A Vision for Grandparenting
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National Grandparent’s Day was celebrated last month on September 7 (It’s always the Sunday after Labor Day.). I have four children and they each had four children, so I am a grandfather (“Papa”) of 16 grandchildren.
While I had a vision as a younger man for my family – a very strong, burning vision – it didn’t go beyond that first family season. By that, I mean that first season when it was just me and my wife and our four kids. Throughout that run, there was no other life I could see beyond that; no other “season” of family that would follow.
A lot of parents are that way.
In fact, I didn’t think there would be a season beyond that one. It’s a strange case of myopia—I could see things close up with clarity, but in the distance, things got fuzzy. In truth, when you are in the thick of family life, you can’t imagine it ending. You know – conceptually – they will grow up, move out, marry, but you can’t really imagine it.
Until they do.
The truth was that our family operating as a single-family unit – that wonderful, magical group of six – was just a season of my life. We’re obviously still a family, we’re still very close, but that unit – that grouping, that living situation, that set of dynamics – was, in truth, a short segment of our life. The time from when our last child, Zach, was born, to when our oldest child, Rebecca, was married, was only about 17 years. If I were to live the average life expectancy of a man in the U.S. today, which is right at about 73, that wouldn’t even constitute a fourth of my life. If I live into my eighties, it’ll be even less.
So what is your vision for that second, longer season of family life? If God blesses you with grandchildren, what will that “family life” entail? The Bible gives direction for this vision, beginning with sheer enjoyment. In Psalm 128 we read, “May you live to enjoy your grandchildren” (v. 6, NLT), and in Proverbs, “Grandchildren are the crowning glory of the aged...” (17:6, NLT).
And it’s not just a time of enjoyment, but also a time of responsibility. Too many grandparents see it as a time of payback. Of entitlement. It’s all about what the grandkids do for them or give to them. When you look at grandchildren as an entitlement, it becomes all about you. You have expectations, and you want them met. It’s all about your enjoyment, your satisfaction, your fulfillment. Having them there when you want them there, doing what you want them to do.
This is not a biblical vision.
Instead, it should be seen as a time of investment, not entitlement. It should be seen as a season characterized by what you can do and give to your children and grandchildren.
Some ways of serving should be clear, such as helping with babysitting and childcare, offering strategic financial assistance, creating a “second” home where it is easy and safe for grandchildren to come. And, of course, providing unconditional love. A child simply cannot have too many people in their life who love them.
But the most important thing a grandparent can do is reinforce the values being conveyed to those children by your children, and to embody the faith that (hopefully) they are endeavoring to pass on. And if that faith is not being passed on, to be the one that God uses to ensure that it is.
In Proverbs, it says, “A good life gets passed on to the grandchildren...” (13:22, Msg). That’s a very clear statement and an intriguing one: the good life of a grandparent can be passed along to the grandchild. When Paul wrote to Timothy, commenting on his strong faith, he went out of his way to point out how that faith got planted in his life:
“I write this to you, Timothy, the son I love so much....
“Every time I say your name in prayer — which is practically all the time — I thank God for you.... I miss you a lot, especially when I remember that last tearful good-bye, and I look forward to a joy-packed reunion.
“That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith — and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you!” (II Timothy 1:2-5, Msg)
Timothy didn’t have a Christian father. But his grandmother was a Christian, and she handed that faith down to Timothy’s mother, and then together, they gave it to Timothy. The strategic importance of the role of his grandmother in his faith was so clear to the apostle Paul that he wrote about it. And it is so important for us to remember the importance of grandparents in a child’s life, particularly spiritually, that the Holy Spirit inspired him to write it so that even to this day we could be reminded of it.
You may find this surprising, but until very recently, there were no significant studies from the social sciences on how parents can best pass on their faith to the next generation. We knew that parents mattered. We knew that the Church mattered. But what exactly was it about parents and churches that mattered? That wasn’t as clear. Now it is, thanks to a national study of religious parents in the United States conducted under the leadership of sociologist Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at Notre Dame.
Drawing from new empirical evidence from more than 230 in-depth interviews, as well as data from three nationally representative surveys, there was one significant headline: The single, most powerful causal influence on the religious lives of American teenagers and young adults is the religious lives of their parents.
Not their peers,
not the media,
not their youth group leaders or clergy,
not their religious school teachers,
not Sunday School,
not mission trips,
not service projects,
not summer camp….
It’s parents.
Parents define for their children the role that religious faith and practice ought to play in life, whether important or not, which most children roughly adopt. In other words, speed of the parent, speed of the child. Smith writes about the dynamic as akin to parents setting a “glass ceiling” of religious commitment above which their children rarely rise.
But that’s not all that Smith’s research found. Along with the importance of parents was the importance of grandparents. Specifically, the importance of grandparents in reinforcing the parents.
There is a disproportionate impact when a child sees another adult that they know and love – and particularly a grandparent – saying the same things as their parents, modeling the same things as their parents. If they see me as their Papa reading the Bible, praying, talking to them about God and my own relationship with Jesus, it affects them deeply. They may feel comfortable asking questions of their Nana that they wouldn’t ask their own mother. In essence, we are partners in raising that child intellectually, emotionally, physically,
... and spiritually.
That was my vision for my four children. It has become my vision for theirs as well.
James Emery White
Sources
Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk, Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass their Religion on to the Next Generation.