Grandma and grandpa have no purpose? What rot! SANDRA HOWARD joins furious readers in condemning study that said children don't need grandparents

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There can be no greater moment than arriving at your daughter’s front door and hearing a small boy jumping up and down on the other side, shouting: ‘It’s Gran-Gran and Grandpa!’

Your grandson then hurls himself into your arms, his younger brother Theo bouncing up and down for his share of hugs. 

Then their chubby, nearly-two-year-old sister, who’s still a bit shy, shuffles over — it’s not long before she warms up and shows off her new tricks.

Sandra, centre, holding her grandchild Jasper with husband Michael behind her. Top row, from left: Jasper's parents Conrad and Larissa (Sandra's daughter) and Sandra's son Nick. Bottom row: (flanking Sandra) Alex, with Tallula on her lap, and husband Sholto with their son Louis

Jasper, the eldest, now seven, is soon tugging on his grandfather’s arm, dragging him out into the back garden for a never-ending game of football. Theo joins in while I humour Layla with her own ball.

I thought of our precious time with our grandchildren when I read that a team of scientists at Edinburgh University has claimed that the ‘evolutionary purpose’ of grandparents is a mystery — and that children fare just as well without them. Citing the results of a detailed study, the scientists declared there is no obvious biological reason for either sex living beyond the age of 50.

What rot! Which busy working parent has the time to kick a football into the gap between two bushes and endlessly retrieve it? Never mind all the help that we give our children and their families, whether its with childcare, indulgent confidence-boosting or even financial aid at times.

As one who missed out on the grandparent experience — my mother’s father died before I was born, her mother had a stroke and couldn’t communicate, and I only met my father’s parents once (they lived in South Africa) — I have always been acutely aware of my very particular role in our five grandchildren’s lives.

Let me explain my family: I have three children, Nick and Larissa with my husband Michael, and my eldest, Sholto, from a previous relationship.

My grandchildren Jasper, Theo and Layla belong to my daughter Larissa and her husband Conrad, then my son Sholto and his wife Alex have my other two grandchildren, Louis and Tallula, who are in their late teens.

Not only are we valuable back-up, as the children (and we) grow older, learning to cope with the doddery, cantankerous seniors in their lives will, I think, be character building. After all, it never hurts to acquire a little patience.

And then there’s the fact that we can be more lenient, perhaps more fun, mischievous even, than parents.

Theo, who is four, loves to show me the seeds he has planted with his mother; he is growing in confidence, but it’s still a bit shaky at times, and seeing how proud I am of him can only be a little boost.

Larissa and Conrad's children Layla, Jasper and Theo. Sandra thought of her time with her grandchildren when she heard scientists at Edinburgh University has claimed that the ‘evolutionary purpose’ of grandparents is a mystery.

Once when he was two and visiting us in Kent, I took him to a corner of the garden that looks out over the fields of Romney Marsh to the distant English Channel and told him that the clearly etched line dividing the sea and sky was called the horizon.

Six months later I asked him if he could remember what the dark etched line was called and he whispered ‘horizon’ very shyly. I’m not sure which of us was prouder.

Like me, you disagreed vociferously with the Edinburgh research — by the sackload.

Reacting to the news story, you wrote in in your droves to explain what makes grandparents not only invaluable to their families, but the glue that holds society together.

The childcare support grandparents provide is well documented: we are the most used form of childcare in the UK, ahead of nurseries and pre-schools, according to recent research.

And then there is the matter of trust. My daughter works four days a week. With her two boys at different schools and the toddler to care for too, there are inevitably times when there’s a sudden panicky need for cover. She would far rather call on me than some stranger from an agency.

Understandably, she feels happier to leave her three children with a grandparent they love — who also knows which drawer the Pampers are kept in, what snacks they are allowed, and all their little foibles and ways.

Reader Joy Adams, 76, lives in Reading and has five grandchildren aged eight to 24.

Together with her ‘opposite-in-law’, she says she’s been looking after grandchildren Thomas, 11, and eight-year-old Madeleine since Thomas was just nine months old.

She wrote: ‘We do it very much as one big family. There’s no competition at all; when they were little, one grandma had them for three days a week while their parents worked, and the other for two — and then we’d alternate the next week.

‘The children have both grandmas for Christmas, and we’re both in the audience for every music performance and school play. We’re quite able to take a discreet back seat when it comes to parental decision-making.’

Understandably, Joy disagreed with the conclusion grandparents are superfluous: ‘For some of us, these years are the best of our lives.

