How big is your container? The lebenswelt of affective containment among skipped generation Filipino grandparents with chronically ill grandchildren

ABSTRACT

From being a non-normative family episode, the practice of grandparents raising grandchildren has become a normative experience in recent years. Such involvement of grandparents, whether primary or secondary, is rooted from a multitude of reasons and poses a number of implications to identifying interventions and mechanisms to support them in their transition to a new role. This paper argues that among the typologies of caregiving grandparents, the skipped generation (custodial care) becomes more vulnerable when embracing the task of caring for a sick grandchild, especially those coming from low-income families. Framed around Wilfred Bion’s theory of affective containment, this phenomenological inquiry sought to describe the emotional journey of a select group of Filipino grandparents (51–64 years) with their sick grandchildren. Narratives shared by the participants were subjected to Colaizzi’s descriptive phenomenological procedure to capture the essence or lebenswelt of the phenomenon. Findings of this study yielded the emergence of the Skipped Generation Grandparents’ Container of Emotions. The emerged conceptualization is a valuable anchor for educational gerontologists and social workers as they continue to serve this vulnerable group whose experience of hopefulness and helplessness can be mitigated by meaningful and supportive measures and structures.

Disclosure statement

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