Emotional Relations With Grandparents and Received Support: The Adolescent View

Abstract

Following concepts of solidarity and intergenerational ambivalence, the present study focuses on the perspectives of high school students (N = 155) aged 12 to 21 to describe their relationships to maternal and paternal grandparents with respect to (a) emotional quality and (b) grandparental support. Based on the frequency of positive and negative emotions, a classification approach is adopted to determine patterns of relationship quality. Parental lineage differences are found with regard to size and profile of clusters. Cluster comparisons regarding appraisals of received grandparental support (emotional, instrumental, material) indicate that support is significantly diminished if relations become disharmonious or detached.

Keywords:

• maternal
• paternal
• grandparent–grandchild relations
• adolescence
• intergenerational solidarity
• ambivalence

Acknowledgments

We thank Laurence Duhr and Cynthia Liebgott for their valuable work in data collection.

Notes

1. For comprehensive insights on Luxembourg's socioeconomic and educational properties, see EUROSTAT (2010).

2. All procedures were in line with the ethical code of the American Psychological Association (www.apa.org).

3. The study design thus did not provide a test of the difference regarding gender of grandparents.

4. On some indicators of received support, increased variance heterogeneity was found between clusters. In these cases, the ANOVA procedures were cross-checked with robust Welch tests (Tomarken & Serlin, 1986), respectively Dunnett's T3 tests for multiple comparisons.