t’s exciting. You’re going to be a new grandparent! It will be wonderful. You’ll bond with that baby. You’ll help the new parents learn the ropes. Hold on — stop right there. Yes, it’s thrilling when your adult child becomes a parent. But you are stepping into a brand-new set of relationships. Negotiating your role as a grandparent can be tricky, and how you start out will set the tone for the rest of the family dynamic.
When it comes to American families, one size does not fit all. Roughly 40% of babies in the United States today are born to unmarried mothers. Some 2.6 million LGBTQ+ adults are parenting children under 18. Children often have more than two sets of grandparents, because step-grandparents are often part of the picture. And 2.3 million children are being raised by their grandparents, due to the death of a parent, incarceration or substance abuse issues.
The image of long-married Grandma and Grandpa visiting new parents who are young, married and heterosexual is outdated, and has given way to a far more complex society. And that means that parenting norms and conventions that were tried-and-true in their day may not apply today, especially amid changing attitudes towards parenting styles and newer information about baby safety. Grandparents have to figure out where they fit into the picture.