This project will study kinship relationships longitudinally as they undergo reorganization following divorce and remarriage. The over-all objective is to determine how these changes in the American family system affect the social integration, health and well-being of the grandparent generation. To examine these effects, the study will focus on three levels of analysis of interviews with both grandparents and their divorcing children: 1) intergenerational relationships as they vary in intimacy/distance, conflict/harmony, and independence/dependence; 2) the kinship network as it expands or contracts with divorce and remarrriage; and 3) cultural definitions or the norms and rules which govern these relationships. The degree of value congruence between generations will also be examined as it is associated with the grandparents' integration into their children's families. Variables of age, timing of grandparenthood, the kinship linkage, and competing commitments will also be associated with the status of grandparents. The study group comes from ongoing research, so changes in kinship can be studied over time. The respondents include 59 grandmothers of which 50 had children also interviewed. The sample is stratified by age of the grandparent generation (under 65 years and 65 and older) and the kinship linkage (maternal or paternal). It is confined to white, middle-class families selected from public divorce records. The methods will combine ethnographic, descriptive techniques with objective measures of social variables, functional status and mood. To augment the findings of survey research, descriptive data will be content analyzed to illuminate how the processes of reorganization affect the status of the grandparent generation. Objective measures of contact, reciprocity, functional status and mood will be repeated to determine their associations with changing social relationships.
| Johnson, C L (1988) Active and latent functions of grandparenting during the divorce process. Gerontologist 28:185-91 |
| Johnson, C L; Barer, B M (1987) Marital instability and the changing kinship networks of grandparents. Gerontologist 27:330-5 |
