22 Funny Grandparent Quotes Capturing Generational Chaos
Words My Family Quotes Editors
The Myth of the Serene Elder
Literature got to the comic grandparent long before the greeting-card industry did. In The Pickwick Papers (1836) the grandmother at Dingley Dell is deaf, sharp-tongued and running the card table. In Bleak House (1852) Grandfather Smallweed collapses so often that his granddaughter has to revive him by shaking him "like a great bottle" and punching him "like a great bolster." Hilaire Belloc's Lord Lundy has a grandpapa who is a Duke and a grandmamma who is "Blind and nearly ninety-three," and neither is the least bit gentle. The serene grandparent knitting on the porch is the newer invention.
The twenty-two lines below are grouped by the jokes people keep making: grandparents overruling the parents, the stamina it takes to babysit, spoiling, getting older, and the alliance that skips a generation. Each one has a note on where it comes from. Funny quotes are the worst-sourced corner of the quote world: plenty of the one-liners on this subject go round under a famous name they never had. Where a line is an unsigned joke, we say so and give the earliest printing we could find. Where a book or newspaper column is named, we have seen the line in it. Lines that didn't survive the check are listed near the end, with the reason.
Subverting the Parental Authority
"Grandparents are there to help the child get into mischief they haven't thought of yet." — Gene Perret, Grandchildren Are So Much Fun We Should Have Had Them First, 2001
Gene Perret wrote jokes for Bob Hope and Carol Burnett before turning to short humor books, and this line heads one of the chapters of his 2001 grandparent book (Arizona Highways/Azurite). The paragraph under it opens "In the ongoing war between parent and child," and that framing is the whole joke: the grandparent isn't a referee but an arms dealer. Quote sites often give the title as "…I Should Have Had Them First" and the year as 1980. That "I" title belongs to a different book, by Lois Wyse (see below).
It's the safest line on the page for a card to a new grandparent, because it praises them while teasing the parents just a little.
"Never have children, only grandchildren." — Senator Thomas P. Gore, as recalled by his grandson Gore Vidal in Palimpsest, 1995
This is almost always credited to Gore Vidal, but in his memoir Vidal gives it to his grandfather. Thomas Gore was Oklahoma's blind senator, and the young Vidal read aloud to him and led him around Washington. Vidal calls it his grandfather's "usual line," and says that on one later occasion the old man swapped it for "Be not fruitful, do not multiply." Our guide to misattributed family quotes has more on this one.
Say it to a friend who has just become a grandparent and is clearly enjoying it far more than they enjoyed the toddler years the first time round.
"Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers." — Lewis Mumford, The Brown Decades, chapter 1, 1931
Mumford wasn't writing about babysitting. He was explaining why Americans of his generation were rediscovering the architecture and art of the decades after the Civil War, their grandparents' world, which their parents had dismissed. It still works as family humor because it describes something you can see at any Sunday lunch: the teenager who can't stand their parents' music but borrows Grandpa's records.
A good caption for a photo of a grandchild in a grandparent's old jacket or glasses, or for a teenager and grandparent ganging up on the middle generation.
"When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window." — Unsigned saying, collected in Evan Esar's 20,000 Quips and Quotes, 1968
Gift books credit this to Ogden Nash, but we found no trace of it in his poems, and the Nash credit only shows up in print in the 2000s. It's a twist on an old proverb, "When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window." A Reader's Digest essay in 1961 already quoted it as "an old Chinese proverb," and the humor anthologist Evan Esar collected it in 1968. Credit it as a saying.
It suits the moment the grandparents arrive for a holiday visit and bedtime quietly becomes a suggestion.
"The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called a grandparent." — Commonly attributed to Sam Levenson (no primary source located; in print by 1980)
Sam Levenson was a Brooklyn schoolteacher turned TV humorist who wrote fondly about family life, and the line fits his style. We couldn't find it in any of his books, though. The earliest traceable printing is a 1980 collection, published the year he died, followed by Reader's Digest in 1985. The book and year often given online, Everything But Money (1966), don't check out, so we label it "attributed."
It reads well under a photo of a grandparent on all fours being ridden like a pony, which is more or less what it describes.
The Physical Toll of Babysitting
"The best babysitters, of course, are the baby's grandparents. You feel completely comfortable entrusting your baby to them for long periods, which is why most grandparents flee to Florida." — Dave Barry, Babies and Other Hazards of Sex, 1984
Dave Barry's mock guide to parenthood came out in 1984, and Reader's Digest reprinted this passage the next year. It continues with advice for parents who have no grandparents to hand: "you will have to rent a teen-ager." Many quote sites cite a "Dave Barry's Guide to Babies, 1981," which doesn't seem to exist.
