Western families have been less inclined to utilise grandparents in the same all encompassing way as adopted by Eastern cultures. A difference with western cultures and attitudes towards the older generation has made the notion of an all encompassing family to include live-in grandparents less common. Significantly both genders of grandparents in the West commonly possess a working life outside the home which until now would have been rare among Eastern communities. Raising grandkids in the West has therefore been a primary responsibility of the parents with grandparents interacting when necessary and usually from a distance because they would not live directly within the family group.
As Eastern cultures have developed a similar approach to the working day comparable with their Western counterparts the family unit inevitably needed to adapt in order to meet the changes. In some respects the Eastern family unit was perhaps better equipped to handle the effects of the parental wife also seeking ajob outside the home thereby leaving the grandparents to manage home affairs, simply because the grandparents lived at home with them. Raising grandkids appears to be a fundamental part of the Eastern family structure adopted by grandparents in that region of the world for thousands of years. Perhaps this contribution by grandparents in the development of grandchildren has partly made successful the maintenance of notions in regard to other issues within their society as a whole such as religion and politics. Certainly experience in the West has shown that for many generations families have followed a specific direction in relation to both religion and politics and that the possible reasons behind this lie within the family collective as the views of both grandparents and parents are passed down to their children.
A very useful incentive for children being raised by grandparents is that parents enjoy freedom from the continual supervision demanded by children. This important aspect lends families an opportunity to reduce the potential for stress that can build up over time when a mother and father are the sole adults available to meet the demands made by their children. When raising grandkids, grandparents are also able to enjoy a sense of self-worth that might ordinarily be lost when living alone or outside the family collective and through being a part of the raising of grandkids enjoy a fulfilling sense of achievement.
Grandparents offer families a unique means by which many of the daily routine issues generally addressed by the parents can be resolved without going to the additional expense of seeking outside help. Grandparents offer families a unique and genuine avenue of support that cannot be found elsewhere.