Grandparents in Rural Ireland

Many young couples today have great difficulty coping with childcare and in some cases with care of the elderly. In rural Ireland down to recent decades, grandparents had important roles. Three generational families were the norm in a home, where grandparents had desired and respected roles. These people had pride of place in most homes, with seats by the fire, where they participated in nightly discussions with their families and neighbours on numerous topics in the pre-television society (prior to 1961). They provided child-care services, thus enabling the children’s mothers to undertake other work, often on farms, as there were no crèches at that time. Most of the grandparents, especially grandmothers, were very influential teachers of children, telling stories, reading, playing with them, reciting prayers, as well as passing on a rich legacy of sayings and lore. In turn, these grandparents were cherished and every family did their upmost to look after them until the end of their lives. Some grandparents lived in the same houses as young couples, or a single daughter or son, while others had separate accommodation attached or nearby. Often, many in that era only transferred the family farm on condition that they had a right of maintenance until their deaths. The biggest criticism by grandparents in that era was directed at any family that sent their parents into residential care, when a son or daughter was regarded “as a bad rearing” or worse still in the case of an in-law. Many couples and several single daughters and sons made huge personal sacrifices to look after their aging parents to the end, in some cases sacrificing their own careers and marriages. Grandparents of that era sought holistic independence to the end, if possible, and not dependence which developed towards the end of the twentieth century with the institutionalisation of care. That old culture in rural Ireland provided intergenerational solidarity and great social cohesion.