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Generation Grandparent

A Cornucopia of Grandparents

Today there are children with six or eight grandparents, step-grandparents and grandparent-equivalents.

Credit...Andrea Ucini

My 2-year-old granddaughter is going to be one happy kid on Thanksgiving Day. With three of her five grandparents on hand in Brooklyn, she’ll become the nonstop center of attention.

We’ll all think every self-composed ditty she sings is genius. We’ll laugh (initially) when her response to putting on a jacket before heading outside is to run away.

If I start to droop after reading “Knuffle Bunny” for the fourth time, her father’s parents, Nana and Saba, can take over. If they don’t know the oft-requested song about monkeys jumping on the bed, I do. If she melts down during dinner, taking place this year at a favorite restaurant, we’ll have plenty of grown-ups to walk around outside with her.

Having Bubbe (that’s me, Yiddish for grandma) show up on a Thursday is no biggie; I’m her day care provider every Thursday.

But her Nana and Saba live two time zones away. They arrange to see her several times a year, visit weekly via FaceTime, regularly send packages and cards. Still, I know they’ve been longing to spend time with her. Her other grandfather and his wife, who live several hours upstate, will probably check in by phone.

That my granddaughter, Bartola (a pet name, a nod to the former Mets pitcher Bartolo Colon), has five grandparents hardly makes her unusual these days.

I grew up with four, when that was the standard number, and by the time I’d hit junior high, I was down to two.

Now, asking around, I’m hearing about kids with six, seven, eight grandparents, step-grandparents and grandparent-equivalents. We’re in the midst of an unprecedented grandparental population explosion.

Why? One factor is that we stick around longer.

Back in 1959 to 1961, the census shows, people who turned 65 could expect to live another 14 years or so. Now, the average American 65-year-old has a life expectancy greater than 19 years. The grandparents-per-child ratio keeps climbing partly because, well, we’re not dying yet.

But “the main reason is divorce,” said Deborah Carr, chairwoman of the sociology department at Boston University and a longtime family researcher. “Older adults today had higher rates of divorce when they were young married couples in the ’70s and ’80s.” A surge in so-called gray divorces later in life also contributes.

As divorced spouses remarry and re-partner, they introduce new grandparental figures to the family mix, and often acquire additional grandchildren through their new relationships as well.

As a result, among grandparents over age 51, about 20 percent have at least one step-grandchild, according to a study published this year in the Journals of Gerontology.

And that probably underestimates the phenomenon, said Jenjira Yahirun, the family demographer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who led the research team.

The national samples it used included cohabitants in committed relationships as well as married couples. But it didn’t include those who became step-grandparents through another route: their adult children became stepparents when they married spouses who already had children.

More grandparents sounds like a good thing, right? It means more loving adults in kids’ lives, more help with child care if geography permits, more financial reserves in case of layoffs or illnesses or divorces, more support in general for stressed young families.

Consider Amy Murray’s two sons, now teenagers. They grew up in Manhattan and had seven grandparents, but three were in New Zealand, where Ms. Murray’s first husband and his family lived. Fortunately, the seven included new in-laws in Queens, acquired when she remarried.

“They took my boys in and included them in everything, Hanukkah, birthdays,” said a grateful Ms. Murray, a social worker. “It was not even a question; they were part of the family.”

Alas, that’s hardly a universal response. “Step relationships in general tend to be weaker than biological relationships,” Dr. Yahirun pointed out.

Lots of research attests to these more tenuous connections, including Dr. Yahirun’s 2013 study showing that stepchildren and stepmothers are less likely to live with or near each other than biological mothers and children, and less likely to move closer.

“We assume these weaker ties will be replicated with the third generation,” she said. Stay tuned; her current work will examine that very issue.

Sometimes, the birth of a grandchild serves as the catalyst that can begin rebuilding family connections fractured by divorce and its fallout. But not always.

“The middle generation is always the gatekeeper,” Dr. Carr explained. “If it was a difficult divorce, if there’s a frayed or fraught relationship, that middle generation can become the wall that stops a grandparent relationship.”

This appears to have befallen a college friend of mine in Connecticut, who told me a wrenching saga of post-divorce discord that results in her barely knowing her second husband’s grandkids, and of his having scant connection with hers.

Grandparental conflicts can get tough for the grandchildren, too. Anne Paris’s two kids grew up in suburban Washington with seven grandparents, the product of divorces and re-partnering on both sides of the family.

If Ms. Paris and family drove south to her hometown in North Carolina for the holidays, her parents couldn’t occupy the same room. If they headed north, her husband’s parents in New York also remained at loggerheads.

For years, “there was this juggling act,” she recalled. “It’s hard to be navigating that with your young children.”

Her daughter, now 16, told me she learned early on that “there were unspoken rules. ‘I’m with this grandparent, so I’m not talking about that grandparent.’ I didn’t want to mess up and make that person feel sad.”

Happily, Ms. Paris’s parents reached a rapprochement a few years back, and now those holiday gatherings have become more inclusive, less tense. It made Ms. Paris and her brother wonder, “Why was there so much bitterness for so long?”

Of course, intact biological families can create plenty of skirmishes, too.

But even when everybody remains cordial, having multiple sets of grandparents creates logistical challenges. Katie Woodruff’s kids currently have two grandfathers and five grandmothers and equivalents, which leads her Bay Area family to shuttle between Seattle and Los Angeles at Thanksgiving, while planning visits at other times of year to keep everyone happy. “We make it work,” Dr. Woodruff said, sounding only slightly weary.

She’s having less success stemming the tide of presents that hits her household at birthdays and Christmas, another complication in many-grandparented families. “I’ve sensed a little competition to see who can give the best gifts,” she noted.

Still, “everyone recognizes that they’re lucky kids to have so many people who love them.”

I think Bartola will grow up thinking that way, too. I can foresee years in which she goes skiing and hiking out west with Nana and Saba, and also visits her upstate grandparents’ farm, where she’ll get to know donkeys and sheep.

Bubbe’s presence may be less exciting, but I’ll be around on Thursdays and then, as Bartola gets older, after school. And when Bartola’s parents desperately need a meal out, with nobody’s food to cut up but their own.

In an era of multiplying grandparents, I’ve decided, that’s what I’m uniquely in a position to provide. I’ll stay nearby. I’ll be around.

Paula Span writes the New Old Age column in the Science section of The New York Times.

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