In the US a lot of people don't even know who their grandparents are. Lots of broken families and the decline of marriage.
>Today, a new survey from Ancestry, the leader in family history, found more than half (53%) of Americans can't name all four grandparents – demonstrating a knowledge gap in key information about more recent family history.
There's no need to push grievances over the "decline of marriage" when the reason that people in the US can't name all four grandparents is because they've spent their whole lives knowing them as "grandma" and "grandpa", and additionally because it's quite likely that at least one of their grandparents will have died before they've gotten old enough to form memories.
Did you really think "they just call them grandma/pa" was a good argument against people not knowing their grandparents' names? What do you think people in other parts of the world call their grandparents?
I spent 30 years being wrong about my grandmom's given name, because my granddad called her by other name than the official one[0], and in all those decades there was hardly an opportunity for me to notice or for someone to correct me. Grandma was always "grandma".
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[0] - Anna vs. Hanna. Close enough to be ambiguous in speech.
Is some of that just that people tend to refer to grandparents as "grandma" and "grandpa" and not their first names? And maiden names of grandmothers have long fallen into disuse by the time their grandchildren are born, if they didn't keep them?
I think I didn't really know my maternal grandparents' names until they died and I looked at a family tree. My paternal grandfather's name isn't even well-defined: it's been butchered after 4 civil wars & invasions, 2 emigrations, different dialects, repeated anglicizations, and a change in the orthography of his native language.
Pretty surprising to me; haven't you expressed some curiosity about your grandparents or had them talk about their lives. Ever seen your parents birth certificates or marriage certificates?
My kids come from 2 lines of unbroken homes and intact marriages. I moved to SV for a career, so my parents have seen their grandkids 3 times in 3 years. My kids spend the first week they are around avoiding them because they don’t know them, start to build up a relationship right about the time they are back on a plane.
My other grand parents come once a week to hang out with the kids, nanny is off that day. I beg them to take the kids to the zoo, the playground, the library, jumping jacks, a hike, a walk with the dogs. I am constantly disappointed by a grandpa on his phone and a grandma that can’t do all that herself, and I’m stuck working so I can’t do it.
I think “the decline of marriage” or “broken homes” is a symptom. If you’re an American who frequents this board, you’re in some of the roughest late stage capitalism effects on your personal relationships and community relationships that could exist until we see the Wall-e universe.
Not having a multi-generational family to help raise the kids in your neighborhood to help ameliorate the cost and stress of raising kids puts a huge strain on a marriage. Having to work 60-70 hours a week to make life possible to have those kids, with daycare and preschool and all the other costs… it’s a self fulfilling cycle.
The 60s youth barely had 1 parent at home, my generation had none, if the parents weren’t even home why should the grand parents feel any responsibility to help right?
Anyway, something to think about when you’re just blaming “decline” (it’s actually gotten better) of marriage. Some stats:
Currently, the divorce rate per 1000 married women is 16.9.
The divorce rate per 1000 married women is nearly double that of 1960, but down from the all-time high of 22.6 in the early 1980s.
The divorce rate for couples with children is as much as 40 percent lower than for those without children.
An annual income of over $50,000 can decrease the risk of divorce by as much as 30% versus those with an income of under $25k.
Many of my daughter’s (pre-teen) friends are raised entirely by their (GenX or Boomer) grandparents: their parents are either not in their lives at all, or are total neglectful deadbeats, or divorced/fighting to the point where the grandparents had to step in. For quite a few of them, grandparents are the only family they know.
This is also something (anecdotally) common with Gen X parents. That being said, deadbeats have been a relatively common trope since the Silents or before. Is it really that surprising that, now that it's possible for both parties in the parenting equation to be deadbeats, they're taking that option?
This doesn't seem like a new aspect of moral decay: People have always been terrible, and neither sex is inherently morally superior or magically more empathetic or responsible.
It becoming equitable is just another side effect of suffrage and no-fault divorce, something decided upon by the Silents, Boomers and Xers. It's still probably better than the prior situation, but acknowledging the fact that it's a consequence of the legislative choices of society is probably better than just randomly blaming Millennials for something that isn't unique to them.
>Today, a new survey from Ancestry, the leader in family history, found more than half (53%) of Americans can't name all four grandparents – demonstrating a knowledge gap in key information about more recent family history.