GRANDPARENTS' DAY:Celebrating family on Grandparents' Day this month is less of a gimmick and more of a fine idea. Here, some older parents and their children share their stories of the third generation, writes DEIRDRE MCQUILLAN
IF SISTERHOOD WAS the clarion call of the 1970s and fatherhood that of the 1980s, today is the era of modern grandparenthood. Studies show that far from cosy notions of the past, grandparents play an important role in the development of their grandchildren’s personalities, behaviour and value systems.
As they live longer and their children work harder, they often provide free childcare, while others may be their grandchildren’s sole support. It has been estimated in the UK that 14 million grandparents provide childcare worth £3.9 billion a year, while some 200,000 provide care without state support for their children’s children.
In an Irish survey, Grandparenthood in Ireland, conducted by the Department of Social Protection, the majority of interviewees recounted feelings of delight and joy on becoming grandparents. However, others expressed shock and said it made them feel old.
Over a quarter said they were loath to interfere in their children’s lives while others experienced the loss of being denied access to their grandchildren, usually after separation and divorce. As elsewhere, the law in Ireland does not give grandparents any automatic legal rights to their grandchildren. “For many children the grandparents are the only stable relationship in their lives,” says former MEP Mary Banotti, who is a member of the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
According to Lisa O’Hara, a relationship counsellor with Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services:
“Grandparents are incredibly valuable people to have around because you can trust them with your children. They provide an opportunity for parents who are under a terrible amount of stress. The pitfalls are when they are seen as intrusive, when trying to help is seen as taking over.”
She also points out that the grandmother/daughter-in-law relationship is a particularly complicated bond.
“They are both females and females are emotional containers. In some respects, women like things a particular way and they like things their way and may see alternatives as competitive.” Access to grandchildren, she argues, is a human if not a legal right. “When grandparents can’t access or lose access to their grandchildren through divorce or separation, it is a huge individual loss.”
That is a view echoed by Margaret Chambers, an Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy counsellor, who is also a grandmother. “When grandparents lose contact, they can experience huge grief at the loss of this living bond. Whoever has custody will determine the decisions made about what contact, if any, can be made.
Young children may not be aware of it, but when they grow up, they will ask questions. There is a route for everyone else through the courts, but no redress for grandparents.”
Her own experience has been a pleasure. “There is nothing that prepares you for the sense of continuity. I knew my own grandparents, I became a parent myself, and now as a grandparent, it has come full circle.”
Her advice for successful grandparenthood concerns child rearing. “How children are reared today is quite different to before.
The number of choices children are given today would not have been the case before, so the golden rule is to learn to say nothing.”
As the following interviews reveal, the role of grandparenthood has been the start of a new life for many, exposing the secret joys of a connected relationship with a younger generation.
In turn, grandchildren talk about what their grandparents mean to them.
PAULINE BEWICK artist
"Being a grandmother is wonderful. I have four grandchildren, my daughter Poppy's two boys, Aran and Adam, and Holly's two girls, Chiara and Jiada. The boys live nearby and only have to run down a path to get to our house. The girls live in Italy.
"The role is less about the business of rearing a child, schooling and so on, and more about enjoying the everyday.
You don't have to spend your time separating them or having to even out the chip distribution on their plates.
"Aran has been painting with me since he was about two. I used to lift him up on to my table where he would paint on his knees. He has got a good eye and I will ask him what he thinks of my paintings. We go on walks along the beach, competitively combing for curiosities. I'm looking for feathers for my artwork. Aran is scouting for new things to add to his nature club. "If I get a new gadget Aran shows me how to use it. Although I know exactly how to put on the DVD player I prefer to ring him and ask him to come down and do it. "I grew up in a house full of women.
Poppy's two boys is the first time I've had close contact with boys, and the difference is very interesting. They're not as naturally aggressive as I had thought.
"They're very affectionate and sweet and sensitive and very interested in babies. "One feels younger being a grandmother than as a mother. I don't like being called a grandmother. The term pins you down.
It's not a particularly flattering label. The kids call me Pauline."
What does her granddaughter Chiara think of Pauline? "She's fun and tells us lots of stories," says the 12-year-old. "She gives me lots of advice, especially about what to do when I'm bigger. I have to think positive and always be myself."
