Baby Boomers Put Their Spin on Grandparenting

Christine Crosby skates, does yoga and videoconferences with her grandchildren.

Allan Zullo hikes to mountaintop waterfalls with his.

Ellen Hamilton and her grandchildren have been stilt-walking together for years.

The long-held image of gray-haired grannies who knit and wizened grandpas who sit on the porch whittling couldn’t be further from reality today. With the aging of the baby boomers, that huge generation of Americans born from 1946 to 1964, the social institution of grandparenthood is being turned on its head.

Because American life expectancy now is 75 to 80 years, boomers will be able to be part of their grandchildren’s lives longer than any generation in history, routinely until the grandchildren are well into their 30s.

Because they are better off than any previous generation, with a collective annual disposable income approaching $1 trillion, boomers have the ability to provide for their grandchildren financially as no other pool of grandparents has before. And many boomer grandparents are youthful and active enough to do everything from windsurf to run marathons to travel around the world with their children’s children.

But there are downsides to the modern grandparent-grandchild relationship too.

The stereotypical boomer spent a lifetime working long hours and many plan to do so well into their 60s, leaving them busy with their own lives and careers. An increasingly transient population means that more grandparents live far from their grandchildren.

And even those grandparents who most want to be involved often find it difficult; today’s grandparents are the first generation of grandparents who in large numbers still have living parents, many of whom need as much or more care, monitoring and financial assistance as grandchildren.

In a nutshell, baby boomers -- the oldest of whom turn 60 this year, the youngest of whom are in their early 40s -- are redefining grandparenting as profoundly as they altered almost every other facet of American culture, including marriage, the workplace, politics and technology.

“We’re the invention generation,” said Crosby, 59, a grandmother who two years ago launched Grand magazine, targeting baby boomer grandparents. Crosby pointed out how her generation had not only invented but embraced a litany of life-changing technology, including the Internet and the BlackBerry.

“We feel that we can reinvent anything in our own image, and right now we’re doing that to grandparenting,” she said.

But embracing their new role as grandparents bucks against another key baby boomer characteristic: a desire to feel young. And many boomers are unsure exactly how to morph into that grandparent role.

A chat room comment on one website, AgingHipsters.com, sums up the identity crisis: “I cannot be a grandparent,” the entry practically moans. “I don’t know how to make a strudel, I don’t own a hairnet, and my stockings are never rolled down to my knees. I can’t crochet, play mah-jongg or speak Yiddish. How could people as young and hip as we boomers turn into grandparents?”

True to their reputation for being entrepreneurs, many boomers are going so far as to turn grandparenthood into a full-time career.

Crosby, who previously edited small, regional magazines, founded Grand after her first grandchild was born and she realized there was no magazine on the market that targeted the burgeoning social niche of grandparents.

Zullo and his wife, Kathryn, both North Carolina authors, put other work aside to pen “The Nanas and the Papas: A Boomers’ Guide to Grandparenting.”

Hamilton, 61, the Tennessee grandmother who stilt-walks with her grandchildren, opened a company to manufacture her stilts, an enterprise so successful that toy giant FAO Schwarz signed on to sell them.

Whatever their career, boomers are busier than virtually any generation of grandparents before. An AARP study released this year found that nearly 70% of Americans age 50 to 64 remained at work. About 80% of boomers expect to work at least part time during retirement, according to the AARP findings.

“There is a fair number of disconnected grandparents out there,” said Zullo, 58. “Some of them are just so self-involved that they don’t make time for much else. Secondly, a lot of them didn’t make much time for their own children, and therefore they don’t have good relationships with their grandchildren’s parents.”

But Dr. Arthur Kornhaber, a psychiatrist who has been studying the grandparent-grandchild relationship since the 1970s, is beginning to notice that as the notoriously workaholic boomers age, they start to realize how much they have sacrificed to advance their careers, make money and travel the globe.

“I see that with grandchildren, they suddenly realize they have another chance at things,” said Kornhaber, who also is president of the Foundation for Grandparenting. “They start to grow out of their narcissism, out of their whole ‘me’ thing. They begin to realize that transmitting their minds and talents and souls to children -- their grandchildren -- is what immortality is really all about.”

At 73, Kornhaber looks as an outsider at this generation of grandparents he writes about in a new book called “The Grandparent Solution.” He encourages them to be philosophical about their new role in a way they perhaps have not been about any role before.

“The longevity of people’s lives today has given us a nation of vital, healthy grandparents like we’ve never had before,” he said. “What do we do with that extra time? Do we work? Vacation? Or do we achieve a better balance in our life by realizing that our grandchildren, particularly in these times, need us?”

Some grandparents are certainly answering that call. According to U.S. census numbers, more than 5 million grandparents are raising grandchildren, but experts such as Kornhaber suspect that number may actually be as high as 8 million. These grandparents essentially are taking on a second parenthood due to the fallout of their children’s divorces, financial problems or, increasingly, drug addictions, Kornhaber said.

Marketers are taking notice of these baby boomer grandparents. Retailers have begun targeting boomer grandparents, using pop hits from the 1950s and ‘60s in commercials and reviving old-fashioned toys such as the Sock Monkey and the kazoo.

It’s working. A U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey predicted that grandparents spend nearly $30 billion a year on their grandchildren -- but not just on toys.

“I think one of the things that is really a trend among boomer grandparents is that we are interested less in buying our grandchildren toys than we are in buying them experiences,” Zullo said. “Where grandparents once spoiled kids with toys and candy, now we prefer to pay for ski trips, dance lessons, outings to the Museum of Science and Industry.”

Yet for all the changes being seen in grandparents today, many boomers still feel as though they are struggling to hit their stride in the new role. Because the life expectancy of previous generations was shorter, many boomers got limited -- or no -- time with their grandparents, and many have little knowledge of how a grandparent should look and act.

All this new-grandparent anxiety has led to a burgeoning self-help industry. In just two years, Grand magazine has increased its circulation to 100,000. Blogs, chat rooms and websites devoted to the topic -- such as grandboomers.com-- are multiplying. Summer camps are adding grandparent-grandchild weeks.

“When my wife and I found out that we were about to be grandparents in our late 40s, we said, ‘What do we know about grandparenting?’ ” Zullo said.

Even the title of grandparent seems to throw boomers for a loop. Boomer grandparents have been opting to have grandchildren call them by younger-sounding, more informal titles such as “Papa,” “GG,” “Bubbe” or “Nanny.”

“Our peers are the ones who have spent God knows how much money on Botox and plastic surgery,” said Zullo, whose grandchildren call him Papa and his wife Nana. “Having someone call you ‘Grandma’ or ‘Grandpa’ can seem to negate all that.”

Grand, Crosby’s magazine, has gone out of its way to make being a grandparent more glamorous to boomers. The magazine’s cover routinely features grandparents who defy the stereotype of the old, gray-haired person in a rocker: Goldie Hawn. Sylvester Stallone. Billy Crystal. Last year, the magazine named Harrison Ford the “sexiest grandparent in America.”

Although boomers may belong to a generation that has embraced everything from plastic surgery to new-age medicine to cryonics in a bid to live forever, experts such as Kornhaber hope that very part of the boomer psyche can be taken advantage of to make them even more active as grandparents.

“The real question will be, how can we make this a role that gives meaningfulness to old age in a society that doesn’t currently have much use for old age?” he said.