There are over 70 million grandparents in the US today, and each month 75,000 Americans 45-69 years old join the club. The average age of becoming a grandparent is 50 years for women and a couple of years older for men. Today's grandparents may range in age from 30 to 110, and grandchildren range from newborns to retirees. The transition to parenthood is a stressful period, even for competent couples with uncomplicated pregnancies and healthy babies. In another study, it was found that when daughters become mothers they often find themselves with a new need for their mothers.
Parents are a bridge between the two generations.
Parents can set the tone for grandparent-grandchild relations over the entire life course by how they perform their early function as gatekeeper to grandparents and as regulator of appropriate grandparent role behavior. Even as adults, grandchildren tend to interact with grandparents in the context of wider family activities, often involving the parents. Greater closeness and contact between parents and grandparents equals more closeness and contact between grandchildren and grandparents. Grandparents can find themselves as primary caregivers. Intergenerational bonds need not be traditional or biological.