Expectations of grandparents
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Anonymous
You’re “sure” boomer parents invited the grandparents on vacation? When did that happen? I never heard of classmates taking their grandparents on vacation with them when I grew up. It just didn’t happen. Vacation was time for the nuclear family to enjoy, I don’t think it would have been looked at benevolently at all by the boomer parent generation if their parents expected to come too. |
Anonymous
| We took my grandma to Disney World and San Diego. Our ages were 8, 10 and 16 and she was widowed. She had 12 kids and 28 grandkids at the time, so her attention wasnt hyperfocused like today's grandparents with fewer grandkids |
Anonymous
| ^ PP this was early 90s |
Anonymous
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^^
"Hyperfocused on [fewer] grandkids" is a good point. I know many women who are grandmothers and if they aren't in contact with their grandkids EVERY day, they literally get sad and depressed. We just had a friend visit and she was texting/Facetiming with her 2 toddler grandkids every single day. Her daughter is a SAHM but I am fairly sure her DIL (works full time) did not appreciate a phone call every evening from grandma, for her daily grandkid fix. This should not be the norm. |
Anonymous
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I only had one living grandparent during my childhood. We visited her in Texas a few times but mostly she traveled up to visit us. Usually for Christmas. We never took her on our trips. My parents have visited us twice and we've visited them twice during our 10 years of marriage. They never travel.
MIL visited us once or twice a year before the pandemic and a health scare. She's no longer welcome because she abused our daughter during this summer's visit. FIL has never met our kids because he can't be bothered to visit. We won't visit them because they live in a very dangerous neighborhood and we don't want to expose the kids to their abusive relationship. |
Anonymous
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So so much. For example, my FIL is from the Midwest. My ILs have always lived on the west coast. They took my spouse and his brother to visit the paternal grandparents exactly 3 times in 18 years. And my MIL vividly recounted how bad traveling with her then 4 and 3 year olds was to see them and then in the next breath berated us for not bringing our 2 year old out to visit, which is an even longer trip than they had to endure!
We’ve taken our kids to them at least once a year since they were 3 (so at least 10 visits) and it is NEVER enough. The hypocrisy drives me nuts. |
Anonymous
Good point. My grandparents had 6 children and 20 grandchildren. We would see them a few times a year and they were lovely people but we were not close and they had her own lives. My parents and all their siblings don’t have more than 4 grandchildren each, and spend a lot more time with them. |
Anonymous
I agree with this, though I am a DIL who has a good relationship with my MIL. When we got married though, and especially when we had kids, DH's family (not just his mom but the whole family) definitely had this expectation that I would suddenly step in and coordinate everything on our behalf with his family. I was honestly confused by this expectation and simply... didn't. I mean, I coordinated stuff with my family, why would I coordinate with his? I didn't get it. Sometimes his mom would reach out to me about something and I'd say honestly, "Hmm, I don't know but DH probably does," and then move on with my life. Or I'd forward him texts or emails. I didn't stress about it, just assumed they'd figure it out. And they did. At first I think everyone was confused, like "wait, but we raised our kids with the expectation that women handle all family and social obligations." But they adjusted. I think I only had to be somewhat stern one time, and that was with my BIL and FIL (who were unreasonably unhappy with our family for not making a 14 hour round trip drive for a 2 hour event on a Saturday night, and then blamed me for that choice when it was a joint decision with DH and I), not my MIL who tends to be more understanding of people in general. I remember early on in this process, during one of those incidents where DH's family was asking me for info about some gathering or another and I was directing them to DH, I had a conversation with DH where he said he thought his mom had always wanted a daughter, and that's why she always reached out to me with this stuff. And I said, "But she had sons. She needs to make her relationship with her sons as good as it can be, not just adopt me as a replacement. I'm an add-on, not her actual child." And I think that resonated with him, the idea that he and his mom needed to really own their relationship to one another and invest in it, and not lament that it's not something else. It just isn't, oh well. I think often parents give up on their adult sons and just figure only daughters can be devoted or attentive or thoughtful. It's shortchanging everyone (in addition to unfairly burdening DILs with a job their DH's certainly don't perform for their families). |
Anonymous
| Yup, it's probably 1) fewer kids and thus fewer grandkids (less distribution of focus) 2) people more likely to move away from home so the grandparent visit/trip becomes more of an event 3) people living longer and with more disposable income so they have the time and means to want to do stuff like this |
Anonymous
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U.S. seems to be the land of people disconnection.
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Anonymous
Very much this. People had more kids and they definitely didn't live as long and didn't have as much money. Times have changed in all aspects. People need to adjust and accept it for what it is. All but one of my grandparents were dead before I was born or while I was in elementary school. People just live longer now. |
Anonymous
Not really - my kids had 2 grandparents when they were born and by the time the oldest was 8, only 1 was left. People have kids later in life, people still die from illnesses relatively young (cancer, strokes, etc), so I don’t see that people really live longer now. Statistics confirm this too. |