15 million grandparents

In 2011, 8.9 million grandmothers and 6.2 million grandfathers lived in Metropolitan France, i.e. a total of 15.1 million grandparents. Among people aged 75 or over, one in five was not a grandparent, either because they did not have any children (14%) or because their children had none (6%). People who had more than one child were virtually assured of being grandparents. On average, women become grandmothers at the age of 54 and men grandfathers at the age of 56. After the age of 75, grandparents have an average of 5.2 grandchildren. Nord - Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine are the French regions with the most grandparents among those aged 75 or more (85%), while Île-de-France is the region with the fewest (75%). The more brothers and sister a person has, the more children and grandchildren he or she has. Lastly, grandchildren more often know their grandmothers than their grandfathers, and more often their maternal grandparents than their paternal grandparents.