It's the perfect reply when grandparents announce a long winter somewhere warm. It's also a little pointed, so keep it for grandparents who'll laugh.
"An hour with your grandchildren can make you feel young again. Anything longer than that, and you start to age quickly." — Gene Perret, Grandchildren Are So Much Fun We Should Have Had Them First, 2001
Perret's book is full of this kind of honest arithmetic. The joke is the timer: the same visit that takes ten years off at the start puts twenty back on by the end. It suits a grandparent who has just survived a whole weekend in charge.
For a card, it pairs well with something practical: a voucher for a massage, a box of good tea, or an offer to take the kids back early.
"Few things are more delightful than grandchildren fighting over your lap." — Doug Larson, United Feature Syndicate, in print by 1986
Doug Larson was a newspaper columnist whose one-liners United Feature Syndicate sent out to papers around the country. Reader's Digest ran this one in 1986. The 1993 date given on many sites is too late. It's the gentlest joke in this section: the lap is contested ground, and the grandparent is quietly delighted to be fought over.
A sweet caption for a photo of two small grandchildren wedged into one armchair with a grandparent.
"A grandmother is a babysitter who watches the kids instead of the television." — Unsigned joke, printed by Herbert V. Prochnow in The Successful Toastmaster, 1966
Herbert Prochnow, a Chicago banker, compiled one after-dinner speaker's handbook after another, and he printed this joke unsigned in 1966, ending "television set." It has been printed as "author unknown" ever since, from the Chicken Soup grandparent books to Willard Scott's grandparent collection. There's no famous author hiding behind it, and it doesn't need one.
It works well inside a Mother's Day or birthday card for a grandmother who does a lot of the childcare.
Sugar, Spoilage, and Sabotage
"I don't intentionally spoil my grandkids. It's just that correcting them often takes more energy than I have left." — Gene Perret, Grandchildren Are So Much Fun We Should Have Had Them First, 2001
Perret's third entry here is the grandparent's defense brief: spoiling isn't a policy, it's an energy shortage. It's funny because it's half true. Ice cream before dinner is often less about generosity than about which battles a seventy-year-old wants to fight at five in the afternoon.
Hand this one to the parents before they complain.
"Grandchildren Are So Much Fun, I Should Have Had Them First" — Lois Wyse, book title, 1992
Lois Wyse was an advertising executive and columnist who wrote a run of best-selling grandparent books, starting with Funny, You Don't Look Like a Grandmother (1988). The "had them first" joke is usually quoted as a sentence ("If I had known how wonderful it would be to have grandchildren, I'd have had them first"). We could not find that sentence in her books. What she certainly wrote is the joke as a title, in 1992. Versions of it were already around as an unsigned saying in the late 1980s, so it's best quoted in this short form.
A good line for a baby-shower card from the grandparents-to-be, or for a T-shirt nobody will ever be allowed to forget.
"Naughty little Hannah said / She could make her grandma whistle, / So, that night, inside her bed / Placed some nettles and a thistle." — Harry Graham, "Inconsiderate Hannah," Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes, 1899
Harry Graham published his "ruthless rhymes" under the pen name Col. D. Streamer, and they're the ancestors of every dark children's joke since. Hannah's plan works: grandma, "quite infirm," settles into bed and, at the thistle, whistles. The poem ends with the narrator's verdict: "A successful plan was Hannah's, / But I cannot praise her manners."
The sabotage section needed one grandchild on the attack. Read it aloud to a grandchild old enough to enjoy it, and keep the nettles out of reach.
"When I, Sir! was a little Boy, / An Animal was not a Toy!" — Hilaire Belloc, "Lord Lundy," Cautionary Tales for Children, 1907
Little Lord Lundy cries at everything. When his father tells him to leave the cat alone, he wails so loudly that "His Grandpapa the Duke" delivers this "severe rebuke." Belloc is mocking the grandparent who measures every modern child against an imaginary perfect childhood of his own. The same poem gives Lundy a grandmamma who wishes she were "Brisk and Spry" enough to "give him that for which to cry."
It's the line for the grandparent whose stories all begin "In my day…" Quote it back to them affectionately, and watch them recognize themselves.
