Using data from three British birth cohort studies, we examine patterns of social mobility over three generations of family members. For both men and women, absolute mobility rates (i.e., total, ...upward, downward, and outflow mobility rates) in the partial parents-children mobility tables vary substantially by grandparents' social class. In terms of relative mobility patterns, we find a statistically significant association between grandparents' and grandchildren's class positions, after parents' social class is taken into account. The net grandparents-grandchildren association can be summarized by a single uniform association parameter. Net of parents' social class, the odds of grandchildren entering the professional-managerial class rather than the unskilled manual class are at least two and half times better if the grandparents were themselves in professional-managerial rather than unskilled manual-class positions. This grandparents effect in social mobility persists even when parents' education, income, and wealth are taken into account.
Little longitudinal data exist on grandparent caregivers and few studies have examined their physical health outcomes. This study examined the effect of caring for grandchildren on grandparents’ ...physical health and the role of intergenerational support from adult children. Longitudinal data derived from a survey on the well-being of older adults in China were used to conduct path analysis of previous grandparent caregivers (vs. noncaregivers) and repeated grandparent caregivers (vs. noncaregivers). The final sample was 799 grandparents aged 60 or older living in rural China. Three aspects of intergenerational support were measured: financial, emotional, and instrumental support. Repeated grandparent caregivers had better self-rated health (SRH) and fewer limitations than noncaregivers. Previous grandparent caregivers had better SRH compared to noncaregivers. Emotional support mediated the relationship between caregiving and SRH among repeated caregivers. Findings suggest that any caregiving experience (previous or repeated) provides health benefits to grandparents.
The article reviews foreign studies of intergenerational relationships. It analyzes grandchild-grandparent relations, as well as the figure of the grandparent and his/her understanding of his/her ...role in the system of relations with family members belonging to different generations. Putting a figure belonging to the older generation of the family in the spotlight made it possible to look for and find new factors that determine the nature and quality of the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. The article also examines the specificity of interrelations between grandchildren and grandparents living in extended families or separately from their children and grandchildren.
Статья посвящена обзору зарубежных исследований межпоколенных отношений. В ней анализируются детско-прародительские отношения, а также фигура прародителя и понимание им своей роли в системе отношений с членами семьи, принадлежащими к разным поколениям. Постановка фигуры, относящейся к старшему поколению семьи, в центр внимания позволяет искать и находить новые факторы, определяющие характер и качество отношений между бабушками/дедушками и внуками. В статье также рассматривается специфика отношений с внуками прародителей из расширенных семей, и прародителей, проживающих отдельно.
We analyze multigenerational social mobility by drawing on a novel hand-collected data set from Basel (1550–2019) and using a new surname-based approach. We find an average parent–child persistence ...of about 0.4 and an average grandparent–child persistence of about 0.2 in a three-generational model applied to a time span of more than 450 years. A cyclical pattern indicates that social mobility was lowest in wartime generations, with spreading afterward. We measure a statistically significant additional influence of the grandparental generation but not of earlier generations. This reveals the importance of multigenerational analyses to examine equal opportunities in society.
As a result of the devastating impact of the opioid epidemic, increased numbers of children are being raised by their grandparents in what are known as grandfamilies. Despite these children and their ...families experiencing difficult environmental circumstances, numerous adverse life events, and challenging family dynamics, empirical examinations of the opioid epidemic, as it relates to grandfamilies, remain limited. The purpose of this review is to advance the understanding of how grandfamilies have been impacted by the opioid epidemic by using a systemic perspective to highlight themes and major conclusions within the existing conceptual and empirical literature. The review reveals five systemically informed themes including the assumption of caregiving responsibilities, grandparent stress and well-being, caring for vulnerable grandchildren, navigating relationships with parents, and contextual stressors of societal stigma and barriers to service. To extend this work, systemically informed recommendations for clinical intervention and future priorities for research and policy are discussed.
