You gotta cut the boomer would-be grandparents some slack

Plus: an interview I gave about the election, the history of a prayer, and more

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here’s this week’s post. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, please consider upgrading to read the whole thing and support my work:

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A take I haven’t written elsewhere

You gotta cut the boomer would-be grandparents some slack

(via)

N.B. I’m working on an election-related piece that I intended for this week, but I need to take a bit more time with it, and this is timely now, so that’ll be the next post instead.

This week, The New York Times published a story about boomers (and Gen Xers, but that’s much less fun in a headline) who are disappointedly realizing they will never be grandparents because their children have decided not to have kids. The opening anecdote will give you the gist:

Lydia Birk, 56, has held on to her favorite copy of “The Velveteen Rabbit” since her three children — now in their 20s and 30s — were young.

She loved being a stay-at-home mother, and filled her family’s home with books. (All of her children could read before they started school, Ms. Birk recalled with pride.) She hoped one day to be a “cool” grandma who would share her favorite stories with a new generation.

But none of her children want to have kids. And though that decision is “right for them,” Ms. Birk said, it still breaks her heart. “I don’t have young children anymore, and now I’m not going to have grandchildren,” she said. “So that part of my life is just over.”

Maybe the subject matter would’ve sparked strong reactions regardless, though the story makes pointedly clear, early on, that its subjects understand that their adult children do not “owe” them grandkids and that its author understands that society is Bad, Actually for “tend[ing] to paint grandchildren as a reward for aging.”

But the headlines really guaranteed blowback. The Times often uses several per story; the two I saw for this one both struck a mournful note:

• “Longing for grandchildren when your child doesn’t want kids”

• “The unspoken grief of never becoming a grandparent”

The social media objections were as you would expect: Oh, boohoo, you ruined the world and are mad at your kids for making the eminently sensible decision not to bring a baby into an overpriced trash heap. Or, in the words of a viral post with a generational wealth chart, “‘how could this have happened,’ we cried from our vacation home while our kids were barely affording groceries.”