Through her teens, Hannah Domoslay-Paul had a great-grandmother on each side of her family. One of them was always crocheting, and as a girl, Domoslay-Paul would sit and watch her nimble hands construct the most delicate lace doilies. The other was a retired schoolteacher; at family events, she would tell stories or just list off all the counties in Michigan—the kind of thing students learned back when she was leading the classroom. Even their most mundane activities, to Domoslay-Paul, were enchanting.
汉娜·多诺斯利 - 帕尔（Hannah Domoslay-Paul）穿过十几岁，在她的家人的每一侧都有一个曾祖母。其中一个总是在钩编，作为一个女孩，多诺斯 - 帕尔（Domoslay-Paul）会坐下来看着她的灵活的手构建了最精致的蕾丝折磨。另一个是退休的学校老师。在家庭活动中，她会讲故事，或者只是列出密歇根州的所有县，这是学生领导课堂时回到的东西。即使是他们对Domoslay-Paul的最平凡的活动也令人着迷。
Now Domoslay-Paul is a graphic designer in Pensacola, Florida, and she herself has six children: four with her late first husband, and two with her current husband. On the morning that I spoke with Domoslay-Paul, those kids were in Michigan with their great-grandmother, a 92-year-old in excellent health, picking strawberries to take home and make jam. They visit her every summer; they play cards, water the flowers, and even haul hay like Domoslay-Paul did when she was around their age.
现在，多诺斯 - 帕尔（Domoslay-Paul）是佛罗里达州彭萨科拉（Pensacola）的图形设计师，她本人有六个孩子：有四个与已故的第一任丈夫一起，有两名与现任丈夫在一起。在我与多诺斯利 - 波尔（Domoslay-Paul）交谈的早晨，这些孩子和他们的曾祖母一起在密歇根州，一个92岁的健康状况良好，挑选草莓带回家和果酱。他们每年夏天拜访她；他们玩纸牌，浇水，甚至像多诺斯 - 帕尔（Domoslay-Paul）大约年龄的时候一样。
Domoslay-Paul is grateful that her kids are growing up in a four-generation family as she did—but that experience is actually less rare now than when she was a child. For centuries, living long enough to become a great-grandparent was uncommon. The role was niche enough that kin researchers rarely studied it. But now many more people are reaching old age; even with people having children later on average than those in previous generations did, great-grandparenthood is becoming remarkably unremarkable. Ashton Verdery, a Pennsylvania State University sociologist who’s part of a four-generation family himself, estimates that from 1996 to 2012, the number of great-grandparents in the United States increased by 33 percent, up to 20 million from 15 million. And according to Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, who studies kinship at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, American 15-year-olds today have an average of 2.85 great-grandparents—a figure that has been inching up since at least 1950 while the mean numbers of siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins have fallen. He expects that the overall number of great-grandparents will continue rising, not just in the U.S. but in countries across the globe.
Domoslay-Paul感激她的孩子像她一样在一个四代家庭中长大，但是现在的经历实际上比她小时候不那么罕见。几个世纪以来，足够长的时间可以成为曾祖父母，这并不常见。这个角色足以使Kin研究人员很少研究它。但是现在有更多的人正在年老。即使人们平均生育了比前几代人的平均生育，曾祖父母也变得异常毫无意义。宾夕法尼亚州立大学的社会学家阿什顿·维德利（Ashton Verdery）本人是一个四代家庭，他估计，从1996年到2012年，美国曾祖父母的数量增加了33％，从1500万人增加了2000万。据迭戈·阿尔布雷斯·古铁雷斯（Diego Alburez-Gutierrez）研究了马克斯·普朗克（Max Planck）人口研究所的亲属关系，今天，美国15岁的年轻人平均拥有2.85个曾祖父母，这一数字至少自1950年以来一直在增加，而平均数的兄弟姐妹，阿姨，叔叔，叔叔和cousins却跌倒了。他预计，曾祖父母的总数将继续增加，不仅在美国，而且在全球国家。
In some ways, this is a beautiful development: Imagine your own children’s children’s children someday learning about history not from textbooks but from you, the person who lived it. But aging inevitably entails frailty, and caregiving often falls to one’s children; when it comes to great-grandparents, their children are seniors themselves. Sociologists have long worried about the “sandwich generation,” meaning the people who are simultaneously caring for their young kids and their own aging parents—a situation that can significantly strain one’s mental health (and savings). Now they’re seeing a growing number of people in a sort of triple squeeze, helping care for their grown children, their grandchildren, and their own parents. This cohort is called the “club-sandwich generation”—and they’re stretched exceedingly thin.
