Who cares? The grandmother kinship carers shouldering the burden within a gendered care economy

Abstract

It is estimated that around half of all kinship carers in the UK are grandparents. International studies show that when broken down by gender, these carers are predominantly grandmothers. However, there is little research exploring the gender dimensions of kinship carers’ experiences. Drawing on data from qualitative interviews with 27 grandparent kinship carers, this article highlights the gendered context in which the grandparents we spoke to found themselves. The grandparents – the majority of whom were grandmothers - described lives filled with multiple unpaid caring commitments and demands. We discuss the ways that gender norms, roles and stereotypes, alongside economic models and policies that invisiblise women’s care work, shaped the experiences of the grandmothers who took part in our research. We argue that, despite their undeniable determination and commitment to love, nurture and care for their grandchildren in very difficult circumstances, and the money they are saving the state in doing so, grandmother kinship carers are penalized in multiple ways. Economically, emotionally, socially, physically and practically, grandmother kinship carers are unsupported and undervalued. We need a social, economic and cultural shift around the value of care and a redistribution of care work across genders. The situations of grandmother kinship carers need to be part of this shift, so that grandmothers who care for their grandchildren are no longer penalized, and all kinship carers are properly supported and valued.

Keywords:

• Economy
• grandchildren
• grandmothers
• gender
• kinship care

Introduction

I’ve got these children, and I’ve got my own children, we’re in a tiny house, you know I’ve got nothing for them, you know. But at the same time I was saying, you know no worries, I will beg, borrow, whatever, to get what I have to for these children to make sure they’re safe. (Hilary)

In 2020, we published the findings of the first qualitative research project in the UK to explore the experiences of grandparents who are subject to violent and/or abusive behaviour from their grandchildren, with whom they are in a kinship care relationship. The research yielded important insights about how the kinship care context shapes the violence and aggression experienced by grandparents caring for their grandchildren, as well as grandparents’ help-seeking practices and experiences of support responses (Holt & Birchall, 2020, 2022). However, as we conducted the research and wrote up our findings, we noted the gendered dynamics of the context in which the grandparents we spoke to found themselves. As well as talking about the violence and abuse they were experiencing, the grandparents – the majority of whom were grandmothers – described lives filled with multiple unpaid caring commitments and demands. In addition to dealing with the impact of abusive behaviour from their grandchildren, and the barriers they faced in accessing support for this, these grandparents were also negotiating the economic, social and emotional fall out of their roles in a society where women are expected to shoulder the burden of unpaid care within families.

This article looks at the ways that gender norms, roles and stereotypes, alongside economic models and policies that invisiblise women’s care work, shaped the experiences of the grandmothers and grandfathers who took part in our research.

Background

Kinship care

It is estimated that 1 in 74 children in the UK are placed in kinship care, and that grandparents are the carers in 51 percent of these cases (Wijedasa, 2015). Kinship care can be arranged informally between parent(s) and kinship carer. It can also be arranged through a formal order issued by the family court, such as a Child Arrangements Order or a Special Guardianship Order. The Children Act (1989) requires that kinship care is used wherever possible for the long-term placement of children, and it is recognized that kinship care offers more favourable outcomes for children than other types of placements. However, the process of becoming a kinship carer is complex, and the support offered to kinship carers is patchy, especially when compared to other kinds of full-time carers of children such as adoptive parents and foster carers (Holt & Birchall, 2020; Tarrant et al., 2017).

