Gran out, Glammy in: the new generation of grandmothers

Grandmothers like Kris Kardashian are these days far too young to be called gran, in spirit if not quite in body, writes Nikki Gemmell. Picture: AFP

Out with the old, in with the new. We’re talking grandparents’ names. None of that gran and pop anymore thank you very much. Grandmothers of Australia are far too young for that now, in spirit if not quite in body. They’re rebelling. Changing things up. How about Glammy. G-dog. Insta-gran. Glamma. Lovey (which is what Kris Kardashian’s grandkids call her). Lolli to go with the other half, Pop. Or simply, G.

When I think of the grandparent brigade when I was young, they looked uniformly old. Past it and dressed like it. Not this lot. And while we’re at it, the collective noun for those people who inhabit the third trimester of life – that needs a change up too. Seniors? Please. How about … oldsters. Much cooler.

The age of the grandparent cohort varies wildly now too. I have a friend my age who has four grandkids and is known to wear skin-tight sequinned leggings covered in huge silver stars (most fabulously). I have an 11-year-old. We’re in different worlds when it comes to the ages of our offspring yet have the same kind of mindset. Which is: may we never, entirely, grow up. Carpe diem.

A reader sent a letter which chimed. She posed: “At what age do we (women) safely assume we’re ‘free’? The mothering years have a second round for us now. Grandchildren. So many of us, when we hit our 60/70s, are caring for grandchildren – for regular days and nights. A friend called it ‘co-parenting’. And for many it lasts for years. We thought we’d be ‘free’ once we’d given our all to our children; made invisible sacrifices, comforted by the thought it would only be ‘til they were adults.”

The reader continues, “We don’t complain; we love our time with grandchildren, in the same way we loved our own. It’s just that in there, the ‘time to revel in life’ seems (still) somehow a bit too far away. I’m now, at 65, fighting against sliding into the mothering role all over again – and not making time to think about what I want.”

Indeed. A new favourite podcast examines how to navigate the shock of the early senior years; it’s Suddenly Senior from old media hounds Ange Catterns and Ian Rogerson. They interview contemporaries who find themselves freshly in this discombobulating state of limbo – those who don’t feel elderly, yet are neither young nor middle aged. Old? Me? Pardon? Jean Kittson wishes her chin hair and ears would stop growing. Mikey Robins has the lowdown on post-colonoscopy sandwiches. Jane Caro says the best thing about ageing is losing your shame. Bring it on, I say, even though I’m not quite there yet.

Meanwhile, as this fresh brigade of spry young things colonises the ranks of grandparenthood, the names grandma and nan seem to be disappearing. Going the way of other old certainties like bankcards, passwords, plastic bags, manual cars, drivers, signing your signature with actual pens, cash and wallets.

So what is it that gives us most happiness as we age? Danish research concludes it’s a sense of home. The Happiness Research Institute stated, “If you’re happy with your home, you’re almost certainly happy in life”. It found the home is “almost three times more important than what we earn, and five times more important than employment status or whether we have children”. The Institute’s CEO, Meik Wiking, says homes are where we “can retreat to and seek refuge”. They shape our lives.

So that’s the aim for the third trimester: the nurturing of an enveloping sense of home. Because as poet May Swenson wrote, “I always felt like a bird blown through the world / I never felt like a tree.” Ah yes, time to be that tree and not a bird. And to be called Glammy – if you’re ever so blessed with grandkids – and to damn well live up to the name.