Angela Kim spends two days a week baby-sitting for her 2-year-old grandson, Noah, while her daughter, Andrea, a doctor, works nine-hour hospital shifts.

Only Mrs. Kim, 57, lives in Houston and her daughter and grandson live in Dallas — 250 miles away.

This long-distance child care arrangement means that on Tuesdays Mrs. Kim wakes at 4:45 a.m. to catch a 6:30 a.m. Southwest Airlines flight to Dallas Love Airport, where her daughter and Noah pick her up at the curb.

At the hospital, her daughter hops out of the car to make her 8 a.m. shift and Mrs. Kim slips into the driver’s seat. Then she and Noah drive to his preschool, and after that, home, where Mrs. Kim fills her grandson’s next two days with brown rice, seaweed and Konglish, a mix of Korean and English.

On Wednesday night, Mrs. Kim does the trip in reverse, catching a 7:30 p.m. flight to the Houston airport, where her husband picks her up…

“To me, grandparents are like the family National Guard,” said Andrew J. Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University who studies intergenerational issues. “They are ready to step in when there is a need, and as soon as that need is met, they are ready to leave active duty.” …

“This is the first generation where we have so many older people living long enough, being healthy enough and being affluent enough to provide these services on a large scale” since women entered the workplace in large numbers, Dr. Cherlin said…

Source: New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/fashion/10granny.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin