Parenting Grown Children: What Dr. Spock Forgot to Tell Us

Grannie as Nannie: A rise in the professional ranks

The latest stats that count this kind of thing--they're in a report from Pew Social Research--finds we grandparents offering care, coddling and shelter to our grandchildren are part of a growth trend: The number of American children being raised by gramps and grannie rose sharply after the recession began. In one year--from 2007 to 2008--there was a boomlet of a 6 percent rise in the numbers and share of children living with grandparents. 

According to the report, the sharpest increase in the number of children who had a grandparent as a primary caregiver was among white children, even though this family set-up is generally more common in black and Hispanic families.

Here's another interesting point from the report: Nearly half of the children being raised by grandparents also live with a single parent, and 8 percent live with both parents in the household--in addition to the caregiver grandparent.

Just another sign of difficult times--and the role grandparents play in it.

Granny as Nanny: You're fired.

Her daughter-in-law was not as blunt as Donald Trump in Apprentice, but the effect was the same. Gail used to show up at her son's house every morning at 9. He would already be at work, but the two toddlers would be finishing up a morning snack and their mother, as soon as Gail arrived, would walk up to her office in the attic and work there for five hours.

Gail took care of the kids. When they were babies she fed and burped them and rocked them to sleep. As they grew into toddler-dom, she took them outside for games and walks and trips to the playground. Now they are 4 and 3 years old and she is out of a job.

Her daughter-in-law got a new contract that will require her to work longer hours. She is placing the children in an all-day pre-school. She found it disruptive to hear her children crying or being disciplined by the grannie-nannie.

And that, for Gail. is that. She is out of a job without so much as a two-week notice. She's sad about it. She misses the kids.  It's difficult to catch up with the family on weekends.

This is one of the perils of being nanny as a granny. You may be family but you are still "hired" at the will of the parents. And if their needs change, well, so does your job title.

Not that there are any bad feelings between Gail and her daughter-in-law. In fact, Gail hopes to be re-hired. A baby is due this winter.

Vacation Togetherness: When is enough, enough?

I read the headline of this Ask Amy column and my first thought was: OMG. One of my children has taken up pen to complain about paterfamilias and me. "Husband wants a break from vacations with in laws," it reads. The letter writer says he is a married man in his early 40s who lives carefully within his means. His in laws live 2,000 miles away, and for the past 10 years, he and his wife and family have gone to visit them twice a year--and that's become a point of argument with his wife. "Am I wrong," he asks, "to want to do something else with my vacation once in a while?"  And, P.S., it only made him feel worse when his in-laws offered to settle the argument by paying his family's airfare.

"Ask Amy" is on his side. "This isn't really about money" she writes. "This is about not wanting to spend every single vacation with your in-laws. And brother, I'm on your side."

Hard to argue with her point or her tone. Are we sometimes tone deaf? Or cling too much to a grown child who has moved far away? Or allow our grown child to cling? Sometimes we can kid ourselves into thinking we're being incredibly generous and helpful--inviting our grown child and family on--and paying for--vacations. Togetherness on vacation is a fine, fine thing. But you can have too much of a fine thing. Certainly, your child's spouse can.

Grandparenting: How much babysitting do you want to do?

"You're a pushover!" These are the words my friend Gale hears when she mentions she's babysitting for one of her grandchildren. My friendship with Gale goes way back to third grade. We no longer live in the same city, but as long as I've known her as an adult, she was always the worldly one: Want to know the best new trendy restaurant, don't-miss Broadway show, terrific museum exhibit? Want to know a charming place to stay in Tuscany? She's always been the one to ask. 

And now, this pushover business. Her sons, their wives and children live in the same city as she does--one 20 minutes to the north; the other 25 to the south. Both the families have regular babysitters but when there's an emergency--a child at school feels ill or a 5-year-old doesn't want to go to camp one day--Gale gets the call. "I'm the go-to girl," she admits. And she doesn't mind. "I love being part of their lives," she says. "They are such interesting little people. I love knowing who their friends are, what they like, what they don't like."

As to being a pushover, she says it isn't as though her grown children were asking her to do something she, personally, didn't want to do--say, be the regular babysitter two days a week. And if she felt she were being put upon? "I have a big mouth. I might not complain to my daughters-in-law about it, but I sure would pick up the phone and let my sons know."

So far, she hasn't had to. She'd just like those "pushover" remarks to go away.

They probably won't. Whether friends have grandchildren living nearby or have to fly across the country to see them, everyone seems to have their own style--or pace--for being with their grandchildren. Maybe it's their own personal toleration for being around children. Or a commitment to helping out their grown children.  But when friends aren't available to do things with us, many of us lean back on that old saw and think--they're being taken advantage of by their kids. Or they're giving up their autonomy and I wouldn't do that. But that's saying our friends don't know how to say No if they don't want to do something. Most of the time, we want to do it. Or we wouldn't do it. It's part of our autonomy.