Kinship care is undertaken for a range of reasons, but often because of circumstances that can include parental illness or death, domestic abuse, parental maltreatment or abandonment, substance misuse, and/or mental health problems (Ashley & Braun, 2019; Farmer et al., 2013; Lanyado, 2019; Raikes, 2016). Kinship carers face potential adverse experiences such as challenging family dynamics, financial strain, child behaviour problems and social isolation, all of which can impact on carers’ wellbeing (Sharda et al., 2019; Strozier, 2012). Studies have found that grandparent kinship carers experience high levels of carer stress when compared to other carers such as non-relative foster carers (Harnett et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2016). They also report lower levels of support and advice (Sharda et al., 2019; Valentine et al., 2013). Many grandparents who become kinship carers face huge changes in their roles, with “leisure/pleasure” grand-parenting replaced with “rescue and repair” grand-parenting (Tarrant et al., 2017).¹

Research shows that kinship carers are more likely, when compared to the general population, to come from vulnerable or marginalized groups. For example, they may be older, have a disability or chronic health condition, be from Black or minoritized groups, and/or live in areas with higher levels of deprivation (McGrath & Peak, 2020).

The Covid-19 pandemic has amplified many of the pressures and challenges experienced by grandparent kinship carers. In addition to the stress created by lockdown restrictions, school closures, isolation and loss of income, grandparent kinship carers must also deal with the additional fears arising from older people’s increased vulnerability to the virus itself (McGrath & Peak, 2020; Xu et al., 2020). Government messages that grandparents should stay away from their grandchildren in order to keep safe, and that young people should keep away from older people as part of ‘Don’t kill granny’ public messaging (Smyth & Bennett, 2020), left grandparent kinship carers fearful and feeling forgotten (McGrath & Peak, 2020). It also served to further marginalize this type of family configuration. In addition, lockdowns and school closures exacerbated, for some grandparents, violent and abusive behaviour from the grandchildren in their care, and an abrupt halt in any support or respite previously offered for this (McGrath & Peak, 2020).

Gender, grandparents and kinship care

When grandparent kinship care is examined with a gender lens, it becomes clear that grandmothers and grandfathers have different experiences, with a range of gender dynamics and inequalities coming into play. One survey of 671 kinship carers living in England and Wales found that 83 percent of these carers were grandparents, and 91 percent were women. 30 percent of respondents had multiple caring responsibilities, looking after elderly or disabled people as well as the child or children in their care (Grandparents Plus, 2017).

Women in the UK are more likely to live in poverty than men, and female-headed households are poorer than comparable male-headed households (Women’s Budget Group, 2018; Reed & Portes, 2018). These disparities between women and men are due to a number of reasons, including: the gender pay gap and the high proportion of women in low-earning and part time work; women’s higher unpaid care commitments and the gendered roles and expectations about who should undertake caring responsibilities; the lack of investment in social care and child care; the design of the social security system, and sustained cuts in benefits and public spending since 2010 (Women’s Budget Group, 2018). As Elson (2017) points out, the combination of structural gender inequalities and gendered expectations and norms around care means that “women continue to have greater responsibility than men for unpaid care and domestic work in families and communities, looking after people, providing for their daily needs, and caring for children, frail elderly people, people who are ill, or living with disabilities” (Elson, 2017, p. 53).

Economic policy continues to be based on the “universal breadwinner” model, which has prevailed as the dominant model over many decades. This model encourages women to take on traditionally male patterns of work and does nothing to recognize the value of the unpaid care work that women do, or to encourage both women and men to combine paid work with family care. Neither does it provide alternative, publicly supported care provision models as women increasingly work outside of the home (Folbre, 2006). Current economic models and policies, which only value labour undertaken outside of the home, help to disguise ‘hidden’ and different degrees of poverty for women within households “as a result of the unfair sharing of resources – and the costs of doing so” (Bennett, 2015:3). The Covid-19 pandemic has illustrated the gendered nature of these economic models and policies, with studies demonstrating how socioeconomic responses to Covid-19 have impacted more negatively on women and carers (Power, 2020; Smith et al., 2021). Studies taking an intersectional approach have highlighted the greater impact of pandemic school closures, furlough, and job losses on mothers and carers who are on lower incomes, are from Black and minoritized groups, and/or are disabled (Women’s Budget Group, Fawcett Society, Northern Ireland Women’s Budget Group, Women’s Equality Network Wales, Close the Gap & Engender, 2021).

