The glory of grandparents

Demographic change, like continental drift, is too gradual to be visible day by day but eventually it shakes the world. People live two decades longer than they did in 1960, and women have half as many children. One of the many ways in which this has transformed family dynamics concerns grandparents. There are a lot more of them, and they each have fewer grandchildren to dote on.Surprisingly little is known about this trend, so commissioned . This found that the number of grandparents in the world has roughly trebled since 1960, to 1.5bn, and the ratio of grandparents to children under 15 has jumped from 0.46 in 1960 to 0.8 today. This matters because grandparents pass on knowledge and traditions and maintain a family’s links with the past. More vitally, they help bring up children, and free mothers to work outside the home.