Observations on Aging and Irony
"Grandchildren don't make a man feel old; it's the knowledge that he's married to a grandmother." — Unsigned, printed in Reader's Digest in 1955 and credited to The Saturday Evening Post
This was a filler joke in the mid-1950s magazines. Later quote books give it to a "G. Norman Collie," but that name only shows up decades after the joke first appeared, and we could not tie it to any article. The humor is in who gets blamed: not the grandchildren, not his own age, but the sudden new title his wife has acquired.
A teasing line for a grandfather's birthday card, best signed by the grandmother in question.
"Grandchildren are God's way of compensating us for growing old." — Unsigned saying, in print by 1974 (no primary source located); later credited to Mary H. Waldrip
This is one of the most-shared grandparent lines online, nearly always with the name Mary H. Waldrip and sometimes a 1988 small-town newspaper as the source. We found the sentence unsigned in home magazines of 1974–75, apparently as plaque or gift copy, and the Waldrip credit only in later quote books. Whoever wrote it, it is closer to wry than to sentimental: grandchildren as a refund for the knees.
It works on a plaque, a framed print for a new grandparent, or a toast at a sixtieth birthday.
"Elephants and grandchildren never forget." — Andy Rooney, Word for Word, 1986
Andy Rooney, the 60 Minutes commentator, used this line in a newspaper column about his grandson, collected in Word for Word in 1986. The book often cited instead, Years of Minutes (2003), came much later. Any grandparent who has made a casual promise about a trip to the zoo knows how true it is: the grandchild will remember it, word for word, months later.
Use it as a gentle warning on a card, or as the caption when the promised trip finally happens.
"There never was a more bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather fetched him from Illinois—got him of a man by the name of Yates—" — Jim Blaine, in Mark Twain's Roughing It, chapter 53, 1872
Twain's miners tell him that Jim Blaine, once drunk enough, always starts a story about "his grandfather's old ram," and that "the mention of the ram in the first sentence was as far as any man had ever heard him get." The story that follows wanders through a dozen neighbors, a glass eye and a man who fell into a carpet factory, and never gets back to the ram. It's the original grandfather story with no ending.
It's affectionate shorthand for every family's champion storyteller. "Grandpa's old ram" makes a good family in-joke.
"So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time." — Grampa Simpson, The Simpsons, "Last Exit to Springfield," 1993
A century after Twain, The Simpsons made the same joke on purpose. Mr. Burns hires Grampa and his friends as strikebreakers, and Grampa explains their secret weapon: "tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere." The story that follows, a ferry to Shelbyville, nickels with "pictures of bumblebees on 'em," never arrives anywhere.
For a birthday card to a grandparent famous for long stories, or for a photo of them mid-anecdote. Add an onion for full effect.
The Grandparent-Grandchild Alliance
"He isn't as handsome as my grandfather, but I like him." — Jo March, in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, chapter 5, 1868
Jo is looking at a portrait of old Mr. Laurence, the neighbor she has been warned is fierce, and gives her honest opinion out loud. Then "a gruff voice behind her" says, "Thank you, ma'am." The old man is standing in the doorway. He is delighted rather than offended, and the friendship that follows turns him into a grandfather figure for the March girls (he later gives Beth a piano).
A good line for a grandparent who values honesty over flattery, or for an "adopted" grandparent: a neighbor, a godparent, a friend's grandfather who took you in.
"'You don't wear your coronet all the time?' remarked Lord Fauntleroy respectfully. 'No,' replied the Earl, with his grim smile; 'it is not becoming to me.'" — Frances Hodgson Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy, chapter 5, 1886
Cedric, a seven-year-old from New York, has just met the grandfather who disowned his father, an Earl everyone else is afraid of. Cedric isn't afraid at all, and has questions. His friend Mr. Hobbs, the grocer, had assured him earls wore coronets constantly, then decided they must "sometimes take it off to put your hat on." One of the footmen has to turn away and cough. The grim grandfather is won over remarkably fast.
The exchange suits any grandchild who interviews their grandparents with total confidence and no tact.
"Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds." — Charles Dickens, Bleak House, chapter 21, 1852
"It" is the Smallweed family, ruled by a grandfather whose only god is "Compound Interest." Dickens shows the alliance turned inside out: the Smallweeds have banned "all story-books, fairy-tales, fictions, and fables," so nobody in the family has ever been a child. The grandchildren are born middle-aged.
It's a dark joke, but a useful one for a family that takes itself too seriously, and a reminder of what grandparents are for: the fairy tales the Smallweeds banned.
