Grandparenting Facts, Figures...


How Grandparenting Has Changed

Many boomer grandparents work hard and lead vigorous, often stressful, lives where time is a valuable commodity. We must deal with issues far removed from what our grandparents faced. Our adult children's ideas of child-rearing are often very different from the views of Dr. Spock, to whom we once pledged allegiance. Millions of boomers must help raise the grandkids because of economic pressures or personal problems of their adult children. Other factors, such as living in far-flung communities and coping with divorce, make it more of a challenge for boomers to play a meaningful part in our grandchildren's lives.

For the first time in history, a generation of grandparents will be caring for their parents. We boomers must find ways to handle our lives while providing help for our elderly parents as well as for our adult children and grandchildren.

Another big change in the grandparenting landscape is the first generation of boomer grandmothers who have their own careers. They are more likely to be college-educated, to be employed outside the home, divorced or remarried and to have a sense of themselves as independent people.



Jack the writer, 18 months              Oh, what's the word?




Changes in Family Makeup

An analysis by the Population Reference Bureau in 2003 revealed that just 36 percent of all families in the U.S. are considered traditional, where Mom and Dad preside over the nuclear brood. In fact, if Ward, Jim and Alex and their stay-at-home wives were raising the kids today, families like them, where Dad is the sole breadwinner, would represent only 13 percent of all married-couple households.

Today, children are just as likely to live with a single parent, grandparents, stepparents or nonrelatives as they are to live in the traditional nuclear family. From the U.S. Census Bureau and the Stepfamily Foundation:

  • 1,300 new stepfamilies are formed every day.
  • 66 percent of all marriages and living-together situations involving children end in break-up.
  • 50 percent of children will be victims of a divorce before they are 18.
  • 50 percent of the children under the age of 13 are living with one biological parent and that parent's partner.
  • Over six percent of all children today — about 4.5 million — are living in their grandparents' home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
  • Eleven percent of today's kids — nearly 8 million — live with one parent who has never married and another 15 percent, or about 11 million, are being raised by a divorced, single parent.
    • Society has become more open-minded about a variety of living arrangements, family configurations, and lifestyles. As a result, according to the 2000 census report, only 24 percent of all households in America include two parents with children, 43 percent of unmarried couples include children, and 22 percent of all families with children are headed by single mothers. About 40 percent of children will live with their unmarried mother and her boyfriend some time before their 16th birthday, according to a study supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. While there is still some uncertainty about the number of lesbian and gay families in the U.S., the marketing firm Witeck-Combs Communications estimates that between two million and three million gays are currently raising children.



    Boomer Grandparent Facts

    According to Kiplinger Business Forecasts, about 22 million, or roughly one third of America's 70 million grandparents, are boomers — people born between 1946 and 1964 — and our ranks will swell to 32 million by 2007. The marketing research firm Age Wave Impact projects that by 2010, one out of every two grandparents will be a boomer. Because our life expectancy is increasing, we should, on average, be grandparenting longer than any previous generation — for thirty years.

    The average age of a first-time grandparent is 48; the median age of a Harley Davidson owner is 47. It's estimated that half of today's grandparents will eventually become great-grandparents. According to a University of Southern California study, between 1970 and 2000, there has been a ten-fold increase in the number of great-grandparents who are actively involved in the lives of their great-grandchildren.



    Today's Boomer Grandparent

    Many of us are feeling the strain of being pulled in different directions. Our adult children need us. Our grandchildren need us. Our elderly parents need us. Our employers need us. Our spouses need us. Our friends need us.

    Phil Goodman, president and owner of Boomer Marketing Research, says that boomers want to be more of a presence in their grandchildren's everyday lives than grandparents of earlier generations were. This attitude stems partly from the fact that many boomers have fresh memories of the demands of raising children — or have kids from second or third marriages who are almost the same age as grandchildren from their first marriages. Furthermore, remembering the notorious generation gap that colored their own relations with their parents, boomers see helping with grandchildren as one way to keep communication going between them and their own children. "Boomers raised their kids to be seen and heard, but they're going to be helping their grandchildren to be seen, heard and featured," Goodman adds.

    We certainly intend to keep up with the grandkids and not let our age slow us down. Mediamark Research, Inc. reports that the number of grandparents (those with grandkids under age 18) who play basketball and video games and hike increased, respectively, 227 percent, 208 percent and 156 percent between 1988 and 2001. Meanwhile, the number of grandparents who collect stamps and play cards has risen at a much slower rate during that same period.

    A 2003 report by the Public Policy Institute said that one third of working boomers do not have retirement coverage — not a traditional pension nor a 401(k) account nor an individual retirement account. As a result, many of us will work into our seventies out of necessity. However, flex time at the office and telecommuting at home are offering many boomer nanas and papas more opportunities to spend needed time with their grandkids.

    But because Americans are living longer, many boomers also worry about the well-being of their retired parents and the possibility of big hospital and nursing-care bills.

    While there are an estimated 70 million grandparents in the U.S., the number of children per family is near a 30-year low. That's good news and bad news. On the up side, with fewer grandkids, grandparents can dote on them more. On the down side, there aren't enough grandkids to go around — and because of divorces, second marriages and longer lives, grandparents and stepgrandparents are competing for face time. Fewer relationships mean each one can be more special. Boomers will invest more time and energy into their grandchildren.

    Also thrown into the mix of today's new grandparent is the increasing number of grandchildren who live in nontraditional families and face bigotry and prejudice for having gay or interracial parents.

