In a culture focused on nuclear families, grandparents often navigate this role alone, figuring out how to support their adult children, bond with their grandchildren, and manage boundaries without a road map.

A community of other grandparents can make all the difference!

The well-documented rise in adult-child-parent estrangement creates stressors for grandparents, too (such as loss, identity change, social isolation, and complicated loyalties). It raises the practical importance of grandparent communities as protective resources (for emotional support, practical help, advocacy, and skills for boundary work).

I was recently speaking to a friend who is also a new grandparent, and we discussed the joys of being grandfathers, as well as how rewarding it feels to help our adult children navigate this challenging time in their lives. Given the rise in estrangement between adult children and their parents, we both feel grateful that our adult sons feel comfortable turning to us and allowing us to be there for them. We both acknowledged that we are not the parents and have moved from the driver’s to the passenger’s seat,........

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