Another Guardian: How Does Living With Our Grandparents Shape the People We Become?

Credit: Tristan Bowersox (on Flickr)

Picture frames occupied by people you think might have held you as a baby, and tea stains marking the furniture with sepia-toned halos like they were visited by some sort of Yorkshire Tea angel, our grandparents houses rear generations of children with a consistent hum of Emmerdale bleating irreverently in the background. There’s a liminality to the rooms of these houses, as if the ghosts of the people who once inhabited them can sense the transitional usage of the rooms for gatherings, celebrations, and holidays. 

Growing up in Liverpool, and I’m certain this is the case in other places, every person I knew had a friend who somewhat offhandedly, ‘lives with their Nan’. The house they lived at was always ‘just round the corner’ from a park and it usually manifested as a post WW2 terraced house or bungalow within a five minute walk from a shoebox corner shop selling old-fashioned confectionery. Strawberry bon-bons, and black liquorice; dropped toffee clings to the bottom of your boots, a taste for a simpler time that you could never quite grasp digs its heels into these brick sweet cupboards. Maybe you’ll hear a colloquialism or idiom previously only heard from your mum’s elderly coworker, or you’ll notice a ‘posher’ cadence in their tone of voice. Unearned nostalgia and a penchant for the mannerisms present in the grey-haired generation emerge in these friends. I interviewed people anonymously from a variety of places across the UK who spent their childhood either living with their grandparents or spent an extended period of time living with them. What follows in this article is a summation of their lived experiences. 

Interview Portion

Q: Is there any specific reason or event that led to you living with your grandparents? How did that shape your life at the time?

A: Answers to this were mixed, but what was shared was that it was not a conscious decision, although a welcome one. Many individuals stated that their parents had fallen under some hardship. In one case, a bombing had happened to their house while they were a teenager, hoping to focus on GCSEs and the Baldur’s Gate video game, however they had to take refuge with their grandparents due to this earth-shattering event. In another, a family had lost their home and with the risk of homelessness over their heads, they trusted their grandparents to take their family in during this turbulent period. What unites all of these experiences is that a grandparent’s home is a place of sanctity, almost religious in its capacity for care. 

Q: Were there any key experiences you had living there that changed your perception of them or yourself?

A: Due to the circumstances that many people underwent which led to them living at their grandparents’ houses, key aspirations soon began to change after they spent a significant period living with the elder generation of their families. One person asserted that because of the absence of their parents in a key role of their life, they discovered that they wanted to pursue a career in social work and fostering, to enrich the next generation in the same way their grandparents had. Perceptions of grandparents had always been positive, after all, they were and are guardians, in some cases where parental figures are absent or fleeting. 

Q: Was there any media that your grandparents consumed that you have fond or lasting memories of?

A: The Chase, Tipping Point, Murder She Wrote, Coronation Street, the list of evening game-show and serialised soap-operas snowballs on and on with a seemingly infinite number of obscure television programmes that have had an impact on our generation of children who grew up sat on the battered leather couch of our Nan’s house. These media properties have imparted a need for needless trivia and a flair for the dramatic by way of joining in with the choir of their families bellowing at the screen at ear-bleeding volume for the correct answer to general knowledge questions. Fond, core-memories of this are sewn like seeds, growing into aspects of personalities (like providing a competitive nature, inherited from grandad who’s especially merciless towards Bradley Walsh). 

Q: Did you ever feel ostracised for having a different living situation, what did that look like?

A: Unfortunately, ostracisation by peers was a notable characteristic in being resident at their grandparents’ home. Questions like ‘Why do your mum and dad not pick you up?’ and ‘Why would you want to live with your grandparents?’ are commonplace, even by children who are curious rather than intentionally mean. Awkward questions expecting answers you realise you do not have, lead to introspection and a feeling of ill-placed inadequacy among the youth who did not have a choice in their living situation. Accusations along the lines of ‘You live with your grandma because your parents do not want you,’ sting like salt in a wound you were conditioned to have by being in a position out of the expected norm. Some of the people interviewed stated that they were hesitant to invite their friends to their house in the fear of being judged for the slow-paced environment and less ‘kid-friendly’ amenities. 

Q: How do you feel impacted by living with them, do you think you are closer with them now than you would have been otherwise?

A: The main consensus is an expected one, of course you are going to be closer with your grandparents when you spend your life, or a period of your life, living with them. You learn their likes and dislikes, how many sugars they take in their tea; what people you should never bring up… There’s an element of traditionalism you must grapple with as well, for example gender roles and gender essentialism which were prevalent in the values of their generation are entrenched in how they bring up their grandchildren despite the freer values of the current world. In unlearning these principles, there is non-linearity and nuance in our grandparents as people; knowing which lessons to adhere to and which may be alright to leave solely as fragments in our grandparents’ upbringings. 

Are there any moments/experiences living with them which you would like to share?

A few individuals noted that their behavioural issues growing up had stemmed from their familial situations. There was a tendency to lash out, not because of an innate tendency to be acting in an antisocial way, but because there was a lack of room to express the hurt they were enduring. At an early age, court proceedings; the lengthy custody arrangements and the excessive vinyl quotes plastered over the walls of social-worker offices, they feel like two akitas yanking at each of your wrists until you feel like your head is going to pop off. You do not understand what you have done, you do not understand that you did not do anything, but at the end of the ordeal every action feels like damage control. There are serious ripples to these feelings and understanding has to come from all parties.

Thankfully, our grandparents, in all their complicated lives, personalities and politics, provide a shelter. Respite. And that is what I wanted to highlight in this article.