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The purpose of this transcendental phenomenology was to discover the lived experiences of non-custodial grandparents who contribute resources toward their grandchild’s Christian school education. The guiding theory for this study was Erikson’s (1950) theory of psychosocial development and the specific psychological stage of pursuing Generativity action versus Stagnation. This transcendental phenomenology included 15 non-custodial grandparents who had a grandchild who attended a K-12 Christian school and who had contributed resources operationally defined as financial, physical, emotional, intellectual, and/or spiritual for the grandchild’s Christian school education within the United States. The data was collected through grandparent interviews, focus group, support documents, and a grandparent letter by the grandparents and completed through the transcendental phenomenology model of reflective analysis and interpretation of the grandparents’ accounts. The results of the study identified one main theme of support and the five subthemes: (a) why grandparents support, (b) ways grandparents support, (c) aids or barriers to contributing resources, (d) generative results in supporting, and (e) encouragement to be a support. Recommendations were made to families, non-involved grandparents, and school stakeholders encouraging grandparent resource contribution as well as recommended future study on the impact of grandparent contributions on the family unit, the custodial grandparent experience in contributing, grandparent contribution in public schools, and model grandparent contributions in Christian schools.

Using Communicated Narrative Sense-Making Theory (Koenig Kellas, 2018), this study tested how grandchildren’s perceptions of risk and knowledge about heart disease in the family, as well as relational satisfaction, changed over the course of 3 weeks as a result of engaging in a storytelling experiment. Participants included 17 grandchild participants who interviewed their grandparents to tell stories about family heart health or discuss everyday events based on random assignment into a treatment or comparison group. Additionally, participants completed measures surrounding their knowledge of heart disease, relational satisfaction with their grandparent, and their perception of risk to develop heart disease in their lifetime. Thematic analysis of the stories revealed three parts to the storytelling sequence: (a) the HD Family Tree, (b) the grandparent’s story and reaction, and (c) advice/lessons learned. Story themes included (a) confusion/shock, (b) acceptance of their health, and (c) disjointed reporting. Statistical analyses revealed trends for an increase in heart disease knowledge in the treatment group over time, as well as increased perceptions of dread risk over time, although relational satisfaction for grandchildren in their grandparent-grandchild relationship did not change over the 3 weeks. The results of this study provide a deeper look into how grandparents may help to socialize their grandchildren in this understudied family relationship, especially in regards to health. Moreover, these results also help to shed light on how CNSM’s proposition relating to intergenerational values, attitudes, and beliefs are communicated through retrospective stories about health and what living family members should be aware of for their own health moving forward. Advisor: Jody Koenig Kellas

This study explored the caregiving styles of 306 grandparents raising grandchild across three ethnic groups (164 European Americans, 65 Latinos, and 77 African Americans). Significant differences were found in caregiving styles between European Americans and African Americans. Caregiver appraisal (burden, satisfaction, and Mastery) was found to be predictive of caregiving style across the entire sample, and differentially by ethnic group. Caregiver style was predictive of grandchild functioning across the entire sample, and differentially by ethnic group. Lastly, caregiver style was found to be predictive of grandparent well-being across the entire sample, and differentially by ethnic group. Implications are discussed in terms of the complex, multidimensional and culturally embedded nature of the caregiving experience and the importance of considering culture for optimal outcomes.

