Introduction

Population ageing has raised several critical issues for multiple social policy domains, including pensions, healthcare and longterm care. In the European Union (EU), the dominant policy framework designed to address the challenges of population ageing is called ‘active ageing’ (AA). There is no consensus around what exactly AA means, but it usually refers to the idea of exhorting older people to engage in relevant economic and social activities and to be independent and autonomous. The ‘Council Declaration on the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations’ (Council of the European Union, 2012), hereinafter referred to as ‘Council Declaration’, expects that the EU policy on AA will improve productivity, enhance solidarity between generations and contribute to promoting employment and reducing poverty and social exclusion, helping in this way to meet the targets of the Europe 2020 Strategy.

However, the EU policy on AA exhibits several limitations that compromise the promotion of the older people's wellbeing and quality of life. This chapter proposes the adoption of an alternative framework for developing policies and practices to deal with the challenges of population ageing. This framework is based on the capability approach (CA) and is constituted by eight principles that, taken as a whole, shift the ‘normative reference point’ (see Chapter One, this volume) from activity (mainly economic and social activity) to the real opportunities older people have (their capabilities) to do what they value and be the persons they want to be. In the ambit of this framework, policy and professional practice must focus on the promotion of the older people's wellbeing by intervening in those factors that enhance/undermine their capabilities. This entails a more flexible, multidimensional and more supportive approach to old-age policy, without imposing a priori importance on certain policy domains and without an exclusive focus on individual responsibility.

European Union policy on active ageing

Although we can establish the European Year of Older People, in 1993, as the first milestone in the emergence of a specific EU policy on AA (due to the emphasis that was put on the theme of older people's active participation in society), we had to wait almost 20 years to see the definitive institutionalisation of this policy with the celebration, in 2012, of the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations.

The chapters in this book have examined the cultural and welfare state contexts of grandparenting. The focus on gender, welfare states, economic development and grandparental agency binds together the diverse contributions to the volume. It is now time to take stock of the contents by sketching out the main lines of argumentation and contributions to the literature contained in the chapters. In other words, this is an opportunity to formulate some key take-home messages and to indicate promising avenues for future research. A notion I will reflect on throughout this chapter is the idea that the 21st century could perhaps be called the ‘grandparents’ century’. This is a reference to the prediction that by the middle of this century, for the first time in human history, there will be relatively more ‘old’ people (60 and over) than children (aged 15 and under) in the global population. As the majority of older adults are grandparents, the global population in the 21st century is indeed characterised by the presence of unprecedented numbers of grandparents. The deeper meanings of this demographic transformation, however, remain to be teased out and cannot be taken for granted.

In Chapter Two, Margolis and Arpino presented a broad overview of the demographic changes not only driving the generally increasing prevalence and importance of grandparenthood but also leading, in some parts of the world, to increases in the age when people typically become grandparents. They demonstrate striking differences in the proportion of older adults who are grandparents, varying (among countries included in their analysis) from just under half in Switzerland to nearly nine in ten in the United States. Rising numbers of childless adults translate into a growing share of the older population who do not become grandparents. In some parts of the world, the growing share of older adults who will not become grandparents translates, at the micro level, into inability to enter a role that many older adults find gratifying and socially important, and that might be beneficial for their health and wellbeing. Postponement of parenthood in the cohorts currently of ‘reproductive age’ translates into later entry into the grandparent role among their parents.

Introduction

This book is a sequel to Contemporary grandparenting, published in 2012 (Arber and Timonen, 2012). In the first chapter of Contemporary grandparenting, we noted that the existing literature on grandparenting heavily focused on exploring the factors – such as age, gender, geographical proximity, marital status and lineage – that influence the frequency of contact and quality of relationships between grandparents and grandchildren. While the purpose of this introduction is not to provide a review of literature published since 2012, I note that several recent studies have continued to probe into these aspects of grandparenting – for instance, Dunifon and Bajracharia (2012), Danielsbacka and Tanskanen (2012) and Kolk (2017). Another long-established line of enquiry pertains to the extent and circumstances of intergenerational transfers of time, money and accommodation. In the 2012 book, we argued that while it is important that patterns of contact and transfers of time and material resources between generations continue to receive attention, it is also essential to broaden the enquiry to examine the evolving nature and meanings of these transfers, and changes in intergenerational relationships more generally. We were also motivated by the absence of book-length accounts of grandparenting, with the exception of some outdated volumes that focused on grandparenting in a single-country context.

Contemporary grandparenting explored the extent to which, under different welfare contexts and family circumstances, grandparents (especially grandmothers) perform the roles of ‘child savers’ and ‘mother savers’ and act as a ‘reserve army’ or ‘family savers’ in situations where their adult children(-in-law) are strained or unable to look after their children (Arber and Timonen, 2012). But we also noted that alongside these functions, grandparents are increasingly important in many cultures as ‘family maximisers’ (Baker and Silverstein, 2012), making important inputs to enable younger family generations to succeed in realms such as the labour market and education. In other words, the functions of grandparents – as sources of help, care and support to younger family generations – have been a central focus in the literature. Other key conceptual frameworks discussed in Contemporary grandparenting included the norm of non-interference and the norm of obligation – the expectation that grandparents offer help and support to younger generations without interfering in their decisions regarding, in particular, key choices surrounding the upbringing of children (May et al., 2012).