Dismantling the myth of grandmotherhood

And why it's important for everyone, whether or not you have grandchildren

Over the last few weeks, I’ve done a lot of press and publicity for my new non-fiction book She Wanted More, and one of the most common questions asked is: what thing surprised you most through researching and writing the book? To recap, the book is a mixture of my own experience and musings, alongside interviews I conducted with women of all different ages including Marian Keyes and Sari Botton, research, studies and an anonymous survey I conducted of 1,000+ women.

What surprised me most was uncovering the myth of grandmotherhood. I wasn’t seeking it, I didn’t ask direct questions about it, and yet there it was, pervasive and recurring, from the interview I did with my own mother to the flashes of personal accounts in the survey. It appeared in several interviews. And it probably surprised me more because it was also in my blind spot. But once my eyes were open to it, I was shocked and slightly embarrassed that I hadn’t realised it earlier.

My mother’s interview was the first I conducted, and I started with a very open-ended question that wasn’t leading her to any particular subject. I said – is there anything you feel quite strongly about, that you would like women to know?

She answered without pause: “Your role as a grandparent should be when you want to do it, not that you have taken on this additional responsibility which stops you from enjoying your life. But a lot of women seem to be taken for granted, and it is women who take on a major role in looking after the grandchildren. I get the impression that it’s dumped on them without asking. Maybe their children now find it difficult to get child-minders or make alternative arrangements. But grandparents now feel they can’t say no because otherwise they’ll feel laden with guilt. And that’s not right - it’s got to be at our convenience as well.”

The reason it took me by surprise was because my mother’s role as a grandmother isn’t at all labour intensive, so I knew she wasn’t talking about her own experience. My niece lives abroad with her parents, and while my mother likes to take care of her while she’s here, both her and my father’s lives haven’t changed much. When I pressed my mother further, she said it was based on what she had observed.

The mythical core is that grandmothers don’t really have their own identity outside of their relationship as it relates to their status as a parent, and a grandparent. Because a story springs up even in the absence of one, their identity is tunnelled out and replaced with what people assume they must want, ranging from being perpetually delighted to do childcare, and always being around to help out, even to the detriment of their own needs and wants.

A good example came from a woman who took my anonymous survey who said that although she doesn’t live in the same city as her grandchildren, when she does visit, she is immediately thrust into helper mode. Which for the most part she doesn’t mind, and loves spending time with them, but being reduced to a glorified nanny without being asked what she wants to do doesn’t make her feel great, and doesn’t allow for her to do the things that make her feel like a person. In her case, her adult child didn’t consider that maybe she’d like to spend some time with them alone, and that would’ve been something she would have appreciated - but felt unable to vocalise it in case it reduced the access to her grandchildren.

The things underpinning this myth range from what a grandmother looks like to what she is capable of – which often looks like frailty and dressing in a particular way. Red Riding Hood’s bedridden grandmother was one of the strongest archetypes embedded into us from a young age. Stereotypes include: baking cookies, knitting, being terrible with technology. There is an endless conveyor belt of Christmas films that come out every year that underpins these aspects of grandmotherhood.

What is most offensive about this isn’t just the stereotypes. Maybe you’re reading this, knitting needle aloft, with some cookies in the oven and you’ve accidentally butt-dialled your family Whatsapp group. All of these things are fine individually, unless they are assumed, or grouped together to rob someone of their nuance and individualism, because then assumptions are made about what they are capable of, and that eventually leads to a self-sabotaging narrative that feeds itself. I had to confront the ways in which I had stereotyped my own grandmothers and truthfully, I saw them as benign, sweet women who only came alive in our presence. I know.

It’s the way women are worn down into a gummy, unrecognisable version of themselves. I hadn’t even realised it until I’d finished writing the book. Where their individual desires are so decentred, they are not even on the map. Where what they are is a boiled down version of a shorthand that attempts to further shrink women so that their opinions and needs don’t get in the way of what everyone else wants. And where they are made to feel tolerated, so that in this precarious sense of self, they might agree to things in order to stay relevant and within the orbit of other people’s lives.

Janet Street-Porter got pilloried online for saying that grandmothers were being taken advantage of by their children, and while her writing is deliberately incendiary, I’d like to avoid the same fate. Also, because I’d like to believe that most people are not knowingly taking advantage of their mothers. But it does feel as if there are close parallels with the conversations that were necessary around identifying the difference between the institution of motherhood, and motherhood as an individual and collective experience. In other words, the myth of motherhood.

