Grandparents as Buffers of Family Disruption and Social Change

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

SES-0137195 Merril Silverstein University of Southern California The goal of this research is to investigate the role that grandparents play in promoting the well-being of their grandchildren who experience the marital disruption of their parents. Grandparents are considered latent resources who help their grandchildren adapt to stressful events such as divorce, single parenting, negative parental attachment styles, and problematic environments. The aims of the research are to better understand (1) how the investment of time, emotion, and support by grandparents buffers the impact of family disruption and other family stressors on the psychological, social, and material well-being of (a) pre- adolescent grandchildren as they make the transition to adolescence, and (b) adolescent children as they make the transition to adulthood and middle-age. Outcomes include self-esteem, depression, anxiety, affect balance, teen-age childbearing, delinquency, educational achievement, and occupational mobility. Two longitudinal data sets will be used. These include a long-term study of several cohorts of adolescent grandchildren surveyed along with their parents and grandparents over the last 30 years (the Longitudinal Study of Generations), and a nationally representative five-year, soon to be fourteen year, longitudinal study of pre-teen and adolescent grandchildren, and their parents (National Survey of Families and Households). Longitudinal models predict change in prospective outcomes as a function of the statistical interaction between grandparent involvement and family stressors experienced by the grandchild. Transitions over three, five, fourteen, and twenty-six years will be analyzed to investigate the short-term and enduring contributions that grandparents make to the well being of their grandchildren. Multiple regression, logistic regression will be used to estimate the strength of these effects. This research will extend our understanding of the value of extended family relations by documenting how and with what effect grandparents buffer the impact of social change on family systems. The knowledge gained through a rigorous investigation into the role played by grandparents as a resource to grandchildren will help expand the analytic lens of family sociology to include extended kinship relationships.