Traditional and New Forms of Contact Between Grandparents and Grandchildren

Abstract

The article concerns factors predicting different types of both traditional and modern forms of grandparent–grandchild communication in a sample of Finnish grandparents and in a separate sample of Finnish grandchildren between 11–13 and 16–17 years of age. The data has been gathered using a New Technologies Questionnaire in both samples and the Grandparent Role Inventory in the grandparent sample. In the grandparent sample, age, gender, education, the geographical distance between the two generations, and four factor scores of grandparenting style have been used as predictors of different types of contact frequency in categorical regression analyses. The same types of analyses have been carried out in the grandchild sample with age, gender, the age of the grandparent, and proximity to the grandparent as predictors. A significant relation between the proximity between the generations (measured in time) and all forms of contact frequency is found both in the grandparent and grandchild sample. There are fewer face-to face contacts, landline phone contacts, and mobile contacts the farther away the generations live but more letters and/or cards. In the grandchild sample, the farther away the generations live, the less the grandchildren use short message service, or text messaging. The study also finds a significant relation between contact frequency and the factor of formal grandparenthood, those being high on this grandparenting style seeing their grandchildren less often.

Keywords:

• grandchildren
• grandparents
• intergenerational communication
• new media

Notes

The research was supported by the RTN project Grandparenthood and Intergenerational Relationships in Aging European Populations (contract HPRNCT2001-00223) from the European Commission.

1. We acknowledge the help of Peter K. Smith, Claudine Attias-Donfut, Alain Rozenkier, Marika Veisson, Sandra Vidal, Johanna Brandis Menzinger, and Galia Linchitz in questionnaire development.