asked, to shut up, fade into the background and pretend you don't exist.
"As it happens, the above precis refers not only to the noble profession of motherhood, to which we all owe our lives and guilt complexes. It is also a decent character sketch of the chromosome that allows a human or any other mammal to become a mother in the first place: the X chromosome."
There is something so pure about the spirit of most grandparents, so unselfish, so far-reaching in its vision, that grandparental love, tried as it might be at times, may be a religious experience. A silent and powerful grandmother movement is going around the Internet now. Or as the Bible says: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" (James 1:27).
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Lynne Bundesen