Hard-nosed corporate bosses morph into gentle doting grandparents
By Ritva Liisa Snellman
The front hall of the Oksanen family in the Laajalahti neighbourhood of Espoo is overflowing with winter coats, backpacks, and children. Meliina, 12, and Miisa, 10, are almost ready, but Veikka, 7, is having trouble fastening the suspenders of his padded trousers. Antti Oksanen passes the matter on to his wife, as he helps the youngest, two-year-old Veeti with his overalls.
Soon the whole group is rushing out to the front yard. Grandmother takes the youngest to day care. Miisa and Veikka climb into their grandfather's Volvo. They get to go to school in the car, because the weather is lousy, and Grandpa needs to get to a meeting.
Antti Oksanen has always played with his grandchildren. When he served as CEO of Metsäliitto, there was less time, but fortunately his daughters and their families lived close by even then. Now they are neighbours, and so the children cross the yard every day to see their grandparents.
"Parents are parents and grandparents are grandparents", Oksanen says. "It is not right to assuage a guilty conscience by taking care of the grandchildren, if there was never enough time for one's own children."
Oksanen spends time with his grandchildren because he enjoys it. It also gives him a chance to feel useful. When the trip to school of the first-grader feels unsafe, Grandpa sees him off, and walks to meet him in the afternoon.
The common activities involve small everyday matters. Right now Oksanen focuses mainly on Veikka.
"I never fished as much as I have in the past two summers. Fishing is clearly a thing for us guys."
Oksanen admits that as a grandfather he is more lenient than he ever was as a father, but still, he is not too much of a pushover.
The rules are clear, and Grandfather sticks to them. There is only one day a week for eating candy, and allowance provided by the parents has to be enough. The wife and daughters decide on the general rules of the game, and there is no point in going to Grandpa for additional handouts.
Fresh grandmothers are easy to recognise. They behave like teenagers who have just fallen in love. Their cheeks are bright red, and their voices have an extra dose of warmth.
But something has happened to grandfathers as well. Grandchildren are topics of conversation among men at work and during evening business gatherings. A few years ago pictures of the emerging generations started showing up as wallpaper on the computer screens of corporate bosses, photo albums started bulging with baby pictures, and former favourites for computer passwords - the names of a wife or a dog, turned into the names and birth dates of grandchildren.
Interviews with retiring industrialists and high civil servants started to conclude with comments like: "Finally I have time for my grandchildren". One example of this was National Police Commissioner Reijo Naulapää when he retired two years ago.
And has he had time for his grandsons?
"I just built a basketball court", Naulapää says, enthusiastically.
In retirement, he has had time to do exactly what he always wanted to.
Iiro, 4, and Aapo, 3, are big boys now, but Naulapää was happy to take care of them when they were younger as well. He feels that today's children are easy to take care of: no need to mess with cloth nappies: just put a disposable one on the child and fasten the stickers. Children's clothing is also very handy, well designed, and easy to put on the child.
Of his own grandparents, Naulapää has memories of only one grandmother, but he would have liked to have had a grandfather who might have imparted knowledge from the old days, and who would have been a source of security, and who would never have become angry.
He has tried to be such a grandfather himself.
"My task is to be with the boys. We play sports and fish together."
Grandmother lives in the city, but the summer cottage in Sahalahti is where the boys go to meet Grandfather for adventures, and to live differently than in the city.
Naulapää does not hide his enthusiasm. "I notice that I even tell my dog to come to Grandfather, and we can go out."
The status of being a grandparent is not something that Naulapää hides while he is among his peers. When friends meet for the evening, the subject of posterity often comes up. They are all smitten in a similar way. "The soft side of grandfathers comes out well."
Finnish industrialist Tauno Matomäki has also noticed the change in attitudes. He says that he has changed himself.
Matomäki had little time to play with his own children, as running Rauma-Repola and various other tasks occupied all of his time during his busiest year.
Now Matomäki is a modern long-distance grandfather, as two of his grandchildren live in Malaysia. Along with his wife, he takes care of the three-year-old who lives in Finland whenever the parents are busy with something else.
"I have no skills that I could teach anyone. I guess being a grandfather means just being there", Matomäki says.
Kalle Isokallio, a writer and former Managing Director of Nokia is a traditional grandfather with many skills. At his country home he chops firewood with seven-year-old Leevi and four-year-old Miika. The three then take the wood inside and light a fire in the fireplace.
His daughter gets to raise the children, and Isokallio walks with them in the forest and plays football. "It is fun doing things together. Patience is my strong point."
Isokallio has also noticed that people of his age group are eager to take on the role of a grandparent. One explanation could naturally be that today's grandfathers tend to be in good physical condition.
"You need to be in shape when you've played football for two hours, eaten a stack of pancakes a metre high, and the boys ask what we should do now."
