one - Introduction

Summary

This is a book about grandparents whose sons or daughters have divorced. It discusses the findings of a two-year interdisciplinary research study at Cardiff University. The project was supported by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation and the research was completed in May 2001. The project set out to explore family members’ perceptions of the impact of divorce on grandparenting. The study was designed to provide a tri-generational perspective and information was gathered from interviews with parents, children and maternal and paternal grandparents. In this chapter we aim to provide a description of the research and explain why we believe it is important to discover more about grandparents’ roles in divorced families.

Introduction

The breakdown of a marriage usually involves major readjustments for parents and children and a realignment of the network of contacts with friends and family. Mothers may need to make changes to the once familiar pattern of daily life and this often involves recruiting grandparents to provide support. Researchers have commented on the establishment of ‘matrilineal’ families, or what Aldous (1995, p 108) describes as “the female tilt in the kinship structure”. This refers to the marked tendency of mothers, children and maternal grandparents to form close alliances. Following a divorce, the mother normally becomes the resident parent (the parent responsible for the day-to-day care of the children), and the paternal grandparent connection is likely to break should fathers fail to maintain contact and keep the connection alive. Maternal grandparents who may have seen themselves as a latent resource during the marriage (see Riley and Riley, 1993) find themselves called into service when their daughter and son-in-law decide that they no longer want to live together. Bengtson (2001, p 5) concluded that “For many Americans, multigenerational bonds are becoming more important than nuclear family ties for well-being and support over the course of their lives”. The process of negotiating post-divorce parenthood is rarely easy because most parents are ill prepared for the changes (Smart and Neale, 1999). When help is needed, parents often turn to their own parents. Our project investigated the role that grandparents play in families and the effect of parental divorce on their relationships with grandchildren.