While there has been plenty written about parents, there has been less written about grandparents and their relationships with their grandkids. However, almost three-quarters of adults will become grandparents, with the average age in the UK now being around 54. As a result, most people will be grandparents for roughly one-third of their lives.
With dropping birth rates and Western industrialized nations’ demographic aging, family ties are shifting from broad to narrow/vertical structures, or “families on a pivot,” in which grandparents may play an increasingly crucial role. And this post should be appealing to a wide spectrum of psychologists, particularly those with expertise in developmental, social, clinical, and educational sciences. Nowadays, grandparents generally receive favorable coverage. This was not always the case.
Clinical case studies from the 1930s through the 1950s, such as “Grandma: The Trouble with Raising Children and Grandma: The Trouble with Grandma,” Made Johnny Delinquent criticized grandparents for interfering with their grandchildren’s upbringing in old-fashioned and didactic methods. In fact, Staples and Smith (1954) discovered that grandparents exhibit stricter and more authoritarian attitudes than mothers. However, attitudes toward parenting were shifting rapidly in the 1950s, and Townsend noted in an interview with older individuals in the UK that “grandparents were exceptionally liberal with grandchildren.”