Adaptations to Traditional Familial Roles: Examining the Challenges of Grandmothers’ Counterlife Transitions

ABSTRACT

Grandmothers-raising-grandchildren narratives challenge normative familial preconceptions. Utilizing the life-course theory to examine the turbulence and time-disordered role orientations, this study showcases the familial development punctuated by transitions and highlights the transformations experienced in grandparent relationships. This qualitative phenomenological study investigates six grandmothers’ experiences about their unforeseen life circumstances and their renegotiation of normal age-appropriate transitions that cause them to reconstruct their life plans. Five themes (obligation, desperation, intervention, salvation, and normalization) emerged from their experiences that underscore the transformative generational structures and explore adaptive life-course trajectories.

KEYWORDS:

• Grandchild
• grandmother
• life-course theory
• nonnormative transitions
• time-disordered roles

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Professor Emeritus Joan LeFebvre, who provided access and valuable insight into the study. Additionally, we would like to thank the editors, Dr. Rafael Engel and Dr. Leng Leng Thang, and our anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions and comments on our article.

Notes

1. In order to clarify, a legal guardian is a person who has been selected to act as the primary caretaker of a child (and often has limited rights). More often an informal caregiving situation emerged within the family system, and the state is neither involved nor aware of the primary caregiver’s status (Kolomer, 2008). In some instances, the court made the appointment, while in others the child’s parents transferred the caretaking to the grandparent. In few situations, according to the county extension agent, grandparents legally adopted the grandchild. The guardianship varied, and consisting of time, not easily identified, catalogued, or quantified.

2. Two audio recordings were not able to be opened due to technological advancements; therefore, two transcriptions are missing and only the researcher’s notes and interview memos were utilized from those interviews (although they were functional and utilized in the original analyses).