Becoming a parent is one of life’s great transitions — some would argue its greatest transition, incomparable in its power to instantly alter your point of view and permanently off-center your sense of self. And while having kids may change parents most profoundly, parenthood is a change that ripples out multigenerationally, turning your own parents (and your in-laws) into grandparents overnight. 

Grandkids bring with them a ton of joy and all the potential in the world — creating opportunities to change the family dynamic, giving new parents a fresh appreciation of their own parents and forcing even the most independent-minded adult kids to ask for help. Still, it’s not uncommon for these changes to lead to conflict. After all, grandparents are, well, grandparents. They do grandparent stuff, like not enforcing the same rules or respecting specific requests. So it goes.

Grandparents matter now more than ever. In spite of being uniquely vulnerable to Covid — people over 65 account for 75 percent of Covid deaths in the U.S. — they have become the default caregivers for so many families and to so many kids. The ever-thinning social safety nets in the U.S. have pushed families to rely on each other to raise their kids here, a trend that was accelerated by the pandemic. 

So tending to the parent-grandparent relationship is more important than ever. That’s why we’ve gathered essential advice from family therapists and actual parents, doctors and gerontologists about navigating multigenerational relationships. No, it won’t end the bickering or generational divides, but it will help you all learn how to come together to focus on the thing that matters most — the kids.