I reached over for the second time in the night to fumble for my glasses and peer at my phone. Still no reply. I get that he has his library readings, his dates with his rapidly expanding social circle, his beloved strolls through the city for hours at a time. But so fierce is my need to see him, so badly do I want to meet his clear and perfect gaze, my aching heart wakes me up.
What if our playdate is cancelled?
Stefan is 11 months old, and he’s my grandson. There are a lot of demands on his time, and not just from his incessant napping. Because in 2023 we have a surplus-deficit situation in the grandparent-grandchild department. Too many of us, not enough of them. It knocks us off our rockers. It makes us do anything for baby time. Collect them from school, feed them dinner, tuck them in? Sign me up. Convert the office to a grandchild guest room? On it. Move in with the two toddlers? Yes please!
In 1986, Newsweek ran a cover story that set off a panic for every woman of my generation who was not yet partnered. “Too Late for Prince Charming?” claimed that college-educated women over 40 had a less than three per cent chance of getting married. Leading to the famous “It’s easier to be killed by a terrorist than it is to find a husband” line from “Sleepless in Seattle,” and I promise not to make any more ancient cultural references.
Today’s headline, just as chilling for that same generation of women — likely more — might be “No Time for Nana?”
Canada is at peak grandparent capacity. There are a record 7.5 million of us, up from 5.4 million in 1995. Worse, there are fewer babies, and this is historic as well: Potential grandparents now outnumber children under the age of 14 by a hefty two million. It’s all laid out in this family-friendly Statistics Canada graphic: 2017 General Social Survey on Family.
“The age of the grandparent has arrived,” The Economist gleefully announced this January — missing the point. They project grandparents will make up “22% of humanity” by 2050. And this is good news how? Because all I’m hearing is that four out of five of us will never be grandparents.
We don’t need to look beyond our own families to see how we got to this inverted pyramid. Here are three generations of grandparenting in mine:
Click to expand
My two sets of grandparents, the First World War generation, had 33 grandchildren between them. They did not vie for our attention. Grandma Bradbury looked after us once — the only grandparent to do so in my memory — when my parents won a trip to Jamaica. I remember her as remote. I later found out she removed her hearing aids for the duration of her stay, taking the “seen and not heard” childhood maxim into her own hands.
Next came my parents. They contributed to that 33 number by having five boomer babies — I’m number four — between 1947 and 1962. We produced just nine grandchildren. My mother and father were generous and much-loved grandparents. But the time they spent with their grandchildren was of their choosing, in between their happening 60s and 70s travelling and yucking it up with friends.
Now to the rub: Between me and my four siblings, aged 60 to 76, our nine children have produced one grandchild: a.k.a. Mr. Sweetie Pie, quietly observant, loudly assertive, and all alone at the inverted tip of the pyramid. Our generation not only had fewer children than our parents — 2.4 compared to five, according to that Economist report — we had them later. Which means a lot of us are waiting until our 70s and even 80s for the first blessed event to arrive and prise open our multi-stented hearts.
“I’m disappointed but I’ve accepted it,” said my brother David, who along with my sister Laura won’t be having grandchildren. “I believe it would have been regenerative.” There is a pause. “This has filled me with melancholy.” David has a buoyant spirit, though. “Guess I’ll just steal a grandniece or nephew.”
I’d say I’m happy to share. But I’m already meting out precious grandbaby time to Great Auntie Laura, who lives close by. Not only that, Stefan’s parents — my son and daughter-in-law — are part of a millennial generation devoted to spending a lot more time, fathers in particular, with their children than parents in the 1960s. Many bypass nannies and even babysitters, prioritizing down time as a family.
“My daughter has a ‘no hired hands’ policy with my grandbabies,” said Jill, one of the lucky ones with three grandchildren between the ages of nine and two. That means daycare instead of nannies, and grandmother and grandfather instead of babysitters. Jill and her husband, both in their 60s, have converted a room in their house to a grandchild bedroom for regular sleepovers.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Jill. “If you don’t roll up your sleeves and get right into it, you’ll miss one of the most important relationships in your life.” It’s the opposite of the “event grandparents” from Jill’s childhood, for whom she was “trotted out for major holidays.” With her own parents, “I never left my children unattended except to run to the bathroom.” (Jill is a pseudonym.)
It was the Sunday before Easter as we talked on the phone. I heard water lapping. “That’s my Epsom salts bath because my grandchildren are coming at 4.”
Jill works full time at the biggest job of her big career. Which will not supplant her grandparent time. “You don’t get the intimacy without the time spent. And that intimacy is immensely valuable for the children.” Water splashes. “Sorry, I’m just putting my head under.” Jill comes up for air and continues eloquently. “Grandchildren pick up on the subliminal belief of their grandparents that everything will work out in the end. It’s not that the parents don’t have that same belief. But they’re more worried about the day-to-day. They have a job to do.”