在某些方面，这是一个美丽的发展：想象一下您自己的孩子的孩子的孩子有一天不是从教科书中学习历史，而是从您那里学习，而是从您那里学习。但是，衰老不可避免地需要脆弱，照料经常落在一个孩子身上。当涉及曾祖父母时，他们的孩子本身就是前辈。社会学家长期以来一直担心“三明治一代”，这意味着那些同时照顾孩子和自己老龄父母的人 - 这种情况可能会大大损害一个人的心理健康（和储蓄）。现在，他们看到越来越多的人以三重挤压，帮助照顾成年子女，孙子孙女和自己的父母。这个队列被称为“俱乐部 - 桑德威一代”，它们的伸展非常薄。
Zuzana Talašová, a doctoral student at Masaryk University, in the Czech Republic, likes to do a little experiment. When she asks people what it means to be a parent, everyone seems to have an answer. When she asks what it means to be a grandparent, she finds the same. But she doesn’t get any cohesive response when she asks what great-grandparents do. A lot of people tell her plainly: “I don’t know.”
捷克共和国Masaryk大学的博士生ZuzanaTalašová喜欢做一些实验。当她问人们成为父母意味着什么时，每个人似乎都有答案。当她问成为祖父母意味着什么时，她也发现了这一点。但是，当她问曾祖父母做什么时，她没有得到任何凝聚力的反应。很多人清楚地告诉她：“我不知道。”
In the absence of a strict cultural script, great-grandparents are in a strange position. Many of them didn’t grow up with any such living elders and thus have no models to look to. They might never have expected to get to this point at all. But many of them end up serving an important function—one that is not practical, Talašová told me, so much as “emotional, symbolic, or narrative.”
在没有严格的文化剧本的情况下，曾祖父母处于一个奇怪的位置。他们中的许多人没有与任何这样的生活长者一起长大，因此没有可寻找的模型。他们可能从来没有想到要达到这一点。但是塔拉索瓦告诉我，其中许多人最终都发挥了重要的作用 - 一个不实用的功能，就像“情感，象征性或叙事”。
Great-grandparents are, as Merril Silverstein, a Syracuse University sociologist, told me, “the peak of the family pyramid”: a kind of mascot for the whole lineage, and commonly a source of great pride. (Women live longer on average than men, so often that figure is a great-grandmother—a matriarch.) Many of them show up to special occasions and tell stories of national and family history. Verdery’s kids have blond hair and blue eyes—but when they spend time with their great-grandmother, they get to hear about her childhood in Japan and her immigration to the United States. They love feeling connected with not only their great-grandma, Verdery told me, but also the whole line of ancestors she brings to life for them. Domoslay-Paul’s grandfather died last winter, but when he was alive, he would drive her kids around his hometown, telling tales as they went. “‘That’s the house that my grandfather lived in. And that’s the house where I was born,’” she told me he’d recount. “‘When we were kids, we got drunk over there and then had to get sat by that outhouse because we were in big trouble,” and “That’s where my brother’s buried. He died when he was a year old.’”
曾祖父母是锡拉丘兹大学的社会学家梅里尔·西尔弗斯坦（Merril Silverstein）告诉我，“家庭金字塔的峰值”：一种用于整个血统的吉祥物，通常是骄傲的来源。（女性的平均寿命比男人的寿命更长，所以这个数字是一个曾祖母 - 族长。）其中许多人出现在特殊场合并讲述了国家和家族史的故事。Verdery的孩子有金色的头发和蓝色的眼睛 - 但是当他们与曾祖母共度时光时，他们会听到她在日本的童年以及她移民到美国的消息。Verdery告诉我，他们不仅喜欢与他们的曾祖母联系在一起，而且还喜欢她为他们带来生活的整个祖先。多诺斯·帕尔（Domoslay-Paul）的祖父去年冬天去世，但是当他还活着时，他会把孩子们开车到他的家乡周围，告诉故事。“‘那是我祖父所住的房子。那是我出生的房子。’”她告诉我他要叙述。“‘当我们小时候，我们在那儿喝醉了，然后不得不因为我们遇到了大麻烦而坐在那座外口。”和“那是我哥哥被埋葬的地方。他一岁那年就死了。’”
Stories like these can give some perspective. Great-grandparents are a reminder that things change—that our lifetimes are enormously brief, but also that we are one link in a long line of generations, a part of something bigger than ourselves.