The social and economic invisibility of women’s care work is propped up by dominant discourses and norms around parenting and mothering that construct women as naturally caring and nurturing (Delphy, 1984; Malos, 1995; Walby, 1989), and willing to sacrifice their own needs for the greater good of their families (Goode et al., 1998). These discourses and norms do not recognize or admit the multiple skills and challenges involved in parenting. The emotional and mental labour involved in parenting and caring has been described in different ways. Hochschild (1983) originally coined the term “emotional labour” in relation to the work involved to manage emotions within particular professions. More recently, discussions of emotional and mental labour have broadened to include the invisible, and unacknowledged work that women do within families to ensure things run smoothly (for example, Emma, 2018, 2020; Hartley, 2020). While the two terms are often used interchangeably, it is important that they are not used to describe unpaid household labour and childcare. One study by Robertson, et al. defines mental labour as distinct from housework, childcare and emotion work. It involves: planning and strategizing; monitoring and anticipating needs; metaparenting (developing a parenting philosophy to guide parental decision making); knowing, learning and remembering; managerial thinking including delegating and instructing; and self-regulation (Robertson et al., 2019). Women are increasingly juggling emotional and mental labour at the same time as unpaid care and paid employment.

Grandmother kinship carers are therefore caring for grandchildren within a clearly gendered context, which can impact on their socioeconomic experiences and wellbeing. Dolbin-MacNab and Yancura’s analysis of the experiences of grandparents in China, New Zealand, Romania and South Africa found that in each country, where grandparents were raising grandchildren, it was largely grandmothers doing this. As they point out, “given that women are socialized and expected to provide care, experiences of disadvantage and oppression may accumulate over the life course for grandparents raising grandchildren, leaving them even more vulnerable. The consequences of this societal inequity and vulnerability include a lack of formal and informal supports, constrained opportunities for labour force participation, and limited resources for self-care” (Dolbin-MacNab & Yancura, 2018, p. 7).

One study of 335 grandparent carers in Australia considered how gender, age and lifecourse stage, as well as socioeconomic circumstances impacted on grandparents’ experiences (Purcal et al., 2014). The authors found that despite differences in socioeconomic circumstances, all grandparent carers experienced financial stresses related to raising grandchildren. The majority (87 percent) of grandparents in the study were women, with the unpaid care they had taken on across the lifecourse negatively impacting on their work trajectories and their ability to self-fund in retirement (Purcal et al., 2014). Intersectional and structural inequalities and barriers increase grandmothers’ risk of disadvantage and oppression (Pandey et al., 2019), meaning that the opportunities available to them for improving their circumstances, and those of their grandchildren, are restricted (Dolbin-MacNab & Yancura, 2018).

Methods

In our project, we conducted 27 in-depth interviews with grandmothers and grandfathers from across England, Scotland and Wales. All of the grandparents who participated in the study were, or had been, kinship carers for their grandchild or grandchildren, and all had experienced violent or abusive behaviour from a grandchild. The interviews took place either in grandparents’ homes, by telephone or online and lasted 60–90 minutes. The audio data were transcribed and subject to thematic analysis, and recordings were subsequently deleted. Grandparents were asked questions about their family relationships, the nature of the violent or abusive behaviour, its impacts and their responses. During analysis, key themes were identified whilst also attending to the gendered, generational, familial and life-course contexts of the participants’ lives.

Participants were recruited through a range of gatekeepers who worked in organizations such as child to parent violence support groups and services, family and adolescent support services, local Youth Offending Services, and national and local kinship care support services. The majority of participants were grandmothers, who made up 24 of the 27 interviewed. The age range of the grandparents was broad, from 40 to 73 years old. Two thirds of the grandparents were married or co-habiting, with the remaining third either divorced, separated or widowed. Two thirds of the grandparents were retired or unemployed, with the remainder in employment.

