What’s it like when your grandparents have 10,20,30 + grandchildren?

[Anonymous]

I’ve always been curious if people feel their relationships with their grandparents were less connected due to the number of grandchildren splitting their attention.

[Anonymous]

My mom has 11 grandchildren and 7 great grandchildren (so far). She seems to have a pretty different relationship with each one and it depends on their individual personalities, not on her ability to connect with one vs. the other. Most do not live within driving distance of her but she's good at keeping in touch over text and email. She is a fairly social person though, so that may help.

[Anonymous]

I have 11 cousins. I have very fond memories of my grandparents and visiting them at their house, though we weren’t “close”, there was tangible love there. Their house was always warm and inviting. I always felt like they were happy to see ME.

[Anonymous]

My grandparents had four favorites out of ten. I wasn’t one of the four. Never really cared.

[Anonymous]

And one side of my family I have 15 cousins on the other. I’m the only grandchild. When I was younger, it was much different of course, but now that I’m an adult and for the grandparents that are still alive fortunately, I would say my current relationship is pretty even.

[Anonymous]

My mom is one of 13 and there are 20+ grandkids. We don’t even know all our cousins. My grandparents were always nice but we weren’t close and I didn’t feel particular affection towards them. We were super close to my other grandparents who only had four grandkids. They knew us well and were very involved in our lives.

[Anonymous]

My kid is one of 10 grandkids on one side of family. DC spent quality time with her grandparents during summer vacations when young. By 10 years old though we had moved away. Fond memories though.

[Anonymous]

For one set of grandparents my kid are 3 among 13 grandkids, for the other they are 3 of 7.

My parents are closer to my kids because they live locally, I don’t think they are as close or my nieces and nephews, who live a plane ride away.

My kids also love my in-laws and FaceTime them 3 times per week (I facilitate). My in laws send birthday cards and gifts. We visit 3-4 times per year and they visit twice.

[Anonymous]

I’m one of 13 grandkids and I wasn’t close at all with my grandparents. But I think it was more of a function of proximity. They were close with the five who were local to them, and not close with any of the 8 of us who weren’t local.

[Anonymous]

My grandmother had 12 kids and 30 grandchildren - my mom is the youngest child, and I am the youngest grandchild. She died when I was six. I do think she had a pretty good relationship with all of the grandchildren, and would visit everyone, send (smallish) gifts and cards for our birthdays, and keep up with all of our lives (in fact, I received a birthday card for my birthday after she had died - she had mailed it right before she died).

However, our extended family does not have the same tightness that I see a lot of other families have - after she passed, there were no more large family holidays or anything like that.

Funerals of her siblings are the only time the extended family gets together. I think that I missed out on the experience my older cousins had growing up. Everyone sort of focused on their own families - my mom's oldest sister was 24 years older then her, so a lot of her siblings had their own grandchildren by the time I was born.

My dad is an only child, we saw those grandparents regularly until they passed when we were young adults, but they weren't warm people so I wouldn't say we had a super close relationship.

[Anonymous]

My parents have 16 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
The grandchildren range in age from almost 30 to 5. The great-gc are between 12-4.
I don’t think the number of grandchildren makes my kids (17 and 12) any less connected. My ILs have only 6 grandchildren, and I think my kids would say they are equally close to both sets.
We do live further than some of the other families and that limits the in person interaction, especially as they have gotten older. And a few of my siblings are not great at adulthood, much less parenthood, so some of the grandchildren have been almost (or completely for a time) parented by my parents. Obviously those kids have a different relationship. Not the one I want for either set.

[Anonymous]

My dad is the youngest of 14 and I am his his youngest.
I have 32 first cousins through my dad… definitely have never met all of them, but his father would have as he lived into his 90’s.
I do remember my grandfather being very old when I was little.

Big families can have big problems, so unfortunately the family isn’t all close.
But it makes for fun when I’m in that part of Virginia and I share my maiden name. The family name is well known!

[Anonymous]

My great grandmother had around 70 grandchildren. She had 12 kids. My grandmother her daughter alone has 8 kids.

I have 41 First cousins.

[Anonymous]

I was one of 10 grandchildren on each side, and was extremely close with both sets of grandparents. It helped that they all lived within 10 minutes of my house growing up. Looking back, I was so incredibly lucky to have that and now as an adult I realize how rare that situation was to have them in such close proximity.

[Anonymous]

On one side I was one of three grandkids (my mom was an only child so it was me and my siblings). We were extremely close to those grandparents. They came to sports events, we slept at their house, they took us on vacation, saw them regularly, etc. My grandpa was one of my favorite people. On my dad’s side I was one of 8 grandkids. I wasn’t nearly as close with those grandparents but we saw them often enough. They just weren’t as into kids. But my grandpa did come to lots of our sporting events. He was kind of a gruff person. They all lived close to us.

My kid is one of three grandkids on one side and she love love loves her grandma. On the other side she’s one of 10. Not nearly as close but they don’t make much of an effort to come see her.