这样的故事可以给出一些视角。曾祖父母提醒人们事情发生了变化 - 我们的一生非常简短，但我们是一代世代相传的一个链接，这是比我们自己更大的一部分。
In some sense, great-grandparents are acting in a capacity quite like grandparents might have in the past. In the U.S., grandparents tended to be seen as familial authority figures and storytellers. Now, as I’ve reported, their role has evolved. Many of them are deeply engaged in the everyday bustle of raising their grandkids—because child-care costs keep climbing and the demands of parenthood keep growing, but perhaps also because more of them are staying active long enough to be able to help. As Silverstein told me, “Maybe an 85-year-old great-grandparent is as healthy as what used to be a 70-year-old grandparent.” That is: maybe not quite fit enough for anyone to ask them to pick up the great-grandkids from soccer practice, but hopefully strong enough to enjoy the birthdays, the holidays, the visits with no purpose other than to be together. Domoslay-Paul has observed that such a position can mellow out people who might’ve been harsh as parents. Instead of worrying about “who needs to go to the doctor, who needs new pants,” she told me, “you’re able to just give the love.”
从某种意义上说，曾祖父母的行为与祖父母过去一样。在美国，祖父母倾向于被视为家族权威人物和讲故事的人。现在，正如我所报道的那样，它们的角色已经发展。他们中的许多人都深深地参与了举起孙子孙女的日常喧嚣 - 因为育儿成本不断攀升，而父母的需求不断增长，但也许是因为更多的人保持活跃的时间足够长的时间，以便能够提供帮助。正如西尔弗斯坦（Silverstein）告诉我的那样：“也许一个85岁的曾祖父母与以前是70岁的祖父母一样健康。”也就是说：也许不够适合任何人，任何人都可以要求他们从足球练习中捡起曾曾孙，但希望足够强大，可以享受生日，假期，访问，而没有其他目的。Domoslay-Paul观察到，这样的职位可以使可能曾经是父母苛刻的人保持融合。她不必担心“谁需要去看医生，谁需要新裤子”，她告诉我，“你只能给予爱。”
Read: Grandparents are reaching their limit
阅读：祖父母达到了极限
Grandparents, then, may actually be in the most difficult position within the four-generation family. In one 2020 qualitative study, researchers interviewed working grandmothers in four-generation families; the participants described being so busy caregiving that they had no time for medical appointments or tests, even though they could feel themselves aging and their body changing. Sometimes, their different roles—mother, grandmother, child, not to mention employee—would come into direct conflict; they were needed everywhere at once. “Who do I need to help first; for whom should I be more available?” one woman in the study wondered. “I respond not to my own agenda but to other people’s agenda.”
那么，祖父母实际上可能处于四代家庭中最困难的位置。在2020年的一项定性研究中，研究人员采访了四代家庭的工作祖母。参与者描述的是如此忙碌的照顾，以至于他们没有时间进行医疗任命或测试，即使他们可以感觉到自己的衰老和身体变化。有时，他们的角色不同 - 母亲，祖母，孩子，更不用说员工 - 会直接冲突；它们立即到处都需要。“我首先需要帮助谁；我应该为谁提供帮助？”研究中的一位女人想知道。“我不是回应自己的议程，而是对他人的议程。”
I heard something similar from Jerri McElroy, a fellow with the nonprofit Caring Across Generations who lives in Georgia. McElroy is a full-time caregiver for her father, who has dementia and epilepsy and who lost his ability to speak after a seizure in 2018. She lives with him, her daughter, and her grandson—and has five other children and five other grandchildren as well. She has learned that when she’s watching her grandkids and her dad, it can help to include the children in his care, as if it’s a game—to get them excited to check up on him together, or let them carry a towel. She has mastered the juggling act, but it’s never gotten easy. “When I think about certain seasons of life,” she told me, “it’s all a blur. I don’t even know how I got through.”