Ethical approval was obtained under the procedures of the University Ethics Committee and the project was guided by an expert advisory board. All data are pseudonymized and any identifying features have been removed in the extracts.

Findings

Our study highlighted how the kinship care context shapes the violence and aggression experienced by grandparents caring for their grandchildren, as well as grandparents’ help-seeking practices and experiences of support responses. We have reported on these findings elsewhere (Holt & Birchall, 2020, 2022). Below we present additional findings, focusing specifically on the ways that grandparents’ gender shaped their experiences of kinship care, setting their experiences within the gendered care economy and the social norms underlying it.

Grandmother kinship carers have multiple care responsibilities and burdens

The testimonies of many of the grandmothers in our study demonstrated the greater responsibility placed on women for both unpaid and paid care work. One common pattern among these grandmothers was that they were engaging in unpaid care for a range of people across the generations in their families.

I’m a carer three times over, for my dad since his wife died […] and I’m also kinship carer for my grandson who has ADHD and behavioural issues, also being assessed for FASC.² I have a joint residency order for him with the other grandparents. And I also look after, I get carers allowance for my eldest daughter who has mental health issues, she’s got bipolar, schizophrenia and hallucinations and other stuff, but I can’t remember them all. So she’s on medication and that’s why I am I looking after [grandchild’s name] as a kinship carer. So that’s about it really, that’s my day to day life. (Sheila)

Some of the grandmothers also had a background working in care, and others were still working in ‘caring’ professions such as social work or nursing. One had been a foster carer before taking on the care of her own grandchild.

I worked in a care home with people with dementia and I did work out in the community for a little while. But I’ve always done caring work. (Ceri)

And we are foster carers or have been foster carers, of hard to place children, so very complex children, and so I was already trained as a mother parent, mother/child placement, so basically my granddaughter came here. (Barbara)

Some of the grandmothers were juggling multiple unpaid caring commitments alongside part time work in the care sector:

P: I’ve got my mum who is, she was in hospital […] I was going up there every day. She’s got heart problems […] she’s come out now and there’s nothing they can do, and they can’t do any operations because it’s too dangerous […] and then I’ve got my ex-mother-in-law, who I’ve been having to deal with because her daughter moved, and she has no one here […] and I work.

J: What do you do?

P: I’m a carer, I work in a home.

J: That’s an awful lot of caring for other people that you’re doing isn’t it?

P: Yeah

J: How do you think that affects the situation with [your granddaughter]? The fact that you’re always looking after people?

P: Oh, I just feel like running away. I really do. I try to keep some time to myself but, it doesn’t always work. (Pauline)

Grandmother kinship carers face economic disadvantages and disrupted working lives

The majority of the grandmothers in our study had experienced economic penalties as a result of caring for their grandchildren. Many had moved to part time or self-employment when their grandchildren came to live with them:

When I took [grandchild’s name] and I gave up work, I just couldn’t afford the mortgage, and I rented privately and went on … oh I went self-employed when she was four … just selling things on Ebay and … just making things … I make things out of wood, just little crafty things, but I didn’t make a great deal of money, and then I just … I was just worried about everything and then went on Universal Credit last year. (Georgina)

I ended up giving up work and going self-employed, which was very fortunate that I was able to do. But actually, getting in to work on time was really hard, because you didn’t know what you were going to face in the morning when you woke up […] you didn’t actually know if you were going to be able to manage to organize everything in time to actually even set off for work. (Emily)

Other grandmothers were faced with decisions around giving up their jobs or spending their entire salary on childcare:

I was working full time and it just very quickly started to unravel for me because I had to put them straight into full time child care […] And even back then it was a thousand pounds a month full-time and I wasn’t earning much more, bringing home much more than that. So it became obvious in the end that I was just working for nothing and it was very stressful. (Sally)

Many of the grandparents taking part in our study spoke about the differences between kinship care and other forms of care such as fostering and adoption, pointing out the differences in remuneration for these roles.

