Not everyone’s a grandparent
Yes, they are adorable and cute and smart.
And it is indeed remarkable that the little one’s already walking and that her sister is still in first grade but reading at an eighth-grade level. Not to mention that the older one is the star of his little league team and the younger one already knows all the state capitals and did I know that one was in the school play and another has jumped from elementary school directly to Harvard or just won an Oscar?
It’s terrific that the grandchildren are now the new centerpiece of your life. It’s great that you get to pick her up two days a week after school or that you zoom with the twins every Saturday afternoon. It really is wonderful that you just took a trip with them or are planning a trip with them. Lovely you’re taking them with you to Paris or you’re flying out to Denver or driving to Vermont to see them.
Am I sounding a little jealous? Probably. And would I, if I had grandchildren, be pretty much the same as you—sharing photos, talking, bragging, proud, immersed in grandparenthood? Almost definitely. I’d be, I can safely assume, equally involved in my grandchildren’s lives as you clearly are.
But I don’t have grandchildren. My wife and I, in fact, are among the small but not insignificant number of couples in our circle of friends who are not grandparents.
And—you may not have realized this—it turns out we are not the only ones.
Despite the assumption that all older people are grandparents, lots of us aren’t. Some of us don’t even have children. Some don’t even have partners with whom to have children.
More and more older people are not, and never will be, grandparents. According to recent studies, one in five people over the age of 50 has no children and therefore obviously no grandchildren. And there are many more older people who do have children but those children aren’t—and may never be—parents.
Doesn’t mean we don’t want grandkids or wouldn’t love them if we had them. But it does mean we can be a bit sensitive sometimes about all the grandchildren gushing.
And I think, sometimes, you might forget that.
You might forget, sometimes, what it means to regularly show us so many pictures of how cute the little ones are or keep telling us about this really amazing thing one of them did or exclaiming how much fun it is to be with them or posting about them, again and again, on Facebook.
Listen, I understand and am happy for you who have become grandparents. I mean it. It’s terrific how it’s given you so much energy, so much enthusiasm, so much pride. It’s wonderful how involved you are and how your lives have been enriched and how your love has blossomed in new directions.
It’s understandable that the grandchildren are the new center of your lives. But please just remember that they’re not, understandably, the center of everyone else’s, too. Particularly those who don’t have grandchildren.