Grandparents Day

Yesterday was national Grandparents day. Like Father’s Day and Mother’s Day it was designated as a national holiday in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter.

But over a decade ago the United States Supreme Court basically said Grandparents have no rights when it comes to access and visitation rights with their grandchildren.

I won't get into the intricacies of the case, but the emotion of it tugs at the hearts of all grandparents who can empathize with the emptiness that not seeing their kids kids can bring.

We live in a society today where divorce is easy and prevalent. Children, once products of a loving relationship, become pawns in the often vitriolic battles between divorcing couples. The pain of divorce, for whatever reason, brings on attack in one parent or another and most times both. Often the attack affects whatever or whomever the other partner loved, specifically their parents. Thus by denying a grandparent the access to a grandchild the hurt of the grandparent can be transferred as pain to the divorcing parent.

This supreme court decision is based on a hesitancy of further legalizing a states intrusion into the family unit, albeit a single parent unit.

All parents, divorcing or not, should be aware of what psychologists and anthropologists have been telling us for years. Young people need the experience of generational understanding and experience. Grandparents bring an unconditional balance that parents most often cannot provide.

It is no wonder that the United States is one of the few nation's on earth that does not revere its elders. Unfortunately the supreme court decision reinforced that unnatural condition.