It just seems unfair, because I know a lady up the road who’s fostering, and she’s got a husband and they live in a big house, and she’s getting £450 a week, plus extra money for holidays […] Just that extra £100 a week compared to if I was fostering I’d get £450 a week. And if she were in care, it would probably cost three grand a week. Do you know … it doesn’t make sense. (Georgina)

The money that we get for her is basically … just about covers the costs for her, it doesn’t anywhere near cover the amount of wage that I’ve lost by having to take time off to look after her. (Nadine)

In addition to direct loss of income, some grandmothers talked about the impact that kinship care had on their career hopes and aspirations:

So I’ve kind of given up proper work as such to look after her, so I work from home, I do the computer based side of it. Previously, before that I was working with adults with challenging behaviours, mental health, learning difficulties, complex needs. I worked for the majority of that time within secure units, but I’ve also worked with a community support workers as well with mainstream mental health as well. (Nadine)

I thought once my children have grown up, I’m going to go off and explore the world with this degree and become a super scientist because it interested me and I thought that was brilliant. However, life took a different turn for the worse […] I went into nursing care, like care work, and then my children started having children, like they do, and unfortunately my elder daughter went to prison. I ended up having her children […] so that put my career on quite a big hold. And then I kind of like felt a bit washed out after that, and so I just really went back to care work rather than trying to progress any further at that time, because it was just all too much for me to cope with, and so I carried on in care work. (Jeanette)

As this grandmother’s experience shows, the demands of kinship care restricted her career options, meaning that she had no choice but to remain in low paid, low status work. For grandparent kinship carers, the economic impact of looking after their grandchildren can continue for the rest of their lives. Grandparents talked about the depletion of their life savings, and the end of their retirement plans. One grandmother who had cared for all of her (now adult) grandchildren talked about the financial situation she now found herself in:

I’m living in a three bedroom property because I’ve had grandchildren living with me - I’m now penalized £600 a month - I’ve got to find £200 top up for the rent, so that means I’ve got £100 a week for gas, electric, water, and feed myself, my dog and my cats. It’s a very big struggle, it’s hard times. Even if you applied for a smaller property - I can’t afford to move. (Philippa)

Grandmother kinship carers are shouldering greater responsibility for and impact from caring than grandfathers

A common theme emerging from our study was that, even where female and male grandparents had jointly taken on a kinship care role, the majority of the care work was done by the grandmother. Many of the grandmothers explained this in terms of their male partners being more likely to work full time, with tasks such as liaising with school or social services therefore falling to them as grandmothers:

My husband was there, it wasn’t like he was working away all the time or anything like that, but I was kind of the one that dealt with most situations or went to meetings with him, or went to school if anything happened at school or anything like that. (Emily)

As discussed above, the greater likelihood for women to be working part time or in lower paid jobs, and to be single parents, combines with stereotypes and norms about women being more caring and nurturing to increase the likelihood of women doing a greater share of the physical, mental and emotional care work involved in families. When this is combined with challenging behaviour from a grandchild who has experienced trauma and loss, the burden of caring falls more squarely with grandmothers rather than grandfathers:

I can’t even go out for a night because [husband’s name] can’t cope with her on his own. I mean he has had times where he’s taken her in the car, or picked her up in a car and she’s attacked him when he’s been driving, you know, she’s been sat behind him and she’s started punching him in the back of the head […] So I just have to be there all the time and it’s so isolating and most of my friends have given up now. (Sally)

Their dad, my children’s dad, is around like a bad smell, but he comes down and he’ll be at my house now […] He does little bits in the house for me, he supports where [adult daughter’s name]’s concerned, but to be honest he’d rather wash his hands of her, cause he can’t cope with her neither. (Sheila)

