Right. Amazon link...it's been a while, but I enjoyed reading this book. One thing about not having grandchildren is that you can enjoy reading about other people's.
Another thing about not having grandchildren is that, if you're a celiac woman who would have been advised to have an abortion for medical reasons if you'd ever been in danger of having children, and you protected yourself and never had children, you may still be healthy enough to enjoy spending time with your nieces or nephews, or great-nieces or great-nephews, or whatever other relationships with children you have.
(About The Nephews...I use that term to include all children born to my natural and adoptive sisters, and also a child born to a friend who never called me "sister" but taught the child to call me "aunt." Some of these people are still children so the less information about their ages, genders, locations, etc., on the Internet, the better. All of them are much too big, by now, for the kind of dancing I had in mind when I used to joke about baby-sitting as "staying out dancing with three cute, young White guys." In fact some of them are old enough to have full-time jobs. They've never performed as a band, but they do, in the slang usage of their generation, rock. They also rule.)
Another thing about not having grandchildren is that, in fact, having nieces, nephews, etc., seems to feel pretty similar. If you belong to a family where people traditionally marry late, such that children born into your family often lack the full complement of grandparents, as an aunt or uncle you get to fill in that gap. Nieces and nephews are fun. And, as an aunt or uncle, you do sort of have them first.
Possibly the very best thing about not having grandchildren is that it puts you outside the competition.
All grandparents are of course naturally convinced that their grandchildren are not only theirs, but actually the most adorable grandchildren ever born. They think this includes everyone else's grandchildren including their own grandparents'. They are, of course, right in a subjective way. They will always have a perception of their grandchildren that truly does make theirs especially special.
Hence the jokes about how happily grandparents can spend hours completely ignoring what others are saying about the others' grandchildren, as long as the other grandparents give them equal time to run on about the wonderfulness of their own grandchildren. These jokes tend to come from people who lead completely childless lives.
Nevertheless, there is some truth in these jokes, even as they apply to aunts and uncles. We hear about other people's grandchildren's track meet medals and merit scholarships, and we're glad for them. Their Tracy ran the fastest mile in the state. Huzza. Our Lee was promoted to a full-time grown-up job! HURRAH!!!
However, our nieces, nephews, etc., not being grandchildren, we're still able to humor other people's subjective views of the awesomeness of their grandchildren.
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