This is a quickie.
Where are all the grandparents in modern literature?
I could give you a million examples but that would mean me having to read a million books – Authonomy is bad enough!
Let’s just take Harry Potter. His parents were killed when he was a few months old. They were how old? In their twenties? So, the grandparents were probably in their forties or early fifties (all four of them initially)? But where are they? Did Voldemort kill them? I know of no evidence. Four grandparents in the prime of their lives- puff! That defies both demographic trends and oral evidence.
Believe me. Pick up almost any modern Western novel and ask yourself “Where are the grandparents?”
If you go pick up a non-Western book, they are all over the place – not always nice, but always there and generally quite dominant. But in the West, airbrushed! Never were, never are, and obviously (except in sci-fi) never will be.
Tip to authors: sketch in some wrinklies. I never write a book without them, personally, even if I barely knew three of mine. Logic tells me that they must have existed in the annals of time.
Once an agent told me to get rid of some of my characters, I had too many. She started with the oldest and had taken up the least room in my text. They were the grandparents.
I modern African American and West Indian literature you usually find a grandparent. It is usually because the children were left with said grandparents while the parent went off to make money, to find a new life, to explore. There was the promise of coming back for the child eventually. But these are just a few wrinkles which inspire wisdom.