The children of a generation of parents are childfree, by choice or circumstance, and their parents are grappling with the consequences. The New York Times recently ran a piece about this titled “The Unspoken Grief of Never Becoming a Grandparent.”

My grandparents were the parents of four children and, from those four children, only had two grandchildren (their two oldest daughters had one child each). I became interested in genealogy in my 20s and would often reflect on how my family tree practically dead-ended with them. Irish Catholics were the products of many children, and their grandparents and great-grandparents were also the products of large families.