I'm just saying the old Grandma image is no longer applicable. "Grandma" is my mother's mother, with her white braid wrapped around her head, smelling of Black Jack gum as she knitted our Christmas sweaters, one blue arm growing out of her purse as if she had somebody in there.
Take a good long look at this bit of vanity *IF* a unfettered "Gray Bomb" scenario happens this flavor is going to become very old hat. Thanks to our technology no one will want to fill a nice societal role because it takes away from their vibrant identity.
let me set up the one-two punch of shallowness to come. Because i think it shows an utter contempt for others that needs to be appreciated
One recent Saturday morning my daughter, Morgan, and her husband, Trevor, were feverishly trying to pull their new apartment together with Ryan underfoot and the baby wailing. "Can you watch the babies while we work?" Morgan called to ask, as Trevor hammered in the background. She lives three blocks away from me in San Francisco.
So a Saturday, not even an entire Saturday she would just go three blocks and pick up the Grand Kids....seems simple enough right? Seems like a very basic human thing to do right? but the response is telling and well frankly a little bit shocking.
Look, I'd love to nip over and whisper secrets into 1-month-old Maggie's ears, or to dress 2-year-old Ryan in the black leather jacket I bought her recently and take her to look for late blackberries in Golden Gate Park on my bike (with its deluxe new kid seat). But I have a job. I'm a reporter, I have two books to write, a husband who wants to go to France, and I just bought an investment property in Portland, Oregon. I love my grandchildren, but being a grandmother got added to my to-do list.
You see her way to assert she is a good Grandmother is "I'd love to help and....hey look at all these things i bought to show how good a grand mother i am." worse she doesn't even present a reason why she couldn't take maybe as little as 2 hours out of her day to help. I imagine she probably cared this little for her own children, and was so thing centered with them. So she must have truely been desperate to try and call granny shopping bags for help.
The truth is, I can't be the kind of grandmother my own grandmother was -- available and self-sacrificing, always arriving in her red VW with her overnight bag to help Mom. I wasn't a stay-at-home mom, and I can't be a stay-at-home-grandma either.
Was anyone asking you to? no...no one was. While a little self sacrifice was asked for you weren't even willing to do that.
As I pondered this, Morgan was waiting for my answer. "I can't, sweetie. I'm working," I told her. "Okay, Mom, we'll manage," she said, with that briskness she uses to cover up disappointment. I put the phone down, realizing I'm going to have to live with that guilty feeling. You may think I'm being churlish, but at least I'm not alone.
you should feel guilty you took a situation that would be only a minor inconvience and couldn't be bothered?
But another friend of hers is even worse
Having just quit after 12 years as a family court judge, my friend Susan Baker is now trying to set the limits for her own grandmothering. But the end of her legal career merely signals the beginning of another, as an author. She feels bad that, because of a long-planned book signing and a scheduled day on the bench, she couldn't drop everything for a week when her oldest daughter, Susan, had another baby last November. "I felt really guilty about that," Baker told me. But her new career is important to her. "I love those little kids and I do want to have a relationship with them," she said. "But I'm not willing to give up my writing or my traveling. I'll be the best grandmother I can from a distance."
How shallow and pathetic is this woman?
Dr. Helen sums up why this is horriffic here.......
As extended families become less influential in children's lives, I can't help but think this must affect their ability to learn about the closeness of human interactions.
yep going from a generation raised by women to a generation born with no family and people who show family just isn't important.
I'll just let Dr. Helen close this one out with this blurb.
this the guilt parents feel about not spending enough time with kids themselves and the never ending material goods being lavished on the little darlings and it's no wonder kids can be confused and unclear about the importance of human interactions. Extended family also gives kids examples of how other people behave outside of the daycare, school or their immediate family. Grandparents don't have to go overboard but perhaps not adding the grandkids to the to-do list but rather to the I-would-love-to see-them list would be a start
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