"'Mr. Pickwick, grandma!' screamed both the young ladies together. 'Ah!' exclaimed the old lady. 'Well, it don't much matter. He don't care for an old 'ooman like me, I dare say.'" — Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, chapter 6, 1836
At Dingley Dell, Mr. Wardle introduces his guest to his deaf mother "at the very top of his voice," gets "I can't hear you," and has to call in his daughters. A few pages later the old lady, "quite unconscious that she had spoken above a whisper," tells the whole room that a neighbor is "a conceited coxcomb, and you may tell him I said so." When whist is suggested, Dickens notes that she is "much less deaf on this subject than on any other."
A loving line for the grandmother who hears only what she wants to and says exactly what she thinks.
Choosing a Line for a Card, Toast or Caption
Most of these lines tease someone, so the main thing to decide is who that will be. A grandparent will happily laugh at their own stamina or their long stories. A parent may not enjoy a joke about how much better the grandparents are at the job. Use this table as a starting point.
| Occasion | Line that fits | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Congratulating new grandparents | Perret, "mischief they haven't thought of yet"; Wyse, "I Should Have Had Them First" | Celebrates the new role, and the parents can laugh too |
| Grandparent's birthday card | Perret, "An hour with your grandchildren…"; the onion on the belt | Teases stamina or storytelling, never looks |
| Thank-you after a babysitting weekend | Larson, "fighting over your lap"; Prochnow's unsigned grandmother joke | Warm, with no sting |
| Family photo caption | Mumford, "makes friends with its grandfathers"; Rooney, "Elephants and grandchildren" | Short and works under any picture |
| Toast at a big birthday or anniversary | Thomas Gore's "Never have children, only grandchildren" | Six words, gets a laugh, and the story behind it is a bonus |
For a card, pair the quote with one specific sentence of your own: one real detail beats any joke you could borrow. Some examples written by our editors:
- New grandparents: "Gene Perret says grandparents are there to help with mischief the child hasn't thought of yet. We're trusting you to wait until she can at least crawl."
- Birthday: "Happy birthday to the only person who can make a trip to the hardware store sound like an epic. Tie an onion to your belt; it's the style."
- After babysitting: "Thank you for a weekend of no rules and full stomachs. They've talked about nothing else. We'll start the detox on Monday."
If the family is grieving, the lighter lines can still help in a eulogy, as long as they're about the person. "He never finished a story" can make a room laugh at a funeral in a way a solemn quote can't. For gentler, more grateful lines, see our sourced quotes about being thankful for grandparents, or our short grandpa quotes with sources for a birthday card. For the relatives who are harder to love, try the sarcastic quotes about bad family relatives or funny lines for tense holiday gatherings.
Lines We Took Off This Page, and Why
- "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother," credited to Einstein. Quote Investigator traces the joke's main form, explaining a theory to a barmaid. It was credited to Ernest Rutherford in 1955 and to Einstein only from 1979, and QI calls the Einstein link spurious.
- "A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween," credited to Erma Bombeck. It was printed unsigned in family newsletters and joke books by 1972–75, years before the 1987 Bombeck book it's pinned to. We found it in no Bombeck column.
- "If your baby is 'beautiful and perfect…' you're the grandma," credited to Teresa Bloomingdale. Its early printings are unsigned, and nothing ties it to her 1982 book.
- "My grandkids believe I'm the oldest thing in the world…," credited to Gene Perret. It isn't in the parts of his book we could see. It's credited to him only in later compilations.
- "Grandparents are just antique little children," "the perfect granddad… terrified of the word 'boo'" (credited to Robert Brault), "Grandparents are similar to a piece of string…" and "Grandchildren are the reward you get for not killing your teenagers." We found no dated source for any of them, and the "1960 Saturday Evening Post" and "Reader's Digest 1992" citations the old version of this page gave could not be confirmed.
The Short Version
- The comic grandparent is old. Dickens, Twain, Alcott and Belloc were writing grandparents who were deaf, grumpy, long-winded or scheming more than a century before the greeting card.
- Many famous grandparent jokes are unsigned. "Discipline flies out the window" and the grandmother who "watches the kids instead of the television" were in print as anonymous jokes long before famous names were attached.
- Check the book before you print the name. Gore Vidal's line is his grandfather's, Dave Barry's is from 1984, Andy Rooney's from 1986, and Perret's book title says "We," not "I."
- The alliance skips a generation. Mumford said it in 1931, and every Sunday lunch since has proved him right.
- Tease the grandparent, not the parent. Jokes about stamina and long stories land. Jokes about the parents' rules can backfire.