PenPenWrites

I spent a weekend with Alpha Daughter and her daughter. Alpha had to take part in a conference at a college that was a 4-hour drive from my home and two airplane flights from hers. She did not wish to be parted from her child for yet another weekend; her husband couldn't get away. I offered to meet her at the college, babysit by day and be there for a friendly visit in the evening. I drove there by myself [paterfamilias did not wish to partake] and it was unnerving–I was driving into unknown territory and it is hard to read a map when you're at the wheel and you want to double check those directions. In any case, I got there–rattled but I arrived. So did she–after several flight delays. So we weren't off to the best of starts.

The weekend wasn't easy. None of us were on familiar ground. But we made it through without any major meltdowns. Then came the time to part. I drove her to the little airport that serves the college town and told her to run inside and see if her flight was on time. In she went and out she came: the flight would be delayed; no one knew how long. It had yet to leave the airport from whence it was supposed to cometh. If that flight was late, she would miss her connecting flight and then… and then?

That was her problem. Here was mine. Stay or go? If i stayed, I could always drive her to our home and put her on a direct flight to her city. This is what I was thinking as she unloaded her bags and her daughter. I hesitated. The urge to protect was surging. Should I park the car and wait with her to make sure everything was OK? Or should I drive off–I had a four hour drive ahead of me and had to go to work the next day. What to do?

Reader, I left: Helped her get the bags out of the car; kissed my little Grand goodbye and started the journey home. With a heavy heart. Anxious. Uneasy. But here was the comfort I took: I reminded myself that Alpha daughter is a grown woman with a child. She will handle whatever happens. It's my maternal instinct kicking in that made me want to provide and protect. But she has that instinct now–for herself and her child.

I was reminded of this feeling when I read a piece in the New York Times by Michelle Slatalla, in which she describes how her college-age daughter on a trip to Haiti to do volunteer work becomes ill–sick enough to need intravenous fluids. The mother's first instinct is to fly to her side–but it's not really possible at that moment. As the daughter starts to recover, she calls and asks her mother whether she should come home. She wants to but doesn't want to. What should she do, she asks her mother? "Stay" Slatalla says, though she agonizes over the decision. "There's nothing that instructs parents on exactly how and when to let go," the mother writes. "No guidebook that says how much or how far to push."

Hers was clearly a closer call than mine. A younger child; a situation more fraught with danger. But the feeling at the core is the same: The need, the desire, the urge to take care of our children–even when they are grown up and leading independent and successful lives.

This harsh economic downturn takes it toll in many ways. Our 401ks may be lighter and tighter but our grown children face even grater perils: job loss, job change, job downgrade. Where they might have had full time nannies before, that is now a luxury. Or is it? Some of us are filling that gap. The only stat I've seen is one quoted in the article below, that about 40 percent of grandparents who live within an hour’s drive of young
grandchildren provide regular child care while the mothers work; only 8 percent of them are rewarded financially. I have several friends who've answered the call for help–more about those stories in future blogs. Meanwhile, here's the phenomenon as reported by the Wall Street Journal (June 24). 

WHEN GRANNY IS YOUR NANNY

By Sue Shellenbarger

Marie
Rej, a consultant and mother of two, and her mother, Antoinette
Traniello, often clash over the right way to raise kids. Antoinette
thinks Marie is too lenient, and Marie regards Antoinette’s rules as
too black-and-white.

But the Wakefield, Mass., mother and daughter are swallowing their
differences so Antoinette can provide the summer child-care help Marie
needs after a recent layoff and job change. Disagreements aside, Marie
says gratefully, her mother “has told me she’ll pitch in wherever she’s
needed.”

