There are two occasions in the Torah in which a grandparent addresses a grandchild, both times with everlasting impact.

Noach informs his grandson Canaan that he and his progeny will serve the descendants of his uncles Shem and Yafes.

Yaakov Aveinu gives a bracha to his grandsons Ephraim and Menashe that becomes the legacy of their descendants.

What impact do grandparents have on grandchildren today?

According to a group of eight year olds who were interviewed on this subject, quite a significant one.

Grandparents take us for a walk and slow down past things like pretty leaves and caterpillars.

Grandparents never say “hurry up.”

Grandparents don’t skip when they read to us.

Grandparents are the only grown ups who like to spend time with kids.

For many generations, grandparents were vertically integrated into families.

In the business world, vertical integration is when a business expands by acquiring another company that operates before or after them in the supply chain.  An acquisition under vertical integration helps to make a company self-sufficient and lowers dependence on suppliers.

In a nuclear family comprising mom, dad, and children, mom and dad are seldom self-sufficient.  Two income households consist of two adults trying to balance parenting, house work, and other, non-family, work.  Some or most child care is outsourced.  To whom?

Sometimes to older siblings.  But some aren’t mature enough to properly fill that role.  And some older siblings resent being held responsible for parenting; their younger siblings resent them in return.

Sometimes to babysitters who may be caring and competent, but may not be.

In the vertically integrated family, grandparents can be uniquely suited for sharing in child care.  They have the time, they care and are competent, they love the children and the children love them!

When moms and dads don’t have time to prepare home cooked meals, to take children out to play, to have breakfast with and help children unhurriedly prepare for school, grandparents can.

In a nuclear family, there can be regret.  Dads and moms often tell me they wish they could spend more time with each other and have some time to themselves.  They sometimes resent their children for making that impossible.  That is not bad or wrong.  It is reality and it is sad.

Rabbi Ackerman, when I was engaged, my Rebbe told me that when I get married, I will have to change my mentality from “me” to “we,” and when, G-d willing, we have children, I will have to change my thinking from “we” to “they.”  Now, with my children getting married, I don’t have much of a relationship with my wife. “We” gave ourselves to “them.”  I lost “me” long before that.

Had I met this man twenty years earlier, I would have modified the advice he received.  I would have taught that you add on, not replace.  You add we onto me and then you add they onto me and onto we.  You spend much of your life balancing among me, we, and they to the best of your ability.  In a nuclear family, that can be very difficult.

In an vertically integrated extended family, grandparents can make it possible for parents to have time for each other and themselves without depriving their children of loving adult care.  Everyone gets the time and care they need and no one feels guilty because no one is deprived.

In some communities, the vertically integrated family is making a comeback.

The return of multigenerational living arrangements is already changing the built landscape. A 2016 survey by a real-estate consulting firm found that 44 percent of home buyers were looking for a home that would accommodate their elderly parents.  These houses are carefully built so that family members can spend time together while also preserving their privacy. Many of these homes have a shared mudroom, laundry room, and common area. But the “in-law suite,” the place for aging parents, has its own entrance, kitchenette, and dining area. 

Family members of different generations need to do more to support one another.

This is a significant opportunity, a chance to allow more adults and children to live and grow under the loving gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes, and be caught, when they fall, by a dozen pairs of arms. For decades we have been eating at smaller and smaller tables, with fewer and fewer kin.

It’s time to find ways to bring back the big tables.

(From: The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake, David Brooks, The Atlantic, March 2020)

Building grandparent-friendly houses is a good idea.  Building grandparent-friendly mentalities is harder, and has been for some time.

Have you considered integrating the ages?  Grandparents are “stowed out of conscience as unpopular luggage.”¹  It is time to reintroduce them to your children.  (The American Family, Patricia Coffin, Look Magazine, July 26, 1971, page 22)

After building houses so that family members can spend time together while also preserving their privacy, extended families need to maintain boundaries to preserve the distinct roles of parents and grandparents.

B’ezras Hashem, we will soon be able to remove the boundaries that have been imposed upon us by Covid.  May we then give our children and grandchildren even more of our brachos and enjoy even more nachas, with our words and our touch.

¹Then a child,

    in dismay with Mamma, could refuge with Gran

to be revalued and told a story.  As of now,

    we all know what to expect, but their generation

is the first to fade like this, not at home but assigned

    to a numbered frequent ward, stowed out of conscience

as unpopular luggage.

(From: Old People’s Home, W. H. Auden, 1970)

Rabbi Yitzchak Shmuel Ackerman is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with specialties in marriage, dating, and parenting.

He is the author of Confident Parents, Competent Children, in Four Seconds at a Time  Available at bookstores and on Amazon.

He can be reached at 718-344-6575.