"More than 'just' a grandmother"

Is that enough ammunition, Cari ?

cari sounds like you have already said it "I assume it's like the not just a mum thing - ie I am a mother and it is absolutely central to my life (etc) but I am also a daughter, sister, friend, colleague, writer, editor, walker, chocolate addict"

I am a grandmother, mother, mother-in-law, wife, counsellor, friend, culture vulture, advisor, ballet critic, gardener, general helper and occasionally stroppy cow!

And what's with the "just" anyway? As though being a grandmother is a minor role!

It sounds like this country is only now waking up to the fact that grandparents "do" things.

I'm a grandmother but it doesn't define me.

I am a sum of everything in my life so far.

Is that succint enough?

Here is what should define us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpu_PV3BTfI

Feeling grumpy today, so I'm objecting to the word "just" being applied to anyone in any capacity!

Play the link, MiniMouse and blast it out!!

(Not too loudly though, I have a headache)

Roseq keep losing signal but listened to some of it. Says it all!

What is actually wrong with being "just a granny". Obviously you are going to be a mother too. But what if you don't want anything else? What if your family - all your children and your grandchildren - are the complete sum of your life? Of course you will get happiness from a lot of other small things- a nice meal, flowers in your garden, a walk by the sea, a few days in a nice hotel, but what if these things pale into insignificance beside the joy you get from your family? Being with them, hearing about them, sharing their good times and their sadnesses?

I think that is the way things are meant to be. It's the way nature intends us to feel. Everything else is just chaff in the wind in comparison.

I'm not quite sure what the question is getting at but if it is alluding to the fact that women are often described in the media in terms of their relationship to other people (wife, mother, grandmother, etc.) then I find it annoying.

I would object to being defined only in terms of being a grandmother - it is part of my identity but certainly not all of it - any more than it is any woman's. Would a man choose only to be defined by the fact that he is a husband/father/grandfather?

I don't see anything wrong in deriving great pleasure from your family and grandchildren - in fact I would hope that most parents/grandparents do. However, I think to build your whole life around your children/grandchildren is so narrow and limiting. I feel it might also lead to you becoming a rather boring, uninspiring and possibly needy person.

What is actually wrong with being "just a granny"

I think because no-one is 'just' an anything.

Today I am a hands-on granny but tomorrow I will be doing something else!
Tomorrow I shall be an 'angry customer'. Whether I am a granny or not will be irrelevant (although I will still be one).
Oh yes, I can see the headlines: 'Angry Grandmother, 68, storms into offices of .....'

Isn't it about what the word "just" implies? It's as though being a Gran is somehow inferior - just a Gran/just a sah Mum etc.

I don't think it has to be "narrow and limiting". Just the opposite. Their lives and their interests have broadened my world no end.

Perhaps I am "boring, uninspiring and needy"! I don't mind.

Come to think of it, I've never actually heard anyone say "she's just a grandmother" about anyone.

I've got a feeling this is just a case of a journalist creating a situation to write an article about.

I suppose they have to write about something.

That's a very good pont jingl about broadening our world.

I've learned so much from the GC and had to keep up with, eg., technology, music, Harry Potter, and shared new interests like kayaking, camping, learning a brass instrument, Harry Potter, ...... and so on......

I'm with Jinglebellsfrocks my children and grandchildren are the most important things in my world and they give me more pleasure than anything else in the world, mine or the general ( world that is) When I have to do other things I am a therapist, friend, work colleague, reader, knitter, art enthusiast, traveller, telly addict, writer, collector,and many other things I can't think of off hand. In short I am as interesting and individual as anybody else and did all these things when I was a mother and before I became a grandmother but now I am one I feel and want it to define me above most other things because I LOVE BEING ONE the best!

As MT said:
"We are a Grandmother"

What merlotgran said at 13:40:32. Also, I would want to be "Woman, 63" who survives a meteor strike, not "Grandmother" or, particularly, "Pensioner" Grrr!

I think being a gran does define me. Each stage of your life changes you. This is the stage I'm at now. It's the best. I've still got all the other stages in me though. Even the scared little girl.

And I'm probably talking bollocks crap codswallop.

I think I am defined by being a wife, all the other roles come from that point. Apart from being a daughter it is the longest role I have had and being a daughter was certainly not to me personally as important or fulfilling as a wife.

"Grandmother aged 68" is the work of a desperate sub-editor who can find nothing else to say about the subject of a story. Sub-editors need simple descriptors because that is what makes us read the garbage beneath. Also, "grandmother" is a useful word because it conveys a certain message very simply and briefly: she is either a person to be sympathised with or a horrific character acting against type. The same also applies to grandfathers.

"Grandmother aged 38" is news in its own right of course.

I dislike the assumption that all older people have grandchildren, or want them, too. Even our own children assume it, and it doesn't always apply. My mother doesn't like having grandchildren at all. She's not the only woman I've come across who feels that way.

Many women of previous generations did not become wives or mothers ergo did not become grandmothers.
Lack of men due to awful circumstances.

Were they 'just' spinsters?
Or 'just' old maids?

Or successful career women, some of them my teachers?

Surely no one would define herself as being 'just a grandmother'

It's the equivalent of the old 'Oh, I'm just a housewife' response to being asked what one did in the 1950s.