我听到了杰里·麦克埃罗伊（Jerri McElroy）的一些类似内容，他是居住在佐治亚州的几代人的非营利组织。麦克埃罗伊（McElroy）是她父亲的全职照顾者，父亲患有痴呆症和癫痫病，在2018年发作后失去了讲话的能力。她与他，女儿和孙子一起生活 - 还有其他五个孩子和其他五个孙子。她了解到，当她看着孙子孙女和爸爸时，将孩子们纳入他的照顾时，就像是一场比赛一样，让他们很兴奋地一起检查他，或者让他们携带毛巾。她已经掌握了《杂耍行为》，但这从来没有变得容易。她告诉我：“当我想到生活的某些季节时，这都是模糊的。我什至不知道我是如何度过的。”
Great-grandparents are a kind of microcosm of the larger picture of extending lifespans: On the one hand, around the world, “aging is a big success story,” Silverstein told me. The grandmothers from the 2020 study were exhausted—but still grateful that their parents were alive. They viewed their circumstances not only as a duty, the author wrote, but also as a “privilege.” On the other hand, many societies—including the U.S.—have left family members to care for one another largely on their own, without guaranteed parental leave, child-care subsidies, or any cohesive, accessible system for tending to the proliferating elderly. Populations are transforming radically, and policies aren’t keeping up.
Silverstein告诉我，曾祖父母是一种延长寿命的较大局面的缩影：一方面，“衰老是一个很大的成功故事，” Silverstein告诉我。2020年研究的祖母精疲力尽，但仍然感激他们的父母还活着。作者写道，他们不仅将自己的情况视为义务，而且将其视为“特权”。另一方面，许多社会（包括美国）让家人互相照顾，在不保证的育儿假，育儿补贴或任何凝聚力，可访问的系统中，以倾向于扩散的老年人。人口正在从根本上转变，政策没有跟上。
If lifespans continue extending in the way we’d expect, four-generation families will become only more common. The future may be old. But it also might be more interconnected. As much as people talk about the U.S. and other countries becoming ever more individualistic, generations of American kin are arguably growing closer on average, researchers told me, and becoming more generous with one another. Silverstein said that because today’s grandparents are so involved with family life on the whole, both logistically and emotionally, we might expect that great-grandparents will keep becoming more tied in as well.
如果寿命继续按照我们期望的方式延长，那么四代家庭将变得更加普遍。未来可能是旧的。但这也可能更相互联系。研究人员告诉我，人们谈论美国和其他国家变得越来越独立，但几代人的亲戚平均而言越来越近，并变得越来越大。西尔弗斯坦说，由于今天的祖父母在逻辑上和情感上都与家庭生活相关，因此我们可能期望曾祖父母也会变得更加紧密。
Read: The new age of endless parenting
阅读：无尽育儿的新时代
That shift is bittersweet. With an aged loved one, impending loss is always close to the surface. But great-grandkids stand to benefit from being immersed in the normality of aging and death. They get to observe firsthand how time works: what it takes, but also what it gives. Domoslay-Paul’s grandfather, born in 1930, rarely spoke about emotions. But she remembers that after her first husband died, her grandfather talked to her two oldest sons, who were 6 and 7 at the time. He told them that his own parents had died when he was not much older than them—eight decades earlier. “I know this is hard right now,” he said, “but I got through it.” They could see for themselves that he had.
这种转变是苦乐参半。有了一个老年亲人，即将来临的损失总是靠近地面。但是曾曾曾曾曾在衰老和死亡的正态性中受益。他们可以亲身观察时间的工作方式：需要什么，但也可以提供什么。Domoslay-Paul的祖父生于1930年，很少谈论情感。但是她记得她的第一任丈夫去世后，祖父与当时6岁和7岁的两个大儿子交谈。他告诉他们，他自己的父母在他不比他们大得多的时候死了 - 几十年前。他说：“我知道这很难，但是我已经完成了。”他们可以自己看到他拥有的。
