The point of the article is that the women who are complaining are basically doing so because the grandchildren, drat 'em, don't conform to their schedules. They are inconvenient.

They want not only dispensation from guilt, but praise for their decision to put their grandchildren on the back burner, not just once in a while (which I understand), but most of the time. For crying out loud, one of them actually compared spending time with her grandchildren with managing an investment property, and the property sounded more important to her!

They aren't going to get either praise or dispensation from me. They aren't getting condemnation from me either. Their children and grandchildren will do that, or something more devastating: they will be forgotten.

Children are young for only a very brief period. You miss that window, and you're done.

They want it all. They can't have it all at once. They have to choose. They have chosen. Now they want not only social conditions, but the grandchildren themselves, to conform to and understand their expectations.

They might be able to push society, but unfortunately for them, children's psycho-social development takes place on its own schedule, intransigent in the face of all their time planning instruments and calls for enlightened grandmother depictions. If they choose to be uninvolved, then there will be a big hole that they could have occupied in their grandchildren's memories.

Too bad for the kids. But I don't feel sorry for the women. They will show what they love most by their actions. They will not be able to fool the children with the kind of statements made in this article. Their places in those children's hearts will be occupied by other people, people who think the children are important enough that they should receive the most valuable capital we have: time.