Margaret Mead, the noted anthropologist, has said a lot of controversial things, but you will find no authorities debating her statement in her article Grandparents and Educators. In it she said, "Somehow we have to get the older people, grandparents, widows and widowers, spinsters and bachelors, back close to children if we are to restore a sense of community, a knowledge of the past, and a sense of future to today's children."
(Source: from a sermon by Johnny Creasong, "The Gift of Grandparenting" 7/16/08)