Gen X is entering its grandparent era – and it’s hitting different

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Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more

From Liam “Grandad” Gallagher to Sadie Frost, from The Apprentice’s Karren Brady to Jess in the BBC’s hit series Riot Women, there’s a new generation of grandparents in town. And they are clearly not going to be like the beige-clad nanas and pipe-smoking grandpas of old.

As a late baby boomer, I was born at least a decade before Generation X-ers like Gallagher and Frost, but consider myself one of the new wave of oldies. My first grandchild was born when I was 63, which is the average age of a new grandparent in the UK, and I haven’t for a minute worried that becoming a grandmother has “aged” me.

Last month, I went to the Roundhouse in London to see the excellent indie rockers The Beths – and I was sipping a gin and tonic, and bouncing up and down throughout the support band and main act. My leather jacket was silver and from Jigsaw, but otherwise I thought I looked pretty unremarkable among a crowd of twenty and thirtysomethings.

In my eyes, there is nothing that is less than wonderful about coming to this point in my life, and I am delighted that grandparenting has gone from being something that signified increasing irrelevance – at least semi-retirement, possibly decrepitude – to a glorious, neon-lit, cool status symbol that, if it has changed my life, has only made it better.

The seas part when I go out with my actual grandchildren. Edie, five and a half, and Mina, eight months, are delightful creatures, with big smiles and pealing laughs. It’s important to acknowledge that grandmothering is such a different job from being the mother of small children. Parents are consumed with anxiety about safety, schedules, hygiene, almost everything. As a grandmother, I feel free to relish in the children’s newness; to get down to their level and scrawl all over a colouring book. But I still work, and – as everyone loves to remind you – you just give them back when you want a rest.

I’m intrigued to see how grandparenting lands with Gen Xers like Gallagher, who are still defined by the 1990s – which many of their cohort spent raving, taking ecstasy, drinking too much, living it large. This generation is not sliding into midlife in the same way that pensioned-up boomers did. The increase in gym membership, marathon running, and fitness challenges has been led by them.

Not that they are giving up hedonism easily. New research from Liverpool University shows that clubbers in their forties and fifties make up a significant part of the city’s underground club culture. Sometimes the majority of those in attendance are like Liam: deep in middle age, with children who are well on their way to having children of their own.

And among women, this demographic tops many of the “tweakment” lists, while the current HRT campaigning has come largely from women born after 1964. They don’t want to arrive at post-menopause looking, or feeling, remotely past it.

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Liam Gallagher pictured with Sadie Frost in 2010. The Oasis singer became a grandfather earlier this month – while Frost became a grandmother last year (Getty)

Some believe that the reason members of this generation have reached adult milestones later than their predecessors is that they were mindful of having a good life. They often haven’t had as many children as previous generations – and if they have, they’ve done it later. And data suggests that at least one in four Gen X women hasn’t had a family at all – which could mean not just that being a grandparent is rarer within Gen X friendship groups, but that its impact on this generation’s lives is somewhat different.

Gen Xers are pretty upfront about the difficulty of organising childcare in order to work (my generation were more likely to miss the odd school concert). And their children have often been kept closer, enjoying the same things as their parents, whether in terms of fashion, or music, or TV programmes.

As those children have their own families, will the dynamic change again? And if men like Gallagher cling to their Britpop-era wardrobe, will the “grandpa” mantle be an uncomfortable accoutrement? If the age-defying wellbeing queens, whose time is taken up with yoga, retreats, and beauty salon appointments, have grandchildren, will they buckle and cancel their schedule to see them? There will be a significant shift in expectations, as well as in grandparent machinations.

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New BBC series ‘Riot Women’ features middle-aged women refusing to stick to the stereotype (BBC)

The baby boomer grandparents I know can get mighty riled about the practicalities of being a grandparent, and about their children expecting regular childcare to form part of the doting grandparent package. Many, like me and my husband, are still working; others feel they have done their duty in bringing up their children.

But thinking about grandchildren in the abstract is quite different from the reality. I spoke to a male friend in his early sixties, still running a very busy tech company, about the arrival of his first grandchild. He’d expected to be happy to see the little chap, “but it was a proper coup de foudre. I genuinely fell head over heels just holding him in my arms, rocking him to sleep. I suddenly thought, this is absolutely astonishing, and he has become a huge thing in my life.”

A woman I spoke to who runs a trends forecasting consultancy couldn’t have been more thrilled at the news that her 27-year-old daughter was expecting. She threw her a huge baby shower at her cool east London office, before jetting off to Dubai for work a week later. She will be back for the birth in November, because she “couldn’t be more excited”.

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‘Grandchildren make us see the world anew’ (Alamy/PA)

It’s all part of life’s constant cycle. Getting older has its downsides, like a greater chance of ill health, our parents getting ill and dying, our energy waning, our allure fading. Grandchildren, so fresh, new, funny and explorative, make us see the world anew. Just their existence can make the most cynical Gen X heart feel soft and loving.

At a books festival in my local park this summer, I came upon a powerful media magnate whose children had been at primary school with my youngest daughter. A charismatic, creative woman, she now heads up a TV company, whose most recent series had just won a major award. I was heaping on the congratulations when she stopped me, stating: “But you have something we want more than any of that!” What? “Your grandchildren.”

Louise Chunn is the founder of therapist-matching platform Welldoing