An exhibition celebrating Pauline Bewick's work opens today, on her 75th birthday, at the Taylor Gallery, Kildare Street, Dublin 2, taylorgalleries.ie
In conversation with Alanna Gallagher
Artist
SAM HORLERand filmmaker
EMILE DINEENtalk about their grandmother, sculptor
IMOGEN STUART
Sam: "My first memory of her was when I was about three and she was surrounded in her drawing room by family and friends at her daughter's funeral, crying. . I grew up in Sligo, the youngest of seven, and after we moved to Dublin when I was 17, I made up for lost time with her. I would see her more often when I was studying at Dún Laoghaire School of Art, and once a month would pick up a cheque from her. All her grandchildren who went to college got a cheque. It was a clear exchange – we would go there, have dinner, help her out with something around the house, and she would help us through college.
"We had amazing philosophical discussions and I found my time with her more inspiring than at college. We call her Oma. There is nothing cluttered about her work and she is like that with everything. She keeps redoing things the way Munch did until he got the strong image he wanted. She can distil expression into a really solid object. She's interested in absolutely everything and has a childlike view of the world, where everything is exciting, which makes it exciting to be with her. I always feel she has enriched me."
Emile: "I was always close to her because I lived beside her. I would go through the hedge and be in her garden. I've lived and travelled in so many places with my mum, that throughout my life she has been the one constant, a rock for me. She has gone from being a creative force in my growing up, to a deeper bond and stability I didn't have elsewhere. She's very gentle, open and curious, and doesn't want to look at the darker side of the world. Despite a tough life, she has managed to power through and become successful through this tireless work ethic. She works harder than ever now. She even runs down the stairs.
"People forget she's 82 and she forgets herself. I am making a documentary about her as an artist at a moment of self-reflection, taking a more oblique and unusual approach, using the fact that she is currently working on a self-portrait in wood as a starting point. There's a dreaminess about her that has been there all her life, and you feel that she's still just dreaming. Yet she's the matriarch who has held us all together through difficult times."
Imogen:"I have 12 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren and I think being a grandparent has special value. Grandchildren are much more relaxed when they are with you and you can correct them without them going on the defensive. All the big ones were constantly visiting me at weekends and I had a special cot for the younger ones, and in the morning they came into my bed. When my first grandchild, Daniel, arrived I knew nothing any more about nappies so it was a bit of a shock for me.
"I love having them and they love coming here, where they have a completely different life. Children are smart and listen a lot and because of that there is a good relationship between my children and myself. They only tell me the wonderful things that happen to them – I don't get any problems or annoyances.
"I had a good relationship with Sam when he was a teenager because what connected us was drawing and painting. Even when that child could hardly walk, he was drawing and it was so good it looked like he copied something, though he never copied anything. Even at school he painted walls and the nurseries and kitchens of friends – he has a photographic memory.
"I was always very fond of Emile and we did a lot of things together because I saw much more of him than the others; they were all so lovely. I remember him as a child with a little mallet carving a pencil case – I don't know if he finished it. I have an antique music box that belonged to my father and he loved to listen to it. There is much to see in this house, but the music box is something they all love. He is quite special to me and seems to understand me particularly well; his approach to the documentary about me is quite different to any others that have been done. But all my grandchildren are very nice to each other and that has a special value too."
In conversation with Deirdre McQuillan
FERGUS FINLAY
Barnardos chief executive
“When my daughter Vicky gave birth I never experienced anything like the nerves. I was at home, pacing, waiting for that moment when you could light that cigar.
“I have four daughters; my eldest Mandy was born with intellectual disabilities. The three births after that were nerve-racking. When Vicky went into hospital an image of vulnerability kept coming into my head. It’s a feeling that your child is a baby again. Seeing Ross was a sheer bloody triumph. Vicky had performed a miracle. I was bursting with pride.
“Ross is now two-and-a-half and uniquely talented. He’s probably the most talented, handsome two-and-a-half-year-old in Ireland. He’s full of personality and full of fun. Without being unduly biased, I think he has extraordinary potential. He can sing and memorise songs with ease. The ringtone on my mobile is Ross singing Ireland’s Call. It’s seldom enough we’d have him overnight but when we do we’re both on tenterhooks all through the night, checking in on him every five minutes.
“He is a child who enjoys broccoli, what can I say? A chocolate is a real treat for him. I would spoil him rotten if I was let. I love being a grandparent. I prefer granddad to grandfather. Frieda doesn’t like being called a grandmother.”
“I prefer Frieda,” she interjects. “Being a grandparent allows you to really enjoy your grandchildren and to lavish gifts on them.”
“I’m amazed by what I have learned from the role,” says Fergus. “I probably wasn’t the best parent in the world – work turned me into an absentee father. I now realise kids miss the little things and I will go to great pains to be there for all the little things in Ross’s life.”
In conversation with Alanna Gallagher
