I think I made the internet mad again.
It started out with this beautiful post discussing the importance of grandparents.
I’m sorry to tell you but unfortunately grandma is too busy ‘healing her inner child’ to help you raise yours.
— Tanya (@tanyaelisabethh) August 29, 2026
One of the parts of feminism we talk very little about is how feminism effects older women, in this case, grandmothers. We have spent years talking about what it does… pic.twitter.com/Kj3svANpAu
Grandparents are so important and it's something American society specifically is sorely lacking. So, I piggybacked on that post and added my own comments. You know me, JustMindy, I cannot keep my big mouth shut.
I have talked about this quite a lot and this is so good and insightful.
— Just Mindy 🐊 (@just_mindy) August 29, 2026
55+ communities and grandparents moving away from their families to party with other retirees (IE: the Villages) rather than continuing to pour into their own families and home communities is so… https://t.co/BKIoxC7qbO
Let me be clear. I don’t have a specific beef with The Villages. There are many places like it, and this one is probably no worse than the others. I just live really close to The Villages, so I focus on it often when I talk about how I believe the older generation is failing the younger one.
People who want to spend their retirement years in places like this get really mad at me when I make fun of them.
I just don’t believe the people in our society with the most wisdom, free time, and often the most money should all congregate in tight communities to get drunk, dance, and play organized sports like they’re at summer camp. The first thing people say is, “Those people worked hard all their lives, and now they deserve to do what they want and have all the fun.”
Let’s be clear: I agree retired people have the right to rest and have fun. I even agree there’s room for travel and being away from family for short stretches. I just have major concerns about this trend of retirees permanently leaving their families, making a new life in Florida (or sometimes Arizona), and then having very little to do with their kids and grandkids for the next couple of decades.
First of all, people have worked hard their whole lives for all of time. This is not a new phenomenon. This is not the first generation of retirees who worked hard. In fact, many of today’s retirees have been able to retire at 60 or even younger. That was unheard of for past generations. Plus, medical advances have made it very possible to live well into your eighties. That gives people decades of lounging around and square dancing.
Here’s the thing: those same people will eventually be 85 or 90 and need help to live. What happens when you’ve only seen your kids and grandkids at Christmas, have next to no relationship with them, and now you need them to go far out of their way to care for you — and they have zero interest in caring for a stranger?
My mom will tell you she needs help from her grandkids, my kids. Guess what? They’re happy to give it to her because she spent her whole life taking them to the park, the movies, and Disney, having sleepovers, and making gingerbread houses with them. She sacrificed for them when she could have been getting drunk at the club in The Villages. Now they do the same for her.
Let me be clear: this isn’t just about what the older generation will eventually need from the younger one. The younger generation needs their grandparents. They need those watchful eyes, those special memories, those unhurried conversations, and that soft place to land. Too many children are robbed of that relationship these days, and it has been to the detriment of American society.
