About Grandma: Isn't It Time to Retire the Old Picture?
- Aug 3
- 5 min read
Since joining the hood—grandmotherhood, that is—I have learned that the role, and the women living it, rarely match the old picture society keeps handing us.
Before we begin, tell me honestly: who comes to mind when you hear the word "grandma"?
Was she grey-haired, cardiganed and retired? Speak up - I can almost see her too. Was she baking, babysitting or waiting by the telephone, warm, wise and permanently available?
That woman may exist, and she deserves respect. The problem is not her. Society took one version of grandmotherhood, turned it into a costume and mistook the costume for a definition.
I turn sixty this year. I am a Black grandmother of nine, a writer, a former doctoral student and the founder of Grandma Knows Best.
I am building a business, not winding down a life. I have work I intend to keep publishing, ideas I still want to test and a future I am still making room for. I am not an exception to grandmotherhood. I am an OG - and part of what grandmotherhood looks like now.
When grandma does not look like the picture
When I am out with my grandchildren and one calls me "Grandma," people often look confused. Their eyes search for another woman. The relationship is in front of them, but the picture in their minds says something is wrong.
Then comes the familiar comment: "Black don't crack." It is usually meant as a compliment. But it also reveals how narrow the expectation is.
Men approach me fairly often, sometimes while I am with my grandchildren. My grandchildren find it amusing. I do not. In another setting, I might find the attention flattering. In front of children, it feels like someone ignoring context and boundaries.
My mother confuses the age-guessing game even more. People cannot place her age at all, and she is not the kind of woman you ask. Three generations can stand together while strangers search for visual clues that no longer work.
Black women should not have to look young to remain visible, desirable or valuable. We should not have to look conventionally old to be recognized as grandmothers either. Aging is not a failure. Neither is refusing the costume society prepared for it.
If I do not look like someone's idea of a grandmother, the problem is not my face. It is the picture.
Grandma is a relationship, not a costume
The title tells you that a woman has grandchildren, or occupies that relationship through family or chosen kin. Everything else is projection.
It does not tell you whether she has a pension, a paycheque, a business plan, a manuscript or a date on Friday night. It does not tell you her politics, health, sexuality, style or future.
It does not even reliably tell you that she is old. Statistics Canada reported that the average first-time grandparent was 52 in 2017. A family title cannot carry all the variation of a woman's life.
Grandma is still at work
For decades, 65 operated as a cultural finish line: work, retire and retreat. Reality has moved on. In 2025, nearly 1.2 million Canadians aged 65 and older were working or looking for work - a record participation rate of 15.2%.
But "she is still working" is not one story. One grandmother cannot afford to stop. Another supports family. Another owns the company. Another is starting her first business. Another works because she enjoys the purpose and independence.
Statistics Canada found that almost half of workers aged 65 to 74 in 2022 worked by necessity. Black immigrant women were among the groups reporting higher rates. Work in later life can be freedom, survival, exploitation, pleasure - or several at once.
The stereotype is not harmless
Society loves grandma when she is available: ready to babysit, cook, listen, lend money and rescue the family from crisis.
In 2022, one in five unpaid caregivers in Canada cared for grandchildren. Those caring only for grandchildren averaged about 15 hours a week. That care can be chosen and deeply loved. It is still labour.
A culture can praise grandmothers while extracting from them.
For Black grandmothers, the old picture carries an added burden: the strong matriarch who can survive anything. There is dignity in care and endurance. The danger begins when strength becomes an excuse to expect endless capacity.
Black women's voices are often welcomed as warmth and rejected as analysis. We are invited to comfort, but not always to question. Grandma is not only a source of reassurance. She is a worker, critic, artist, organizer, lover, student, voter, business owner and public thinker.
There is no single grandma of today
Today's grandmothers are everywhere the old picture insists they should not be: offices and classrooms, hospitals and factories, home studios and picket lines, airports, community meetings and dating apps.
They wear locs, braids, silver curls, shaved heads and wigs; lipstick, tattoos, business suits and sweatpants. Some cook for everybody. Some order dinner and close the kitchen.
Some are raising grandchildren. Others are learning, perhaps for the first time, what a life not organized around everyone else's needs might feel like.
Their bodies and lives refuse a single storyline. Some are energetic; some are ill or disabled; some need care as much as they give it. Some feel liberated by the word grandma. Others love their grandchildren fiercely while refusing every assumption attached to the title.
Retiring the old picture does not mean replacing the rocking-chair grandmother with a glamorous super-grandma who runs a company, maintains a perfect body, provides free childcare and never gets tired. That is not liberation. It is a newer costume with a longer task list.
The point is not to invent a better stereotype. The point is to make room for plurality.
About Grandma
Grandma is not the past. She is one of the people making the present.
Grandma Knows Best is not a claim that grandmothers are infallible. It is a refusal of the idea that their knowledge is decorative - lovely to quote and easy to ignore.
A fuller picture begins with different questions: not only what grandma can give, but what she is building; not only what the family needs, but what she wants; not only what she has survived, but what she refuses to carry and what she intends to do with the life still in front of her.
Her wisdom has room for anger, humour, uncertainty, desire and change.
The grandmother of today was never missing. We were looking for a costume instead of the woman.
Sources and notes
Editorial note: Labour-force figures describe older adults, not grandmothers specifically. They are used to challenge the assumption that grandmotherhood means withdrawal from public life.
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