Native American grandparents by tradition are expected to play a role in rearing grandchildren. However, in many Native grandfamilies, grandparents are rearing grandchildren not by choice or ...tradition, but as the result of family crises that necessitated grandparent intervention. European American grandparents have likewise been called to rear their grandchildren when their adult children are unable or unwilling to perform parental duties. Less is known about these custodial grandparents’ resilience pathways, particularly among rural grandfamilies. Guided by the Resiliency Model of Family Stress, Adjustment, and Adaptation, this study examined the relationships between stressors, resources, and resilience among rural Native and European American custodial grandparents. Correlates of resilience were economic stress and stress management. Significant interactions were found between economic stress and government assistance and economic stress and stress management, indicating complex resilience pathways. Implications of study findings for research and intervention are discussed.
Around eight million older adults have internally migrated to take care of grandchildren in China. This study aimed to explore how Chinese migrant and nonmigrant grandparents perceived successful ...aging and how they coped with challenges to successful aging.
Based on ecological systems theory, semistructured interviews were conducted among 21 grandparents (12 migrants, median age = 59 years old) from urban areas in China who provided noncustodial grandchild care. Deductive content analysis was employed to examine the data pertaining to the definition of successful aging, the stressors encountered, and coping strategies employed by both groups.
Findings revealed that both migrant and nonmigrant grandparents placed a higher emphasis on family prosperity than their own physical health, in their definitions of successful aging. Although both groups experienced common stressors in the microsystem (e.g., intergenerational conflicts), migrant grandparents uniquely encountered stressors in the mesosystem (e.g., hardships in their close relationships) and in the macrosystem (e.g., uncertainty in aging preparation). In terms of coping, migrant grandparents exhibited a distinctive pattern of utilizing avoidant coping strategies when navigating intergenerational conflicts and planning for their later life, compared to nonmigrant grandparents.
Our findings suggested that although migration was not associated with grandparents' definition of successful aging, migrant grandparents encountered specific challenges in achieving successful aging. This highlights the necessity of providing more support to grandparents through the family, community, or state, particularly to those who are migrants.
Health geography provides a relational approach to understanding elders' wellbeing experience in relation to place. That the migrating grandparents move between their home and their adult children's ...home to support their children's life in the migrating city provides a particular pattern to supplement the place-based wellbeing literature. How they negotiate their wellbeing remains to be observed in the daily home-making practices related to their two homes. This study conducted in-depth interviews with 35 migrating grandparents and nine of their adult children and conducted extensive field notes in Shanghai from 2020 to 2022. Through thematic analysis, it finds that the migrating grandparents met a series of differences, challenges and tensions in the material, social and emotional home-making practices brought by the separation and rotation between their own and their children's homes. It weakens their physical, social and mental wellbeing. However, they take some initiatives to overcome and relieve these tensions. Therefore, accompanied by sacrifices and negotiations, they also obtain sustained material, social and spiritual-emotional values to negotiate a suboptimal experience of wellbeing. This study contributes to the intersection of elderly wellbeing and home-making studies by revealing the complex and ongoing inter-relationships between migrating grandparents and home in the rotating lifestyle.
Exogenous shocks during sensitive periods of development can have long-lasting effects on adult phenotypes including behavior, survival and reproduction. Cooperative breeding, such as grandparental ...care in humans and some other mammal species, is believed to have evolved partly in order to cope with challenging environments. Nevertheless, studies addressing whether grandparental investment can buffer the development of grandchildren from multiple adversities early in life are few and have provided mixed results, perhaps owing to difficulties drawing causal inferences from non-experimental data. Using population-based data of English and Welsh adolescents (sample size ranging from 817 to 1197), we examined whether grandparental investment reduces emotional and behavioral problems in children resulting from facing multiple adverse early life experiences (AELEs), by employing instrumental variable regression in a Bayesian structural equation modeling framework to better justify causal interpretations of the results. When children had faced multiple AELEs, the investment of maternal grandmothers reduced, but could not fully erase, their emotional and behavioral problems. No such result was observed in the case of the investment of other grandparent types. These findings indicate that in adverse environmental conditions the investment of maternal grandmothers can improve child wellbeing.
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