Some of the grandmothers in our sample explained how they felt they had to shoulder more of the burden of caring for their grandchild, because their partner had either ‘backed off’ from caring, or was not fully on board with the kinship care role:

My mental health got a lot worse because I couldn’t even talk to my husband about it because he can’t, he couldn’t deal with it. So I was just making up all these excuses for all these bruises that I’d got … I couldn’t say they were all [grandchild’s name] because I know his response back then would have been, well let’s just get rid, get Social Services to come and pick her up […] I kind of felt like I was doing everything on my own because I couldn’t tell him how hard her behaviour was. (Nadine)

My husband’s backed off because of her behaviour. He doesn’t want to know. He won’t take her out anymore anywhere. Even just on a little bike ride or to the park […] My husband is really, really depressed. He’s got an allotment garden which he takes himself off to and that’s his peace and quiet, that’s his bolthole really. He’s there every day. He doesn’t come home till, in the light nights, maybe seven, half seven at night. (Lisa)

Other grandmothers described the strain that the kinship care context had put on their relationships with their partners:

We were having arguments, because I can say to him: ‘Oh, it’s what they’ve been through’. And he would say ‘Ah yes, but what about how it’s affecting us? We cannot keep putting up with this all of the time’. (Nicki)

Relationship wise, my husband struggled […] And he did walk out, but it was only for like, less than a day, he come back, he had to try and get his head round it all […] Think relationship wise, I’m too exhausted and knackered to be doing anything else once she’s in bed. Not going out because I’m too exhausted. It has changed our relationship that way. But we’re working on it. (Jane)

One grandmother described how she had had to prioritize her grandchild’s need for love, reassurance and safety, and the impact this had on her relationship with her husband, as the grandchild took her grandfather’s place in the marital bed:

It got to the stage where she wouldn’t be in her own room, in her own bed, I had to be with her. So we ended up swapping rooms. My husband went into the little room, in the single bed where he still is now, he prefers that. And I had to have her in the big bed with me. (Lisa)

A common trigger for disagreements between grandmothers and grandfathers was parenting strategies. Grandmothers who were more heavily involved in the day to day care of their grandchildren talked about their experiences of trying to implement learning from courses on behaviour management and dealing with trauma, when their partners had not had the benefit of this training:

At times it’s hard, sometimes … we want to deal with it differently, or it’s that I’m doing all the training and he doesn’t, cause he works full time. So I’ll come in with an idea, he’s not too sure on it… but most the time we do work as a team. (Jane)

He doesn’t get along with his grandad […] Well, cause [grandchild’s name] swears, used to swear a lot. If he was on the computer or anything he’d start swearing. I’d say "keep that language down please, you know I don’t like it". And if he kept on, my husband would shout at him […] I’d say "there’s no need for shouting, shouting doesn’t achieve anything” […] I said "I can’t tell him to calm down and stop swearing if you’re doing exactly the same thing in a loud manner". (Elaine)

Several of the grandfathers were described by their partners as “stepping away” or “backing off” when their grandchild’s behaviour escalated. In some cases, couples had deliberately adopted this as a strategy, in order to try to keep the situation calm:

My husband sort of realized that if he does try and intervene, it actually makes it worse […] So he tends to sort of not intervene. I mean he’s not really been involved in his actually hands on care at all anyway, but he will sort of come to the foot of the stairs and listen, and if he thinks I’m in trouble, he would intervene. But he tends to sort of stay out of it because we’ve found that works better. (Tess)

While the focus of this article is the experiences of the 24 grandmother kinship carers we spoke to, it is worth noting that the grandfather kinship carers who participated in our study also talked about differences between their own and their female partners’ experiences:

I don’t think it affects me as badly as it affects [grandmother’s name]. I think part of that is that she is the one that’s got parental responsibility, so I’m not the one who’s going to get fined or under so much pressure from that. (Bill)

