COVID-19 and the Pivotal role of Grandparents: Childcare and income Support in the UK and South Africa

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 global crisis and the “stay-home” response taken by most governments has starkly exposed the dependence of formal economies on the invisible and unpaid care labor of women – a dependence that has intensified during the pandemic as public childcare provision and schools are shut and parents work from home. This article focuses specifically on the childcare and income support provided by grandparents in the United Kingdom and South Africa. In undertaking this comparative analysis the study demonstrates the universality of intergenerational interdependence and the contextual specificity of grandparental childcare and income provision, as well as the differential impacts of suspending, or risking, such supports during the pandemic. Grandparents within and across households make substantial contributions to economic, social, and affective lives, and the study argues for greater recognition of these crucial contributions and the development of a more intersectional understanding of the provision of care work.

HIGHLIGHTS

• COVID-19 has highlighted grandparents’ key contributions to society as part of intergenerational support.

• In the UK, suspension of grandparents’ informal childcare exposed gaps in formal childcare provision.

• In South Africa, grandparents maintained caregiving roles in multigenerational households, despite health risks.

• Grandparents’ contributions must be recognized, reevaluated, and reprioritized in government recovery planning.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• grandparents
• gender
• childcare
• age
• household income

JEL Codes:

• B54
• D1
• H53

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research was supported by an award from Glasgow Caledonian University's allocation from the Scottish Funding Council and the Global Challenges Research Fund.

Notes

1 Both under and after apartheid, South African governments have classified people as either white (to refer to settlers and immigrants of European origin), Indian (to refer to immigrants of South Asian origin), African (to refer to most of the indigenous population), and “coloured,” with each label changing over time. This last category encompassed the indigenous Khoi and San populations of the Western Cape, slaves brought to the Cape from South-East Asia, and people of mixed racial descent.

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara Cantillon

Professor Sara Cantillon is Director of the Centre for Economic Justice at Glasgow Caledonian University. Previously, she was Head of the School of Social Justice and Director of the Equality Studies Centre, University College Dublin. Her main areas of research are gender, care, poverty, and intrahousehold distribution, and she has published widely on these topics. She is currently Editor (with Professor Diane Elson) for the series “The Gendered Economy” (Agenda Publishing, Columbia University Press).

Elena Moore

Elena Moore is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Families and Societies Research Unit at the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town. She is the author of Divorce, Families and Emotion Work (Palgrave 2017) and (with Chuma Himonga) Reform of Customary Marriage, Divorce and Succession in South Africa (Juta & Co. 2015). Her work has appeared in the Journal of Family Issues; Gender & Society; Critical Social Policy; Families, Relationships and Societies; and the Journal of Southern African Studies.

Nina Teasdale

Dr. Nina Teasdale is Research Fellow in the Centre for Economic Justice at Glasgow Caledonian University. She is a qualitative researcher who has worked on funded projects including the gender composition of corporate boards, women’s underrepresentation in academia, and the mobilizing of identities by NHS middle and junior managers. Current research includes an ESRC-funded project on flexible working and organizational culture change and leading the development of a gender research network supported by Global Challenges Fund. Nina also has an advisory role with the European Commission’s expert SAAGE network (Scientific Analysis and Advice on Gender Equality in the EU).