Isokallio's own grandfather was a distant figure who did not play with children. Isokallio sees himself as an uncomplicated grandfather, whose daughter can easily ask him to take the boys for a while. And of course he can - as long as the boys are interested in doing things together.
They always adhere to the rules paid down by the parents, and he keeps the instinct to spoil the children under control. However, when Leevi was born, Isokallio could not control himself. His grandson got a Harley Davidson for as a christening present.
There is not much scientific data about grandfathers, as researchers have been more interested in paternity and the changes that have taken place in that area.
Kimmo Jokinen, Professor of Family Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, believes that researchers will become interested in the subject, because there is much that needs to be investigated.
In the 1960s the country underwent a mass migration, and grandparents were sometimes left hundreds of kilometres away in the countryside. In the decades that followed, day care developed, and the role of grandparents in caring for children diminished.
In the 1990s the importance of grandmothers and grandfathers started growing again. In the midst of a more powerful singles culture, there were moves to look for a new kind of sense of community.
Grandparents are part of an important network of human relationships and social capital in a child's life.
Grandfathers have been pushed aside in discussions in letters to the editor columns and chat rooms, where women tend to be at each other's throats. Daughters-in-law complain about the attitudes of some grandmothers, and overworked grannies lament the ingratitude of the daughters-in-law.
There is not very much statistical data. Half of those under the age of 30 have two living grandfathers. One in four Finnish children live in the Helsinki region, and the impact of the migration trend has balanced out. The average distance to grandmother's house is 70 kilometres. Men become grandfathers at about the age of 60, on average.
Men who were born during the war and the period of shortages already have grandchildren, and are contributing to the softening of the traditional image of a grandfather. The image is changed even more by the men of the postwar baby boom generation. Even for them, establishing a family was a foregone conclusion. At some point a family would fall into their lap like a package, and it did not occur to anyone to put too much thought into the relationship with one's children.
The right to paternity leave was established in 1978, but it was not until this decade that there were serious moves to accommodate work and the family.
Now that the men's children are having children of their own, many things that were left unanalysed are getting new clarity. Grandchildren become important and close - and grandfathers think about how to reconcile the requirements of their work with the needs of their grandchildren.
Although grandfathers are constantly taking more space for themselves, they are still the grandparents that are guided, monitored, and advised. Grandmothers hold the choreography of the family relationships in their hands.
"The womenfolk make the rules, I don't dare take any liberties", concedes Heimo Karinen. He does not even try to be an educator. He is a chauffeur.
His career at the helm of the chemical manufacturer Kemira took much time, but once he had retired, Karinen has spent time with his grandchildren every day. His daughter's sons live in Kuopio, but the four daughters of his son, who live in Espoo, get driven around by him. Grandfather fetches the youngest from day care, takes the older ones to basketball practice, music lessons, and during the weekends, to sports events.
"Grandmother is more involved with the everyday lives of the grandchildren, but I have focused on nature and exercise. In the summer we play golf and sail. Grandmother deals with the food, and I assist."
Timo Peltola, the former CEO of Huhtamäki, was a weekend father to his own children, but now he has time to be with his grandchildren on weekdays as well. He crawls on the floor with the little ones, and he kicks a ball and walks in the forest with the three-year-old. Fortunately, all three live nearby, less than ten minutes away.
Peltola plans on more excursions into the forest as the children grow. Orienteering has been a hobby of the whole family, and the next generation might take it up as well.
But even in the Peltola household, it is the grandmother who holds the reins. "I have been given some quite demanding tasks", Peltola says. "When grandmother tells me to do something, I carry it out diligently."
Grandfathers have turned their job into a manly one. They transport and fish, they play games and do sports. Grandmother's house is her domain, while the yard, the summer cottage, and the outdoors are grandfather territory.
Sometimes children need more than a grandfather who keeps busy.
Professional board member Eero Makkonen became a full-time grandfather to the two and three-year-old sons of his daughter eight years ago, when his son-in-law was unexpectedly killed in an accident. Makkonen felt that the boys who were left fatherless needed him more than the Swedish construction company that he was working for.
As there were significant new arrangements in ownership at the company, he left his post as Chairman of the Board of Skanska at the age of 52, and started to shuttle between Espoo and South Ostrobothnia.
Makkonen wanted to be a substitute father and a male role model.
"My starting point was that I am there no matter what. It is that ordinary feeling of security, presence, being held in the lap."
"At that time it was not very common for people to spontaneously talk about their children in the business world. My business partners did not express very great surprise, but I felt that there was some understanding."
Now the worst is over. The grandsons are in school now, but they call their grandfather almost every day.
And Grandfather has become a business angel and an almost full-time professional board member.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.11.2006
RITVA LIISA SNELLMAN / Helsingin Sanomat
ritva.liisa.snellman@hs.fi
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| 14.11.2006 - THIS WEEK |
 Hard-nosed corporate bosses morph into gentle doting grandparents |
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