Parenting Attitudes and Adjustment Among Custodial Grandparents

ABSTRACT

Custodial grandparents (CGPs; n = 42), parents (n = 39), and noncustodial grandparents (GPs; n = 44) completed measures of parenting attitudes (e.g., belief in the use of corporal punishment) and parental adjustment (e.g., parenting stress). Moreover, half of the actively parenting participants were caring for a (grand)child with emotional or behavioral problems. While CGPs and parents differed in their self-reported levels of empathy toward children's needs and opinions about appropriate parent-child role responsibilities, with CGPs scoring in the less adaptive direction compared to parents, these two groups did not differ in their attitudes about corporal punishment or on any measure of parental adjustment. The caregivers in this sample who were raising (grand)children with emotional or behavioral problems, however, reported significantly lower levels of parental adjustment than CGPs and parents whose (grand)children did not have clinically significant emotional or behavioral problems. A multiple analysis of covariance revealed that the two grandparent groups did not differ from one another in their self-reported parenting attitudes, but both scored in a less adaptive direction compared to parents. These data point to cohort effects whereby members of an older generation have attitudes that have been associated with an increased risk for poor parenting behaviors. It is encouraging, however, to find that risk for poor parenting in the form of physical intimidation or abuse is no higher among older caregivers than it is among younger caregivers. Importantly, previous reports about the negative consequences of reassuming the parenting role (for one's grandchildren) may be due, in part, to a third variable such as emotional or behavioral difficulties among custodial grandchildren. Collectively, these findings indicate that when raising a child with emotional or behavioral problems, custodial grandparents are no less resilient than similarly challenged parents.

KEYWORDS:

• Custodial grandparents
• grandchildren
• parenting attitudes
• parenting stress
• adjustment
• cohort effect
• empathy
• role reversal

Acknowledgments

Portions of an earlier version of this paper were presented at the Society for Research in Child Development in Atlanta, Georgia, in April 2005. We wish to acknowledge Kristen Anton, MA, and Jane Jooste, PhD, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.