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Tour operators know a good market when they see one. And grandparents, at more than 60 million strong today and expected to increase to as many as 100 million by 2010, are clearly a cash reserve waiting to be tapped. So, many travel agents now offer intergenerational packages. Helena Koenig's Grandtravel is, well, the grandmother of them all. Long ago, when Koenig was just a parent, she noticed that the most successful outings she had with her kids were the ones in which she allowed each child to invite a friend. Fourteen years ago, after launching a successful travel agency, she used that knowledge and gave it a twist. She began organizing excursions designed for grandparents and grandchildren. This year she's offering trips to 19 destinations, each with four or five departure dates, ranging from a working ranch in South Dakota to a safari in Kenya.
Corporations eager to attract and retain experienced workers have also begun to provide benefits that appeal to grandparents. Lucent Technologies, based in Murray Hill, N.J., offers a variety of family-friendly perks--and grandparents are included in the company's definition of family. Deborah Boyd, who has primary care of her five-year-old grandson Charles, frequently consults company-provided counselors for answers to child-rearing questions. She has also applied for and received two separate grants to enhance his child-care center: $3,000 to buy a classroom computer and $19,000 for new playground equipment. Boyd is delighted. "Not only will it help Charles, but it's going to help all the other children."
Retirement communities too are recognizing the need to welcome not just grandparents but their grandchildren as well. Some, like Marriott's Bedford Court in Silver Spring, Md., schedule holiday celebrations to which grandchildren are invited. Others, realizing how much good the old and the young gain from rubbing elbows, have introduced intergenerational programs for all their residents. Goodwin House in Alexandria, Va., arranges activities that draw unrelated youngsters as well as grandchildren. "The young people stimulate mental health and a cheerful outlook in the elders, and [the young] gain from the mentoring by the seniors," says spokesman Andrew Morgan. To prepare youngsters for the shock of seeing ill or disabled elders when visiting their grandparents, the Jefferson by Marriott in Arlington, Va., supplies a coloring book called Life in a Nursing Home, with pictures of wheelchairs and walkers.
In a world with a shortage of good day care and an abundance of single-parent and two-career households, grandparents willing to care for their grandchildren are highly prized. In the old days, such care was generally rendered by Grandma. Today the social forces that produced the stay-at-home dad have introduced the caregiver granddad. Peter Gross, a retired law professor, picks up grandsons Paul, 3, and Mark, 18 months, every weekday morning at 8:15 and cares for them in his San Francisco home until 6 p.m. "It's a very close, intense relationship that's at the center of my life," says Gross. "What a relief to retire from the hurly-burly of the adult institutions of our world, where b.s. and politics and limitations tend to dominate, and move into this place of love and truth and nurturing and connection."