‘We help our families without making a fuss, but we’re always here — a reliable workforce paid in love and sticky-fingered hugs.’ That’s the point: the hours we put in are out of love, with no payment or appreciation expected in return.

Far from being of no purpose, as Jenny Day, 81, who has four grandchildren, aged six to 17, says: ‘Most of us wonder what our children would do without us.’

Twice a week, and sometimes more often, she and husband Ron, 83, drive 30 miles from Hemel Hempstead to Milton Keynes — taking with them a partly-prepared dinner for six — to collect their eight-year-old granddaughter from school.

Jenny explains: ‘We take her home, or sometimes to Brownies or football. We do her spelling and times tables with her, and check she’s done her Mandarin homework, and then at 5pm, pick up her six-year-old brother from his school and do the same with him.

‘A bit later, I’ll sort out the dinner I’ve brought from home — perhaps I’ll roast the potatoes I’ve already parboiled, and do chicken with it — and then we’ll eat with the children, and leave two more dinners ready for my son and his wife, who are both full-time accountants.’

If that’s not enough, they oversee bath time, and often there are one-off after-school activities that require a willing chauffeur, too.

The pair don’t reach home themselves until about 8.30pm, shattered but happily so.

Vanessa Lloyd Platt, 62, a divorce solicitor, sees things from a very different perspective.

She has four grandchildren, aged five years to nine months, and says when families split — as so often happens these days — grandparents are the ones who provide ‘stability, comfort and unconditional love’.

Vanessa has also listened to tearful stories from hundreds of grandparents who have been denied access to their grandchildren, and seen for herself how emotionally damaging it is.

At present, more than one million grandparents in the UK are prevented from seeing their grandchildren, and ‘the impact is devastating’, says Vanessa. She continues: ‘I’ve also acted for grandparents who’ve been denied access because the mother has taken offence at some imagined slur on her parenting.

‘The reasons can be relatively minor: an innocuous comment on the perils of too much TV-watching, or a pointed observation that in her day, children weren’t allowed to run around restaurants, and the visits by grandchildren suddenly stop, causing heartbreak all round.’

When grandparents are absent, Vanessa is in no doubt that ‘it’s the children who suffer’.

‘What grandparents do best is not usurp the parents’ role, but offer support and laughter, which children need,’ she says.

‘As a grandmother myself, the fun my grandchildren and I have together is truly a wonderful thing.’

Hilda Livesey, 84, from the Isle of Man, has six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

She speaks of the reciprocal nature of the relationship: ‘My husband and I looked after two of my six grandchildren, Charlotte and Rachel, every day almost from the moment they were born until they were eight and nine years old. We had such fun with them. I can honestly say I’ve had more enjoyment from my grandchildren —and now my seven great-grandchildren — than I think I ever had with my own.’

She, too, highlights the ‘special role’, saying: ‘We are there to spoil and indulge, for hugs and treats.

‘Now the grandchildren are all grown up and my husband has passed away, yet Charlotte — now 24 — still goes to his grave to talk to him. It’s a mark of how important their relationship was. I wonder whether there’s a scientific equation to measure the strength of that bond?’

Jean Howell, 69, who lives in Northamptonshire with husband Colin, 70, and has three grandchildren, aged eight, six and three, also makes the point that our generation not only save our children a fortune in childcare, we also bind communities together by doing ‘most of the voluntary work’.

She says: ‘I spend one day a week in a centre for people suffering neurological disorders, for example, where we give carers a day’s respite from the challenge of looking after loved ones in wheelchairs.

‘I also volunteer in a hospice, where I help the nurses by making beds and tea, doing bits of laundry and just talking to the patients. The volunteers are retired, for the most part, and certainly over 50.’

Jean has also trained as a Samaritan, helped at the local Girlguiding group, volunteered at the local cricket club and run playgroups for mums and toddlers.

She says: ‘This is what we do with our time when we’re not looking after extended family, or our own very elderly parents. And that’s after many of us have worked for 30 years.’

She concludes: ‘It makes me cross to see this insidious undermining of my generation.

‘We’re not bed-blockers and we haven’t all had it easy — most young people today have no idea what it’s like to grow up without central heating or half-decent food.

‘And now that we are comfortable, we’re giving hours and hours of our time for free. That sounds like a valid purpose in life to me.’

I couldn’t have put it better myself. After all, it’s only us ‘oldsters’ who have time to spare.

Meanwhile our grandchildren enjoy the treats, admiration and, sensing our unconditional love, the ability to share their little secrets.

As they approach the argumentative teens, they can ask questions and bang on for hours.

After all, we can smile and listen, and it’s no matter if at our time of life we don’t catch every word.