Grandparents


 * "Grandfather" redirects here. For the legal verb, "to grandfather", see Grandfather clause.

Grandparents are family members, the father or mother of a person's own father or mother, being respectively grandfather and grandmother. Grandparents form an important part of the extended family.

In western societies, particularly the United States of America given unstable relationships and relationship breakup between parents, high levels of unstable cohabitation or common-law marriage relationships and divorce, grandparents have increasingly taken on the role of primary caregivers for their grandchildren.

In traditional cultures, grandparents often had a direct and clear role in relation to the care and nurture of children. This has tended to be lost with the development of the nuclear family.

In traditional East Asian culture, filial piety is the top moral under the influence of Confucianism. The grandparents usually exercise its authority on the matter of family and their descendants should care and obey their seniors. This kind of structure gradually eases with the increasing influence of western culture and the increasing number of nuclear families. In Hong Kong, some grandparents live with one of their children and assume the role of parent for grandchildren when grandchildren's parents are out to work all day.