She Wanted More is out now! Get your copy here.

In the same way that most mothers adore and love their children, most grandmothers feel the same about their grandchildren. But loving them doesn’t default to endless labour and sacrifice, and if the same energy isn’t expected from grandfathers who get to play golf and tinker about in the garage, then it does merit discussion, otherwise it’s just a rerun.

Some women want to do a lot, some not so much. Some have to navigate tricky relationships with their daughters and daughters-in-law, and some don’t live in the same country as them. Where it becomes a problem is when there is an expectation, which women feel they cannot say no to, because it’s expected of them, in the same ways that mothers are expected to be continuously enchanted by their children, do the lion’s share of domestic labour, and feel enormous amounts of guilt around not doing enough.

Dr Judith Edwards, a child and adolescent psychotherapist wrote a brilliant-sounding book called Grandmotherland: Exploring the myths and realities, and looks at how the role has evolved. She also breaks down systemic inequalities, and individual realities. One of the most interesting things she covers is the breakdown that might occur in the relationship due to people simply not understanding one another or there being a breakdown in expectations, and how this is to the detriment of children who benefit enormously from having grandparents in their lives who they have a positive relationship with. On a podcast called The Systemic Way, Edwards says that a lot of people think the relationship is ‘about doing. Actually, it’s about being.’

When I put some feelers out for anonymous accounts, much like the answers around parenting, a lot of it was love mixed with fear and challenges. There were also complete extremes from someone writing in to say: “Most grandparents I know are like me. They will do everything to spend more time with their littles.” To another saying: “I have many friends whose lives are taken over by the care of their grandchildren. But I’ve noticed these are friends are not confident that if they said they couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to help, it would be perceived as selfish!”

A number of women said that helping out was hard but that they loved it and appreciated they wouldn’t be kids forever. While others struggled with communicating their concerns. “I did feel taken advantage of when I cared for my first grandchild if I am honest. It felt expected and they would go out partying after work and leave her with me longer.”

Others said they have communicated clearly when they aren’t available and set expectations from the beginning. “From the minute my three daughters were considering a family,” said Shanthi*, “I made it clear that they must only have them if they were in a position to afford to look after them without my help, but I also said that I would be happy to help two/three days a week if required.”

Jane* said that competing with the other set of grandparents can also be hard, as you may end up agreeing to things that you might not have done. “My son and wife have very different expectations to mine as a new parent…they’ve already booked us in for three nights in August when the baby will be 14 months, for example. Sounds like a lot, honestly, but the other grandparents are SO “yes, go away for 3 nights” (and that’s now, at 9 months) so it’s hard! I think it’ll be fine once it gets into a proper rhythm and I know exactly what I’m doing.”

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But overall, I got a sense that women were starting to become increasingly aware that saying no to things or being able to do the things they love didn’t make them selfish, it made them better grandmothers. (Again, very close parallels with motherhood). “I so often see grandparents who look after grandchildren while their parents work and they look exhausted and miserable,” wrote in Ellen*. “I think I am a responsible grandmother, am very interested in my grandchildren’s lives, love sharing holidays, teaching them things etc. I think it makes me a better grandparent to them by not looking after them every day.”

There is a final reason why deconstructing the mythology around grandmotherhood is very important, and may merit a spin-off Substack. What about the women who aren’t grandmothers? Where is their place in society? Most of these women will have experienced a sense of isolation and an erosion of community the first time round, when it came to not having children. Having spoken to a number of women including Jody Day about this, it appears there is a second wind in one’s 60s, around grandmotherhood that raises the same issues.

One of the key issues I address in She Wanted More is around motherhood, and it being so inextricably linked to what we are told is a woman’s purpose, and how that is problematic for everyone. In the baby boomer generation, for instance, motherhood was not presented as a choice. It was something everyone had to do, when clearly some were not suited for it at all. Therefore, extracting what a woman’s sense of purpose and worth beyond motherhood, benefits everyone. It allows those who want to be parents to occupy it, and it creates an alternate path for people who are childless by circumstance or childfree by choice to not feel invalidated.

Devolving grandmotherhood from a woman’s purpose doesn’t devalue the joy and pride a woman has from being a grandmother. Rather, it allows her to see herself as a whole person who has as much right to enjoy the things she likes doing, alongside what she perceives to be her responsibilities.

She Wanted More is out now! Get your copy here.

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