The Role Grandparents Play in Raising Children

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Linda_C_Meredith]Linda C Meredith
Grandparenting has changed since I grew up in the 50's and 60's. When I was a child, Grandma's house was where you went for holidays, or 2 weeks in the summer, (my cousin and I would do this 2 or 3 times during the summer.)
Christmas was especially great. I had 5 aunts and loads of cousins. The house was always full and noisy, but nobody seemed to mind. The kitchen was filled with women cooking, but they never seemed to get in each other's way. Grandma was at her best when she was surrounded by her brood.
How times have changed. When I was a child we stayed at Grandma's house because we wanted to. Grandparents play a very different role today than they did a few years ago. Now, if Grandma is one of the ever decreasing number of grandmothers that does not work outside of the home, she may be the caretaker while the parents work.
The structure of the family has changed drastically over the past few years. There are more single parent households, more families moving back in with grandparents due to finances or other difficulties, and more grandchildren moving in with grandparents due to addictions the parents may have.
This places the grandparents in a role most of us didn't anticipate when we were raising our children. Grandparents are having to take a more active role in raising their grandchildren. With most households having both parents working, it falls more and more to the grandparents to take an active role in parenting their grandchildren.
Very often, children spend more waking hours with their grandparents than they do with their parents. Instead of getting to spend weekends and time during summers with the grandchildren, now many grandparents are responsible for getting them to and from school and other activities, feeding them, helping with homework and other responsibilities that used to fall to parents.
The children that have grandparents that live close enough to fall into this role are blessed indeed. While most grandparents would probably rather have it the way it was when they were grandchildren there are advantages to the role society has given us now. Our children are learning to be parents with all the trials and lessons we had to go through raising them. We've been there and done that so just maybe we can be a very positive influence in helping to raise this next generation. Let's hope so.
Now if we can just learn to play video games and text we'll have it all under control.
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