Similar
scenes are playing out nationwide, as grandparents step up to meet the
erratic child-care demands imposed by a rocky economy. Prevailing
child-rearing beliefs have taken many turns in the past 60 years,
creating ample grounds for disagreement between caregivers, whether
they’re tradition-minded World War II-era grandparents, hovering baby
boomers or the family-focused, informal moms and dads of Generation X.
Other parents wrestle with how to divvy up authority or whether to pay
grandparents for their help The problem-solving and peacekeeping
strategies families must use to make these two-generational setups work
can make already complicated family relationships even more challenging.

Some forecasters predicted this generation of grandparents would be
too self-absorbed to help with child care. But there’s no evidence that
today’s grandparents are backing away. The proportion of preschoolers
cared for primarily by their grandparents while their mothers work rose
to 19.4% in 2005, the latest data available, from 15.9% in 1995, the
Census Bureau says. A wave of closings and cutbacks in child-care
facilities suggest the trend is continuing.

Some 40% of grandparents who live within an hour’s drive of young
grandchildren provide regular child care while their mothers work, says
a 2008 survey of 500 grandparents by the National Association of Child
Care Resource & Referral Agencies, an Arlington, Va., nonprofit.
And grandparents’ child-care hours rise significantly in the summer,
the Census Bureau says.

It seems “boomers aren’t as spoiled as we thought,” says Georgia
Witkin, assistant professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical
Center, New York, and a senior editor for Grandparents.com, a Web site
on grandparenting. “It was anticipated that a lot of grandparents might
establish separate lives and might resent having those interrupted,”
she says. While some have, others “like to feel needed.”

(more…)

Alpha daughter and her daughter have come home for a visit–a long weekend. The Grand is six–not a difficult age. We don't have to watch her like a two-year-old. We are not tied to naps or strict schedules. We can go out to dinner together and enjoy ourselves. She can come to our office and charm our co-workers. We can go to museums or the zoo and discuss what we're seeing and why it's interesting. We can read books. She can sit and read a book by herself. She can play by herself for at least an hour or two.
And yet. And yet. They left today and we are in a state of collaptive exhaustion. Why should this be? Alpha daughter is helpful–she pitches in to prepare meals and to clean up. She doesn't expect us to babysit endlessly. She is here to enjoy some free time with her daughter and some quality time with us as well.

What is it that sets off the weariness? Part of it is tension: will we manage not to offend? Will Paterfamilias, the more critical of alpha daughter's parents, be too critical–of his daughter or, worse yet, his daughter's daughter?  He does not take kindly to having his conversation interrupted and six year olds tend to, well, interrupt. And it's not easy for less-critical me. I never know when I'm going to stick my foot in it, so to speak. Say the wrong thing. And it's so easy to do. Just suggest that you can babysit if she wants to get a haircut, and you can feel the bristling begin.

But that's only part of it. There's another more neutral reason–at least I've come to think there's a more neutral reason. The exhaustion stems, in part, from the break in routine. We eat earlier when we have visitors–so there's a rush to get food prepared and on the table. No more sitting around to watch the evening news then chatting about what we might have for dinner and taking our time to prepare it. And the food they eat is different from the food we eat–they are vegetarians [no fish, no fowl, to say nothing of the beefier stuff; no cheese with rennet]. So I have to re-think meals. It's not terrible. Not impossible. But challenging. And adjustments like that add up. Are they comfortable in the beds you've prepared for them? Is the TV too loud? Are you watching something that should be turned off if the six-year-old wanders into the room–like news of war and bombings or terrible disasters or heinous crimes.

It was with some relief that we drove them to the airport. But no sooner did they walk toward security check in and wave goodbye than the tears welled up. I miss them. I wish they lived near by so that I could have a more natural to and fro with my daughter and her family.

Would that be any better? Friends whose children and grandchildren live in the same city as they do have their exhaustions as well–filling in for a weekend babysit so the parents can go away for the weekend; the last minute call in an emergency–driving to a grown child's house at 2 in the morning. We want to be there for all that. Why else are we still around? Why else do we call ourselves family? And yet, we all tell each other the tales of how tired we are when we've had some time–a visit–with our grown children.