Grandparents are family members, the father and mother of a person's own father and mother, being respectively grandfather and grandmother. Grandparents form an important part of the extended family.

In western societies, particularly the United States of America given unstable relationships and relationship breakup between parents, high levels of unstable cohabitation or common-law marriage relationships and divorce, grandparents have increasingly taken on the role of primary caregivers for their grandchildren.

In traditional cultures, grandparents often had a direct and clear role in relation to the care and nurture of children. This has tended to be lost with the development of the nuclear family.