Are today's grandparents too hands-off?
Have grandparents become more self-involved than their grandparents in past generations? The baby boomer generation has been dubbed the "Me Generation" because after the social upheaval of the ‘60s, they began to focus on themselves, prioritizing wealth accumulation, personal growth, self-help programs, and fitness. Now that baby boomers are grandparents, some millennials aren’t too happy that the Me Generation has taken that ethos into their golden years.
Although we can't paint every generation member with the same brush, many older millennial parents feel that their baby boomer parents, known for being the least involved in recent history, are too hands-off as grandparents. Mother Phyllis, a popular TikToker with much to say about boomer grandparents, recently shared a video about how her parents live 40 minutes away and put very little effort into being grandparents, yet brag on social media about how much they love their grandchildren.
Millennial mom says her boomer parents aren't around for their grandkids
The crux of Phyllis’ point is that older millennials had grandparents who were very involved in their lives, but their parents don’t seem to have the same dedication.
@motherphyllis Can anyone else relate?????? I should’ve said absent grandmother’s not grandparents but y’all know what I mean 🤣 #fyp #fypシ #fypage #viral #fyp #viral #millennial #boomer #momlife #mom #sahm #funny @laneige_us
“My mom comes over for her yearly visit and snaps a picture of the kids. Or sometimes she doesn't even do that. She'll just take a picture off my Facebook page, post it to her Facebook page, and say, 'I love hanging out with my grandkids so much,'" Phillis says in a video with over 200,000 views. “They're so amazing. And then her friends comment and say, ‘Being a grandparent is so amazing, it's just so great.’” Phyllis adds that when she had a child, her boomer parents didn’t show much interest in helping after her birth, saying that helping out was her husband's job.
Some grandparents spend more time on Facebook than they do with their grandkids.Photo credit: Canva
The post resonated with many people in the comments who are having the same struggles with their boomer parents. "Their parents raised us. They didn’t even want to be parents, so they’re sure as hell not gonna be grandparents," Kim wrote. "I mean, you think having boomer grandparents are bad, try having them raise you. Generation X basically raised ourselves because they’re busy," Queen added.
Why are a lot of baby boomers absentee grandparents?
A big reason why parents like Phyllis feel betrayed by their parents for refusing to be involved in their children’s lives is that they probably had grandparents who were involved in theirs. Many older millennials and Gen Xers had grandparents involved in their upbringing, providing daycare, babysitting, and making social visits, because their grandmothers were raised to be homemakers and didn’t have jobs. So their lifestyle was more geared toward caring for children. Boomer women were much more likely to have had careers and still work to this day.
Baby boomer grandparents are also financially better off than their parents were, which means they have more disposable income and can spend more time on vacation and pursuing their hobbies. In previous generations, when grandparents had less money, they found joy by spending time with their families and raising the next generation. But what is fortunate for baby boomers—having more money—means that their kids feel less supported than they did.
@motherphyllis Millennials just can’t understand the way some boomers act If I’m being honest ##fyp##foryoupage##fypシ##fypage##mom##sahm##momlife##honest##truth##relatable##millennial##boomer##generation##millennialstothemoon##phyllis
“Here’s the thing, though: it’s statistically more likely that your own grandmothers were homemakers, at least from the time they had children,” DeeDee Moore, a grandparenting influencer, writes for Scary Mommy. “They were home to watch you after school, or host you and your cousins for weeks during the summer. Starting with the baby boomer generation, women were more likely to be in the workforce, making babysitting grandkids and cousin camp harder to pull off.”'
A happy Baby Boomer couple.Photo credit: Canva
While parents like Phyllis have a good reason to be upset that their parents aren’t involved in their children’s lives, everyone’s situation is different, so we can’t bash all boomers for being uninvolved in their grandchildren’s lives. However, their accusation does follow a significant generational trend: Gen Xers and older Millennials, known by some as Generation Goonie, were raised in a world with very little parental involvement. So, it's unsurprising that their children have grandparents who may not be around much.
This article originally appeared in April.