    Not only that but more grandchildren are being raised by grandparents than ever before — a trend, experts say, that will steadily increase for boomers. A Census Bureau report cites drug abuse among parents, teen pregnancy, divorce, the rise of single-parent households, mental and physical illness, AIDS, child abuse and imprisonment as the leading causes for the increase in both multigenerational households and households in which the grandparents act as primary caregivers. During the latest Iraqi war and occupation, grandparents plunged into parenthood again by taking care of the children of reservists and guardsmen who were called up for duty.

    So, what kind of nanas and papas will we boomers be? We might be the most self-absorbed, materialistic, spoiled generation of the previous millennium, but unless the experts are blowing smoke, we will be pretty good grandparents who likely will:
    • reinvent and welcome grandparenthood
    • fret over finding the time to care for our aging parents and to enjoy our grandchildren
    • become conservative, caring elders
    • parlay grandparenthood into a second chance at righting whatever wrongs we made as parents
    • take a proactive role in helping and advising our adult children



    Grandparents Spending Money on the Grandkids

    Boomer grandparents will spend an increasing amount on gifts for their grandchildren, which in 2003 averaged $500 per grandchild for grandparents of all ages. It all adds up to a $35 billion industry that only keeps growing. With characteristic zeal and self-absorption we boomer grandparents are snapping up experiential products that we can share and use with the youngsters. We don't want to merely give them some nondescript toy; we want to enjoy the gift too. That's why we are purchasing interactive computer games that teach learning skills, nontraditional gifts such as wild animal adoptions through wildlife organizations, games we can play with our grandchildren, and toys and craft sets to assemble together. And, oh yes, lots of grandkids' clothes. Some stores say grandparents now account for more than a third of all its kiddie-gear sales, a 20 percent jump in five years.

    For those boomers lucky enough to inherit money, they will spend it on acquiring personal experiences — whether it's traveling to an exotic locale, taking gourmet cooking lessons or learning to play a musical instrument. And they will use the opportunity to introduce their passions to their grandchildren. They will want to give grandkids a wider range of experiences, particularly to things that boomers wish they could have experienced as kids but that their parents couldn't afford. such as space camp or computer camp and private lessons in painting, music or other artistic endeavors.

    And we'll invest in our grandchildren's education by helping to pay for lessons and tuitions in schools of the family's choice and by salting money away for the grandkids' college expenses.

    According to the Kiplinger Letter, 52 percent of grandparents help pay for their grandchildren's education, 45 percent help pay for living expenses, and 25 percent help pay medical and dental costs.



    Telling the World You're a Grandparent

    When you become a new grandparent, go ahead and tell the world. Burn up the phone lines and plaster the Internet with pictures of the baby. Or you could outdo some of your fellow boomers. When their grandson was three months old, a Dallas couple sent out five dozen invitations for a "sip 'n see" — basically a showing, accompanied by wine and cheese, of their grandchild. New grandparents in Milwaukee threw a "baby beer bash" to introduce the newest member of the family. We've even heard of new nanas and papas who took out ads in their local newspaper announcing the birth of their grandchild.



    Grandparents Raising Grandchildren

    Today more than 4.5 million children in the United States live full-time with their grandparents, nearly double the number in 1980, according to the Census Bureau. In 2003, the bureau said that 2.4 million grandparents (including 1.5 million boomers) were the primary caregivers to their grandchildren — responsible for their basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing. More than a third of these grandparents are caring for children whose parents don't live with them.

    According to the Grandparent Information Center, grandparents are raising their children because of parental substance abuse (44 percent of the cases); child abuse, neglect or abandonment (28 percent); teenage pregnancy (11 percent); death or divorce of a parent (9 percent) and other reasons including parental unemployment, imprisonment or illness (8 percent).



    Legal Issues

    The legal rights of grandparents differ widely from one state to another, and efforts to establish a uniform law that applies nationwide so far have failed. To make matters more confusing, many states are rewriting their laws concerning grandparents' visitation in light of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2000.

    In a plurality opinion delivered by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (herself a grandmother), the court held in Troxel v. Granville that the state of Washington's statute which allowed anybody to obtain visitation as long as it was in the child's best interest was unconstitutional. The ruling came in a case in which Jenifer and Gary Troxel objected to having their visits with their grandchildren Isabelle and Natalie Granville cut by the kids' mother Tommie to once a month after the death of the Troxels' son Brad, the children's unmarried father. The 6-3 opinion asserted that courts can't force custodial parents into allowing visitation rights to "third parties" — a category that grandparents are lumped into, along with other in-laws, significant others, friends, associates, and even step-families.

    "The media depicted the Troxel case as one in which grandparents lost the right to visit their grandchildren, but that's not what the Supreme Court said," explains attorney Richard Victor, executive director of the Grandparents Rights Organization. "The court didn't say the grandparenting laws in all fifty states were unconstitutional. It said the Washington law — which wasn't even a grandparenting law — was too broad. The people against grandparent relationships were asking the court to throw out all laws to make it very difficult if not impossible for grandparents to ever get visitation, and the court wouldn't do that."



    Grandparents' New Role As Comforter

    When we were kids, we felt threatened by the atomic bomb. Remember "duck and cover" drills in school? Today, our grandchildren are growing up in a world threatened by terrorists who have no regard for human life. We grandparents can play a key role in making sure that our grandchildren feel safe and secure following a traumatic event such as the 9-11 terrorist attack.

    "Talk with your grandchild in language she can understand," says Dr. Perry Buffington, noted family psychologist. "Volunteer only enough information to answer her question, and don't confuse her with too many facts, figures, and details. Don't lie. Answer her questions in honest, straightforward language. Bambi's mom found it necessary to tell her fawn, 'Man has entered the forest.' Children can understand terms like 'mean' and 'evil.'" Talking about violent acts won't increase your grandchild's fear but suppressing her feelings could.