Don't Call Her Grandma, It's Too Old-Fashioned

QUESTION: My granddaughter is now 6 months old and I still can't decide what she should call me. I am 63, at the height of my career and attractive (I am told). Grandma or grandmother just doesn't seem to fit. Am I obsessing or is this a real issue?

ANSWER: You have hit on a real issue. Boomers are starting a semantic revolution to avoid senior citizen status. They love their grandkids but don't like the granny image; they want younger sounding names.

Ellen Warren of the Chicago Tribune interviewed a grandmother who said, "Grandma sounds like a prim little old lady with rolled-down stockings driving along the expressway 40 miles under the speed limit, afraid to make left turns."

Finding a name seems easy compared to larger challenges of life. Yet the name one adopts is an identity that stays forever. That name can reflect one's self-perception, uniqueness and personal feelings about getting older.

The boomer generation continues struggling to avoid a wrinkled stereotype of aging. AARP met the challenge by changing its name from the American Association of Retired Persons to AARP. One might guess that the "R" stands for retirement.

The name change is relevant since about one third of the 39 million AARP members are working. The association's magazine title also was changed - Modern Maturity was renamed AARP The Magazine. The cover page often highlights boomers such as Caroline Kennedy, Jamie Lee Curtis and Glenn Close.

We know that the bond between grandparents and grandchildren is special.

If we ever wonder why we care so deeply for our grandchildren, it all began a million years ago in the plains of Africa. A mother gave birth to a child after a long and exhausting labor. She barely had enough energy to nurse her baby and not enough energy to feed or care for her older children. It was then, as geriatrician William H. Thomas writes in his book, "What Are Older People For? How Elders Will Save the World," that, "A miracle occurred."

The maternal grandmother intentionally shared her food with the older children.

At that moment a new pattern of support began that carried over to other families. Thomas writes that humans are the only species that have grandparents deliberately helping to raise grandchildren. He calls this grandparent support a "defining characteristic" of humans.