# Grandparents **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 3, 2011, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701 "2011-07-03T09:22:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2011, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701/41 "2011-07-06T23:58:20Z")
I don’t think it’s going to be much of problem in countries with nice long life expectancies like America. Your grandparents might not be around to see their great-grandkids anymore, but even if everyone has their first kid in their 30s most people are still going to have living grandparents at least until their later childhood. My family has 4 generations living even though we tend to have more babies later in life. Grandpa and Grandpa are now 98 and 88 and relatively hale; their 4 daughters are 63, 61, 53 and 50; their grandkids are 43, 36 (neither of these two oldest cousins have kids), 33, 31, 26, 20, 18, 13 and 11; and their two great-granddaughters are 5 and 18 months old. My family does tend to be long-lived but plenty of people make it to 85+. My family also likes to move a lot so I’ve almost never lived in the same state as a grandparent, or seen them more than once a year… ---
**Author:** ![YaraMateo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/58f4c7/32.png) [@YaraMateo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YaraMateo)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701/42 "2011-07-07T00:09:37Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > Holy shit. Look at the numbers. Put those 70,000+ centenarians and their 3.5 million relatives in a city and call it…Los Angeles (I’m a little off, since LA has a population of 3.7 million people). You’re confused by the fact that someone from Los Angeles is posting to this thread? No. What I’m saying is it would be like saying everyone in the US is related to at least one person in LA. ---
**Author:** ![YaraMateo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/58f4c7/32.png) [@YaraMateo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YaraMateo)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701/43 "2011-07-07T00:12:43Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > Do you have any real statistics about the decline of grandparenting? In the USA? Elsewhere? > > I never knew either of my grandfathers because they died fairly young. One of my grandmothers helped raise me but I only met the other one a few times–because her son, my father, died young & we were raised in a different part of the country. We made a couple of visits to my father’s family but none of them ever set foot in Texas. Looking back in my family history, there were plenty of people who died early, leaving young children & grandchildren; not everybody in the world has always grown up in the midst of a huge extended family. (Immigration & moving within the USA also separate families–& always have.) > > That is, if you want to return to the subject of your OP. Instead of going on about how other Dopers have been lying… Gee, thanks for the snarky remark. I guess the next time I don’t believe EVERY claim in a thread I make, I’ll keep to myself. I wouldn’t want to offend YOU. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![YaraMateo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/58f4c7/32.png) [@YaraMateo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YaraMateo)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701/44 "2011-07-07T00:14:16Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > No, it just sounds like you’re calling most people here liars. While it is impossible to guarantee the 100% veracity of all things posted by people on message boards, it is unacceptable to brand other posters as liars generally. I have issues with this. Just as I have issues with we can’t call people liars (no ine mind SERIOUSLY) even when they’re caught in one. So, I guess I have to play nice. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701/45 "2011-07-07T00:16:59Z")
> [@SanVito](#): > > …yes, I became a great aunt at the horrifying age of 37. Hey, at least my brother, sister and their kids are bucking the trend of older parents)… I became a great-uncle at the age of _22_. My niece was in the same class as me in high school. We told everyone we were cousins. My mother was not happy when she realized she was about to become a great-grandmother that the ripe old age of whatever she was claiming to be at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701/46 "2011-07-07T00:25:31Z")
> [@YaraMateo](#): > > No. What I’m saying is it would be like saying everyone in the US is related to at least one person in LA. We already explained to you how this works at detailed and yet again, you still aren’t getting it and it doesn’t look good. A thread about people with relatives in L.A. will be filled with people who really do have relatives in LA. Look at the view to Post ratio on threads sometime. As of this writing, this thread has almost 1000 views with 43 replies. The views were self-selected as well. People don’t randomly click on every topic and respond to everything they do read unless they have a reason to or something to share. A thread about the death of grandparenting will have a disproportionate amount of posts from people that have older grandparents who are doing quite well. I have no idea whatsoever how anyone could make it more clear than that. ---
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701/47 "2011-07-07T00:40:28Z")
Longevity might well be more common among families of SDMB posters than in the general population. The SDMB seems to be self-selecting for highly educated people, and those with a higher IQ. Longevity isn’t strictly genetic but is strongly associated with traits that can run in families (prudence, forethought, good planning, persistence in attaining life goals such educational degrees). ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701/48 "2011-07-07T04:10:28Z")
As I said in the thread I suspect you’re namechecking, I only lost my last grandparent a few years ago (I think I was 29.) My parents were 39 and 49 but I had three grandparents until I was 13 and 2 until I think 26. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701/49 "2011-07-07T12:53:42Z")
> [@YaraMateo](#): > > Gee, thanks for the snarky remark. I guess the next time I don’t believe EVERY claim in a thread I make, I’ll keep to myself. I wouldn’t want to offend YOU. :rolleyes: Well, why don’t you validate \*your \*claim that grandparents are endangered? ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2011, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701/50 "2011-07-07T12:54:31Z")
> [@YaraMateo](#): > > No. What I’m saying is it would be like saying everyone in the US is related to at least one person in LA. Then you are having a terrible time reading this thread objectively. You keep using phrases like “everyone on the SDMB” when that’s clearly not the case. In fact, it took just three people “from Los Angeles” to post their distinctive stories about their grandparents in a thread inexplicably called “Grandparents” (why, how ever did they decide to open the thread?) before you decided to swing your “liar” claims around. Three! And in all, we have a grand total of 8 “residents of Los Angeles” in this thread (if you consider rekkah and Siam Sam residents, since their relatives are 99 and 91, respectively). I’d expect to get a lot more posters actually from Los Angeles in a thread entitled “Los Angeles”, frankly. You yourself claim to have 40 first cousins. That’s pretty remarkable. Yet I accept it as true, simply because there’s no reason for me not to. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grandparents/587701.md?page=2)