Gen X is entering its grandparent era — and it’s hitting different

Louise Chunn, The Independent

From Liam “Grandad” Gallagher to Sadie Frost, from glamorous TV presenter-former football club owner Karren Brady to the motley crew in the BBC’s hit series about a group of mid-life women forming a rock band, Riot Women, there’s a new generation of grandparents in town. And they are clearly not going to be like the beige-clad nanas and pipe-smoking grandpas of old. As a late baby boomer, I was born at least a decade before Generation X-ers like Gallagher and Frost, but consider myself one of the new age of ancestors. My first grandchild was born when I was 63, which is the average age of a new grandparent in the UK, and I haven’t for a minute worried that becoming a grandmother “aged” me.

Last month, I went to the Roundhouse to see the excellent New Zealand indie rock band The Beths — standing shoulder-to-shoulder, sipping a gin and tonic, and bouncing up and down through warm-up and main act. My leather jacket was silver and from Jigsaw, but otherwise I thought I looked pretty unremarkable among a crowd of twenty- and thirtysomethings. In my eyes, there is nothing that is less than wonderful about coming to this point in my life and I am delighted that grandparenting has gone from being something that signified increasing irrelevance — at least semi-retirement, possibly decrepitude — to a glorious neon-lit cool status symbol that, if it has changed my life, it is only for the better.

The seas part when I go out with my actual grandchildren. Edie, five and a half, and Mina, eight months, are delightful creatures, with big smiles and peeling laughs. It’s important to acknowledge that grandmothering is such a different job to being the mother of small children. A parent is consumed with anxiety about safety, schedules, hygiene, almost everything. As a grandmother, I feel free to relish in their newness, get down to their level and scrawl all over a colouring book, too. But I still work and as everyone loves to remind you, you just give them back when you want a rest. I am intrigued to see how grandparenting lands with Gen Xers like Gallagher who are still defined by their 1990s youth spent raving in fields, taking ecstasy, drinking too much, living it large. This cohort is not sliding into midlife the same way as pensioned-up boomers did. The increase in gym membership, marathon-running, and fitness challenges have been led by them.

Not that they are giving up hedonism easily. New research from Liverpool University shows that clubbers in their forties and fifties make up a significant part of the city’s underground club culture. Sometimes the majority of those at underground events are like Liam, deep in middle age with children who are well on their way to having children of their own. Some believe this generation reached adult milestones later than the previous generation because they were more mindful of having a good life, rather than careering up the ladder. They haven’t had as many children as previous generations — and if they did, they came later. And one in four Gen X women haven’t had families at all, but that could mean that any grandchildren will not just be rare for Gen X friendship groups, or the young boomers in Riot Women, but their lifestyles might not be so different if they do arrive.

Men and women are now more upfront about childcare issues when working (my generation were more likely to miss the odd school concert). And now that their children are adults, children are kept close, often holidaying as a family — enjoying the same things whether that is fashion, music or TV programmes. When those children have their own children, will family dynamics change? If Gallagher-like men cling to their Britpop-era wardrobe, will the grandpa mantle be an uncomfortable accoutrement? If the age-defying wellbeing queens, whose time is taken up with yoga, retreats, and beauty salon appointments, have grandchildren, will they buckle and cancel their schedule to see them? There will be a significant shift in expectations as well as grandparent machinations.

The baby boomer grandparents I know can get mighty riled about the practicalities of grandchildren, and the trend for their children expecting regular childcare as part of the doting grandparent package. Many, like me and my husband, are still working; others feel they have done their duty bringing up their children.

But thinking about grandchildren in the abstract is quite different from the reality. I spoke to a male friend, in his early sixties, still running a very busy tech company, about the arrival of his first grandchild. He’d expected to be happy to see the little chap, “but it was a proper coup de foudre. I genuinely fell head over heels just holding arms in my arms, rocking him to sleep. I suddenly thought this is absolutely astonishing, and he has become a huge thing in my life”. Another woman who runs a trends forecasting consultancy couldn’t have been more thrilled at the news her 27-year old daughter was expecting. She threw her a huge baby-shower at her cool East London warehouse office before jetting off to Dubai for work a week later. She will be back for the birth in November, because she “couldn’t be more excited”.