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FROM Liam “Grandpa” Gallagher From Sadie Frost, to glamorous TV presenter-turned-football club owner Karen Brady, to Mötley Crüe BBC’s hit series About a group of middle-aged women forming a rock band, rioting womenThere is a new generation of grandparents In the city. And they clearly won’t be like beige-clad nanas and old-fashioned pipe-smoking grandfathers.
As a late Baby Boomer, I was born at least a decade before Generation X-ers like Gallagher and Frost, but I consider myself one of the forefathers of the New Age. My first grandchild was born when I was 63, which is the average age for a new grandparent in the UK, and I never worried for a minute that becoming a grandmother would make me “age out.”
Last month, I went to the Roundhouse to see the excellent New Zealand indie rock band The Beths – standing shoulder to shoulder, drinking gin and tonics, and jumping up and down during the warm-up and main act. My leather jacket was silver and made of jigsaws, but otherwise I thought I looked pretty normal among a crowd of twenty and thirty people.
In my eyes, there is nothing less than wonderful about getting to this point in my life and I’m glad that grandparents have gone from being something that symbolizes growing irrelevance – at least semi-retirement, possibly decline – to being a glorified neon-lit cool status symbol. If it has changed my life, it’s only for the better.
When I go out with my grandchildren the oceans part. Addie, five and a half, and Mina, eight months, are delightful creatures with big smiles and laughs. It’s important to acknowledge that being a grandmother is a very different job than being a mother to young children. Parents are worried about safety, schedules, cleanliness, almost everything. As a grandmother, I feel free to enjoy their newness, get down to their level, and even write a coloring book. But I still work and as everyone likes to remind you, you give it back to them when you want rest.
I’m curious to see how grandparents came to be with Gen This group is not moving into midlife in the same way that pensioner boomers did. The rise in gym memberships, marathon-running and fitness challenges has been led by them.
It is not that they are giving up hedonism easily. New research from the University of Liverpool reveals that clubbers in their forties and fifties form a significant part of the city’s underground club culture. Most of the people who attend underground shows are, like Liam, middle-aged and on their way to having kids of their own.
And among women, this demographic tops many reform lists, and the current HRT campaign comes largely from women born after 1964. They don’t want to look or feel the post-menopausal period.
Some people believe that this generation matured later than previous generations because they were more concerned about living a good life rather than pursuing careers. They did not have as many children as previous generations – and even if they did, they came later. And one in four Gen rioting womenBut if they come, their lifestyle will not be so different.
Men and women now talk more openly about child care issues while working (my generation was more likely to miss the odd school concert). And now that their children have become adults, the children are kept close, they often celebrate holidays as a family – enjoying the same things, whether it’s fashion, music or TV shows.
Will the family dynamics change when those children have children of their own? If men like Gallagher stick to their Britpop-era wardrobe, will grandfatherly attire be an uncomfortable accoutrement? If the age-defying health queens, whose time is spent in yoga, retreats and beauty salon appointments, had grandchildren, would they cancel their time off to see them? Along with expectations, there will be a significant change in the conspiracies of grandparents.
The Baby Boomer grandparents I know can be pretty infuriating about the practicalities of grandchildren and the tendency to expect routine child care from their children as part of the indulgent grandparent package. Many people like me and my husband are still working; Others feel that they have fulfilled their duty by raising their children.
But thinking about grandchildren in the abstract is a far cry from reality. I talked to a male friend, who was still running a very busy tech company, in his mid-sixties, about the arrival of his first grandchild. She hoped he would be happy to see the little one, “but it was a proper coup. I actually went crazy with him in my arms, rocking him to sleep. I suddenly thought it was absolutely wonderful, and he has become a very big thing in my life”.
Another woman who runs a trends-predicting consultancy couldn’t have been more thrilled with the news that her 27-year-old daughter was expecting. She hosted a huge baby-shower at her luxurious warehouse office in East London before leaving for Dubai for work a week later. She will return for the baby’s birth in November because she “couldn’t be more excited”.
In fact it is all part of the continuous cycle of life. Aging has its negative aspects, such as greater chances of poor health, our parents getting sick and dying, our energy decreasing, our attractiveness waning. Grandchildren, so fresh, new, fun and exploratory, make us look at the world anew. Just their existence can make even the most cynical Gen
This summer at a book festival at my local park I met a powerful media mogul whose children went to elementary school with my youngest daughter. A charismatic, creative woman, she now heads a TV company whose latest series recently won a major award. As I was pouring out my congratulations, she stopped me and said, “But you have something we want even more!” What? “Your grandchildren.”
Lewis Chunn is the founder of therapist-matching platform well doing