Intergenerational Learning

Grandparenting in Europe, a report funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation in 2010, indicates that by 2025 between one in four and one in five people in the European Union will be more than the age of 65. The U.S. Census Bureau has a [Page 380]similar prediction for U.S. citizens by 2030. Older people are now often free from regular work commitments and, in Western countries, in good physical and financial health. The Gulbenkian report concludes that a large proportion of children born in the 21st century therefore have the possibility of forming long and deep relationships with their grandparents. Grandparents not only provide significant practical and financial help to the parent generation but also pass on to their grandchildren valued cultural, religious, and linguistic practices ...