My wife is a very, very … conscientious person, you know, if you said to her, ‘oh you’ve bought the wrong type of breakfast cereal’, she’d … oh right and go and change it and walk … if it was walking five mile barefoot in ice, she’d do it, you know! She’s so determined to give them the best that she can, you know, not necessarily for her own good or mine really you know, because they don’t necessarily appreciate the effort that she puts in you know. (Tony)

Grandfathers talked about activities they enjoyed as a way of ‘de-stressing’, such as gardening, exercise and music. Some recognized, however, that this option was not available to their partners, who were constantly engaged in unpaid care work:

My saving grace is I’ve always been a mad keen sportsperson, and I go to a local gym […] and I survive on adrenalin really and riding my bike and things like that, you know. I can come back, get on my bike and do a twenty mile and feel a damn sight better for it! That suits me. My wife hasn’t got that benefit you know, she can’t do that. (Tony)

Discussion

I packed in work because I couldn’t cope with looking after my daughter as well as my grandson, and so on my notice I ended up putting in that I had like two choices, either working or putting my family first, and I chose to put my family first. (Sheila)

The grandmothers taking part in our research described lives filled with multiple unpaid caring commitments, lives involving impossible choices and physical, mental and emotional loads to carry. These lives are being lived within a society where social and economic policy prioritizes paid work outside of “the home” and invisiblises and devalues unpaid, but equally important and productive, work within homes and families. In the case of kinship care, these grandmothers are saving the state huge amounts of money, both in terms of the physical and practical care they are providing for their grandchildren, and the therapeutic work they are doing to ensure their grandchildren can recover from past trauma and loss, and flourish into adulthood. The unpaid care burden they carry is more than child-rearing alone; it also involves a responsibility for supporting children through trauma.

Gender norms about women’s roles as mothers, grandmothers and carers mean that, notwithstanding our grandmothers’ undeniable determination and commitment to love, nurture and care for their grandchildren in very difficult circumstances, and the money they are saving the state by doing so, they are penalized in multiple ways. The result is that economically, emotionally, socially, physically and practically, grandmother kinship carers are unsupported and undervalued.

This situation will not change without addressing the inequalities involved in unpaid care work; without recognizing, reducing and redistributing this work (Elson, 2017). Our participants’ testimonies highlighted how even when a grandmother and grandfather had taken on kinship caring responsibilities together, it was the grandmother who largely shouldered the responsibilities; both the everyday care work and the emotional support and input that their grandchildren often needed. At the same time, public spending cuts to support services and welfare further shifted these responsibilities onto grandmothers and away from the state.

In the UK, some fantastic work is being done by charities and non-governmental organizations to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by grandparent kinship carers (for example Kinship, 2021), and the impact of the gendered care economy (for example Women’s Budget Group, 2020). In order for the intersectional inequalities faced by grandmother kinship carers to be fully understood, these two strands of work need to be brought together. Recognizing and illuminating the gender, age and economic dynamics of kinship care is essential if effective and appropriate policy and practice around supporting kinship carers is to be developed and implemented.

Grandmother kinship carers are taking on a huge unpaid care burden and as a result are experiencing life changing economic penalties. They do this because they love their grandchildren, but it is a task for which they should receive greater reward, acknowledgement and support. We need a social, economic and cultural shift around the value of care and a redistribution of care work across genders. The situations of grandmother kinship carers need to be part of this shift, so that grandmothers who care for their grandchildren are no longer penalized, and all kinship carers are properly supported and valued.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was obtained under the procedures of the University of Roehampton Ethics Committee

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the research participants and the funder for their time and commitment to the study.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust [Grant No. SRG\171528].

Notes

1 Grandparents may be trying to support their own adult children simultaneously, or facing a difficult decision between parenting either their grandchild or child. The huge emotional impacts of kinship care for grandparents, the resulting changes to family relationships, and the complicated feelings of guilt, shame, pride and love that kinship caring can create for grandparents, is discussed separately in a forthcoming article.

2 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASC)