When parents fail, grandparents often become parents again
Grandparents are the parents of one's mother or father. Across sexually reproducing species they occupy a unique generational slot; among humans they frequently step in as primary caregivers when money, illness, death, or marital breakdown empties the middle generation. Languages mint Nana, Nani, Dada, Dadi and dozens of nicknames to keep two pairs straight.
Around 30,000 years ago, far more modern humans began surviving long enough to see grandchildren. Nobody knows exactly why, but a key payoff of three living generations is thought to be preserved knowledge, such as where to find water in a drought. Genetically, grandchildren share about a quarter of each grandparent's DNA. English grand- is first recorded in the early 13th century, borrowed from Anglo-French graunt; Old English used words meaning old father or elder father and called a great-grandfather a third father.
Many languages split the two sides of the family that English merges. Swedish has no single word for grandmother: mormor is the mother's mother and farmor the father's. In Bangladesh, Pakistan and much of India, Nana and Nani are the mother's parents and Dada and Dadi the father's. North American families often solve the two-grandmas problem by using an ethnic term for one set, such as abuela, nonna or Oma, or by adding first names.
Grandparents are doing more childcare as life expectancy rises and families shrink. About 10 percent of American children lived with a grandparent in 2010, over 40 percent of grandparents across 11 European countries look after grandchildren without the parents present, and in Britain the figure is around 63 percent. In Hong Kong 55 percent of caregiving grandparents said they stepped in because parents work. Where public childcare is plentiful, as in Sweden and Denmark, grandparents do less; in Spain and Italy they do more, and since 2004 Singapore has given parents a 3,000-dollar tax break when unemployed grandparents mind their children.
Custodial grandparents raise children without either parent at home, often after a death, imprisonment, military deployment or loss of custody; about half in the US belong to ethnic minorities.
Source: Grandparent
