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The New American Grandparent THE NEW AMERICAN GRANDPARENT A Place in the Family, A Life Apart Andrew J. Cherlin Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr. Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 1992 Copyright © 1986 by Basic Books, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 1992 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cherlin, Andrew J., 1948The new American grandparent: a place in the family, a life apart Andrew J. Cherlin, Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr. p. cm. Originally published: New York: Basic Books, ©1986. Includes index. ISBN 0-674-60838-0 1. Grandparents-United States. 2. Grandparent and child-United States. I. Furstenberg, Frank F., 1940II. Title. [HQ759.9.C44 1992] 92-13833 306.874'5-dc20 CIP To The Memory of Our Grandparents CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 Introduction 2 The Modernization of Grandparenthood ix 3 24 3 Styles of Grandparenting 52 4 Grandparental Careers 82 5 Variations 106 6 A Special Case: Grandparents and Divorce 136 7 The Influence of Grandparents on Grandchildren 165 vii Contents 8 The Future of Grandparenthood 185 APPENDICES 209 NOTES 258 INDEX 268 viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was supported by grant number AG02753 from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The funds from NIA allowed us to conduct telephone interviews with 510 grandparents throughout the country whose children and grandchildren had been interviewed during an earlier study. We also were able to conduct follow-up interviews in the homes of some of the grandparents in our sample. The original focus of the study was on the effects of divorce on grandparent-grandchild relations, an emphasis that is-apparent in chapter 6 and elsewhere' throughout the book. But during the course of our research, we broadened the topic to include a more general examination of the role of grandparents in the contemporary family. Needless to say, we greatly appreciate the support of NIA, Dr. Matilda White Riley, Associate Director for Behavioral Sciences Research, and the project officer, Ms. Kathleen Bond. We also benefited from the assistance and suggestions of many professional colleagues. Nicholas Zill and James Peterson of Child Trends, Inc., graciously provided access to the National Survey of Children, onto which our grandparent survey was grafted. They also provided valuable advice throughout the project. Ellin Spector of the Institute for Survey Research at Temple University was a fund of information and enthusiasm as she directed the field work for the survey. We presented an earlier version of the material in chapter 6 at the Wingspread Conference on Grandparenting and Family Connections, sponsored by the National Institute for the Family and the William Petschek National Jewish Family Center of the Ameri- ix Acknowledgments can Jewish Committee, at Racine, Wisconsin, on October 9-11, 1983. The discussions and presentations at that conference helped to stimulate our work. An earlier version of chapter 3 appeared in Vern L. Bengtson and Joan F. Robertson, editors, Grandparenthood (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1985). Professor Bengtson provided especially helpful comments on these early papers and later on the entire manuscript. We also wish to thank W. Andrew Achenbaum, Colleen Johnson, John Modell, Yehuda Rosenman, Daniel Scott Smith, Arland Thornton, and Lillian Troll for taking the time to read and comment on all or part of the manuscript. At Johns Hopkins,Su-Hoon Lee was a valuable research assistant and Shirley SuIt ably typed