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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes, no question, though I don't think they see it as a "disconnect", at least not in my parents' situation.

When I was growing up, we almost never saw my maternal grandparents, who lived on the other side of the country. I recall one trip to visit them when I was 5 or 6, seeing them at another relative's home once or twice, and then they visited us once. My entire childhood. We never travelled with them, they didn't send Christmas or birthday gifts though I think they sometimes sent a card with a bit of cash, I don't remember.

My maternal grandmother lived closer and was a bit more in our lives. I recall hosting her for Christmas several years, and we went to visit her more (but not even annually, there were years we didn't see her).

Both families got together every 5 years or so for reunions, but this would be the only time that all my parents' siblings and their families would be together with the grandparents. And not everyone would always make it. There was zero expectation that everyone get together for every holiday, or even just one holiday, every year.

Meanwhile, may parents want us to travel with them annually, spend every Thanksgiving and Christmas with them, host them 4-5x a year AND for us to visit them at least twice a year for non holiday reasons. It is insane. The only acceptable excuse (to them) for missing any of this is if we are with my DH's family, who also mysteriously has these same expectations (his grandparents lived in the town he grew up in, though, so he was raised with more extended family togetherness).

DH and I say not to a lot of this, including insisting on spending Christmas at home with our kids and taking our own vacations. But I've always just been confused as to what happened between generations to so fundamentally change these expectations. [/quote]

Not my experience at all. My grandparents were basisally ingrained in our lives and provided a lot of help and support to my parents. We saw the ones in our town at least 3-4 times a week and all holidays (and sometimes more if we were staying with them while my parents vacationed). The other grandparents were 30 min. away and we went there every single sunday after Church and stayed for dinner. And saw them every holiday and stayed with them in the summer so my parents didn't need babysitters.

My and DH's parents are the exact opposite. Never visit. Never help. Never want to vacation together. They have "raised their kids" and now just moving on.

I'd like a bit of a happy medium and parents that actually like to be around their kids and grandkids but, alas, we lucked out with the self-centered types and so here we are. [/quote]

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