In this book Kornhaber and Woodward explore the vital connections that link generations to each other and expose a new social contract that destroys the emotional bonds between grandparents and grandchildren.

This is the first book that reviews, in a careful ethnographic manner, the relationship of grandchildren to grandparents and the place of love at one end and abandonment at the other by grandparents. The authors probe the deep, unexplored emotional histories of hundreds of grandparents: how they feel about themselves, their grandchildren, and their loss of function within...