For 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl, Being Grandma Matters Most

For four decades, Lesley Stahl has doggedly pursued the most challenging of stories as a 60 Minutes correspondent. But these days, Stahl, who has covered the White House and interviewed heads of state, is also sharing a very personal journey in her forthcoming book, Becoming Grandma: The Joys and Science of the New Grandparenting. Stahl, a grandmother of two, spent two-plus years delving into the science behind the intense joy she felt upon becoming a grandmother and the ways in which people change when their kids have kids. The result: A fascinating look at what it means to be a grandparent today.

Your book is part memoir, part sociological study and part love letter to your grandkids. Was that your intention?

I didn’t have a real intention at first. The idea of writing a book was brought to me by the publisher of Blue Rider Press, who suggested it because I couldn’t stop talking about the enormous emotions I felt when I became a grandmother. When I decided to write the book, I talked to a lot of people. They would say ‘have you heard about the biochemistry of grandmothers’ so off I went. People would say you have to write about grandfathers so off I went. I knew I had to include step grandmothers, too, because I have some very close girlfriends who are step grandmothers who went through the same explosion of emotions I felt. I knew that I would write that the feeling of being born again when a grandchild arrives doesn’t just happen if you’re related.

Did you discover that many grandmothers interact differently with their grandkids than they did with their own kids?

A lot of people my daughter’s age told me they didn’t recognize their mothers. They’d say things like ‘she was so tough with me and she just isn’t with my kids.’ As a group, we are surprising our children, but believe me, we’re surprising ourselves even more. For example, I used to complain all the time about taking my daughter to the park. Now I happily take my granddaughters to the park. We’re so changed that we don’t even recognized ourselves. That propelled me a lot. I was driven to find out why.

Did any generation gaps pop up as you were reporting?

There’s a little bit of friction over new rules and there’s a little sense that today’s parents are better parents than we were. They rebuke us because they feel they’re more attentive than we were, but I mostly found that baby boomer grandmothers want to spend time with those babies so much, we’ll do anything. We’ll do sleep training—whatever you want!

Did anyone you interviewed tug at your heartstrings?

Yes. The heartstrings came when a grandchild is sick, when a grandchild dies or when a woman sat across from me, tears rolling down her face, saying she can’t see her grandchild and she doesn’t know why. I can’t imagine being denied time with my grandchildren.

At the end of the book, you beseech readers to fix any relationship issues so that kids get to spend time with their grandmothers. Why was this such an important message?

I had no idea I would come around to that. It developed as I did my research. One day I sat up and realized I had a conclusion. When I was talking to sociologists it became clear that children need their grandmothers. They need them to survive and flourish and this is age-old. I realized we need grandchildren for our health, our mental health and, in some cases, our intellectual health.

What was the best part of working on the book?

I loved the research. I was learning about myself and it was so interesting to speak to anthropologists abut why—in evolutionary terms—there are grandmothers. It’s fascinating that we exist when we just take food away from our offspring. I found out all of these wonderful things. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Your book sounds like it would make a great CBS Sunday Morning story, too.

It will be. I’m working on it right now!