Despite the prevalence of grandmothers as both child care providers and kinship carers in Australia, little is known about the process by which grandparents come to provide this care, or the family power dynamics which lead to grandmother care provision. Drawing from interviews with 20 caregiving Australian grandmothers this thesis serves to address the current gap in the research. This thesis adopts a life course approach, positioning grandchild care within the contexts of grandmothers histories of care, work, and family relationships in order to arrive at a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the intersection between family power and care in grandmothers lives. It was found that grandmothers often confronted powerful structural and ideological forces which predisposed them to provide familial care across the life course. Normative gender ideologies linking femininity and carework, a history of care, the inherent emotionality of care as a labour of love, and values and beliefs relating to the supposed superiority of family care were themes which featured heavily in grandmothers narratives. Additionally, kinship care grandparents attributed a lack of choice and control over their care commitments to a paucity of supports and services, inappropriate information provision, a poor relationship with case workers, and the perceived marginalisation and devaluation of their voices, both within the out-of-home care (OOHC) and legal systems. In their narratives, however, grandmothers also spoke of the considerable joy, satisfaction and sense of accomplishment they derive from ensuring that grandchildren are happy and healthy, and from fostering their abilities and interests. This finding echoes a feminist literature on the importance of transformative power; that is, the use of power in caregiving for the empowerment and enrichment of the care receiver. While grandmothers recognise that their care is often provided within a context of constrained choice, they also experience care provision as a positive source of personal power. Ultimately this thesis documents how grandmothers mediate the dilemmas, tensions and contradictions that exist between, on the one hand, their experiences of care, with all the pleasures, frustrations, interpersonal power and labour carework entails; and their social situations as carers. In order to facilitate the new theories and approaches required to address the intersection between care and family power more fruitfully, it is concluded that care needs to be approached as a complexity and a contradiction in terms of family power.

Grandparents are considered a resource in the family because they provide alternative child care support and serve as role models for grandchildren. Although social workers have increasingly examined the needs of custodial grandparents who face many stressors, the profession lacks knowledge about functions of noncustodial grandparents, who are important supports for families; this role of grandparents is especially crucial as the number of multigenerational households grow. In addition, as maternal employment rates rise, mothers increasingly seek alternative caregivers for their children. They often choose grandparents as alternative caregivers, especially when children are young. While both custodial and noncustodial grandparents struggle with the burden of childcare, the relationships among grandparents and grandchildren usually vary depending upon individual and family characteristics.Thus, the purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with the closeness between the grandparent and the grandchild. Also, the researcher sought factors affecting the association between the grandparent-grandchild relationship and the grandparent’s well-being. This study conducted secondary data analysis using the third wave of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) dataset. The number of grandparents in the dataset was 2,541. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied to address the relationship among variables. Findings indicated that older grandparents tended to interact less with their grandchildren than younger grandparents. In addition, as grandparents spent more nights with their grandchild without the parent of the child, the well-being of the grandparents tended to decrease. On the other hand, frequency of communication, frequency of meeting, and the grandparent’s self-rating of closeness with his or her grandchild were positively related to the well-being of grandparents. Specifically, grandparents who interacted with their grandchild more frequently had a higher level of well-being than those who had less contact with their grandchild. Thus, it is assumed that the grandparents’ well-being increased up to the point where grandparenting became a burden for them. In this study, spending nights with the grandchild without the parent of the child seems to be the point where the grandparents start feeling burdened. This finding was consistent regardless of grandparents’ gender, ethnicity, and the presence or absence of legal custody. This study suggested that social support should target both custodial and noncustodial grandparents because noncustodial grandparents who put great effort into child care feel the same kind of stress as custodial grandparents. In addition, cultural diversity should be considered in work with grandparent caregivers because various factors are associated with the well-being of the grandparents.

Little research is currently available on child care arrangements involving grandparents, at a time of significant change within the child care sector. This study explored the experiences of grandparents providing regular care of their grandchildren prior to school entry. It used narrative inquiry, a qualitative research methodology to investigate the nature of their care experiences from the perspective of grandparent carers. Narrative tests were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 17 grandparents from a range of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds across Sydney and in south-west NSW, Australia. The active engagement of grandparents in the preparation of interpretive tests enabled significant depth of meaning to be discovered within grandparents' stories. The study revealed the grandparents held contrasting views in relation to their care experience. They gained significant meaning from building strong bonds with grandchildren, while also experiencing loss of autonomy, physical tiredness, and in some cases, family tension. The study found grandparent careers were not a homogenous group and identified four carer clusters grouped around grandparents' perspectives on family contribution, care obligations and personal independence. The study points to the importance of grandparents having choice in care decisions and the need to establish arrangements with adult children that are true care partnerships.