Jill, I’d like you to virtually meet Jane, because I think you’d have a lot to talk about. (Talking to grandmothers more experienced than myself makes me long to emulate them. There should be a school.) Jane, 82, and her partner Chris have taken the grandbaby guest room a big step further, and given over the second floor of their Toronto Annex home to Jane’s son, daughter-in-law and their two children, aged four and three months.
Three-generation living is the fastest-growing household type in Canada, said the most recent federal census, but Jane isn’t trying to be a trendsetter.
“The number one thing is relationships.” She rocked three-month-old Oscar’s bouncy chair with her foot as we talked in her bright and cheerful Victorian semi, where Jane has lived for 42 years.
She and Chris were already very close to Poppy, 4, when the family moved in nine months ago. Soon after, “they found out they were pregnant with this guy!” Oscar-the-Bald obligingly smiles from his bouncy chair. To make room for the growing family, Jane added a bedroom addition on the main floor — something she’d wanted as the stairs became more difficult for her.
“All of us living together is one of the four best things that has ever happened to me,” Jane said, smiling back at Oscar. ‘Who knew!” Her only regret is that she isn’t younger, so she could lift the baby, but she and Chris “fill in and help out” where they can.
That’s likely best for everyone. Grandparents who take on the bulk of child care often experience depression, illness and financial hardship. “Because I became a grandparent does not automatically make me a babysitter,” Viral Grandma rants in an oddly sweet video, with two babies sleeping in the foreground and her daughter, Quayla Ann, a Dallas-based YouTuber, laughing warmly in the background. “We have our own lives. We worked very hard to get everybody out of the house.” Applause fills the comments.
If Viral Grandma makes good on her promise, she’ll likely live longer. Part of the Berlin Aging Study of 500 seniors aged 70 and older reported grandparents who were actively involved — underline babysitters, not caregivers — had mortality rates 37 per cent lower than grandparents who were not.
Health benefits didn’t come up in my conversations. Instead, grandparents talked about what’s left to do — and there are certainly enough of us to make a difference. Instead of clogging hospitals and tapping dry government pensions, people had ideas about the world their grandchildren will inherit.
Carolyn’s later-in-life children had their own later-in-life kids. But being a grandmother in her 80s hasn’t slowed her down. “Sometimes we pick them up from school and daycare, feed them, and put them to bed. I recently helped with a newborn most days.”
Her greatest value, she feels, is more ineffable. Carolyn’s mother set an example of “how one should live, how one should act and how one should treat others” that Carolyn’s sons will not forget. Now that it’s Carolyn’s turn with her grandchildren, she hopes to help them learn “how to be good to other people.”
Jill thinks about grandparenting in the face of climate change and species loss. “I can’t do anything about what our grandchildren are going to inherit. Except to help them see the value and beauty of the natural world. My constant thought is that the world is not going to be OK without that kind of optimism.”
Maybe, on this Easter Sunday of resurrection and everlasting life, we can even teach our grandchildren something about death.
“I woke up feeling worried about the future of my grandbabies,” Jane wrote to me after our pleasant conversation in her home. Jane also believes tackling climate change is an essential part of her role as a grandparent, and works six hours a day with Seniors for Climate Action Now! As she brooded in bed, four-year old Poppy, who’d been managing the death of a family member, appeared at Jane’s door. “I have to come every morning to make sure you aren’t dead.”
“There we were,” wrote Jane, “looking at each other, wishing each other long lives.”
I considered my grandson in his high chair, the extra one for visits to my house (playdate not cancelled). Blueberries flew as he swept them away with grand maestro gestures.
I love him; he knows I love him. And in that space, we both thrive. Perhaps in the long span of his life he will remember being treated with great care and so treat others with patience, respect and generosity.
“What do you think, Stefan?” I occasionally posed questions, which he occasionally seemed to answer. “Da da da da da DA DA,” his voice swelled.
“In the spirit of Easter, should we share with Great-Uncle David, too? Give him some grandbaby time?” Perhaps a spirit of generosity was something I could give my grandson.
Stefan looked out the kitchen window, maybe at the budding dogwood tree, maybe at the blueberry that landed on the sill, and seemed to weigh my question. On the day when Jesus — the eternal son, never to be a father or grandfather — is said to have risen from the dead, is it such a stretch that babies can decide their own future?
“Ya!” said Stefan.
Cathrin Bradbury is a Toronto-based journalist and freelance contributor for the Star, and author of The Bright Side, published by Penguin Random House. You can reach her at McBradbury@gmail.com.
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