Phenomenologizing Filipino custodial grandparents’ interment stress

ABSTRACT

Custodial grandparenting is yet another dynamic shift in the modern family. A diversity of social, economic and protective reasons why grandparents care for their grandchildren gives additional roles and responsibilities to grandparenthood. Equated with old age, most grandparents perceive interment as an inevitable stressful reality of life, thus this qualitative inquiry. Six custodial grandparents (61–74 years old) participated in a semi-structured interview. Field texts were vertically and horizontally analyzed to capture the core meanings of these custodial grandparents’ interment stress; emergent themes were validated through correspondence and member-checking procedures. Interestingly, this inquiry afforded the development of a Tensional Nature of Interment Stress – spanning cognitive, affective, and behavioral tensions – which represents the conflicting tensions that Filipino grandparents experience to accommodate the presence of interment stress in their custodial grandparenthood. The implications of the emerged model to educational gerontology are discussed in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).