Four years ago, when pregnant with twins, Kristin Rising unsuccessfully begged her parents to move close by to help. When they came for a visit this summer, she didn’t have to say a word.

“I was really at a low, exhausted, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this’ state,” says Dr. Rising, an emergency medicine physician and researcher whose Philadelphia day care closed during the pandemic. “I honestly think my mom just took a look at me when she got there and said, ‘Oh my God. We need to move here. My daughter is going to be crushed by this.’ ”

Overwhelmed by precarious school and child-care arrangements, working parents are turning to their own mothers and fathers for relief like never before. Grandparents are often transforming their lives to help.

The pandemic has washed away the informal, fluid arrangements that once came with being an involved grandparent—flying in for spring break if you lived far away, picking up a sick kid from school if you were local.

Instead, grandparents concerned about the risks of Covid-19 are often forced to make a choice: Isolate from the younger generation entirely, or dive in, becoming full-time caregivers bubbled with extended family. Many are choosing the latter, moving to new cities or pausing or ending work in its twilight to help their children maintain careers—or just a semblance of sanity.

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