While the title of this collection draws attention to contemporary grandparenting and changing family, social and global contexts, the text itself remains well grounded in classical perspectives within this field. The two editors cover this ground comprehensively in the first chapter, offering ‘a new look grandparenting’. The claims made in this chapter are ambitious: that the collection will advance conceptual and theoretical frameworks about grandparenting, while filling gaps in the research field, and also demonstrating the scale of social transformation within multi-generational families around the world. Their concluding chapter looks back at the contributions within the book, and forward to new directions for grandparenting in the 21st century, leaving the reader with a sense of satisfaction that the 12 chapters of this book have fulfilled their claims – and equipping me with both a sense of continuing engagement as a grandmother, and an interesting set of research and reflective pathways ahead.
Contributions to the book come from a mix of established and emerging researchers, based on data from various parts of Asia (China, Hong Kong and Singapore), Europe (Portugal, Norway, Ireland, Germany and England) and the United States of Ameica (USA). The book is in two parts, each offered as coming from contrasting points on the research spectrum. Part One is arranged under the banner heading ‘Grandparents Responding to Economic and Family Transformations’, and each of the five chapters explores a different dimension of social transformation: Chapter 2, by Herlofson and Hagestad, deals with comparisons between welfare states and their social policies relevant to family life; Chapter 3, from Baker and Silverstein, compares the wellbeing of grandparents caring for grandchildren in rural China and the USA; in Chapter 4, Meyer looks at how US grandmothers juggle paid work with their ability to provide active child care to their grandchildren. Chapters 5 and 6, by Ko and Sun, respectively, consider multigenerational residence in Hong Kong, then Sun's Singapore study deals with attitudes to grandparenting in the context of care for grandchildren by foreign domestic workers.
Part Two shifts the focus to ‘Grandparent Identities and Agency’, although the segue to the initial chapter in the second part (by May, Mason and Clarke) is extremely subtle, and could follow almost unmarked from the previous chapter where the focus had been as much on grandparents' responses as on the transformations in the household economy relating to the employment of foreign domestic workers. The following chapters (Chapters 8–11) strengthen the conceptual clarity of the terms ‘identities’ and ‘agency’, through careful elaboration, very much in the way of a series of musical variations, each making the underlying theme more recognisable, and meaningful. Chapter 7 opens Part Two with one of the classic paradoxes of grandparenting: ‘being there, yet not interfering’. In Chapter 8, ‘Grandparental Agency After Adult Children's Divorce’ (by Timonen and Doyle) is demonstrated in the context of the strong cultural constraints surrounding divorce in Ireland; the examples of sustained and determined agency from grandparents whose sons have experienced divorce are compelling. This chapter in turn links well, through the attention paid to men's place and, by derivation, that of paternal kin in Irish law, to Chapter 9 on the cultural construction of grandfathering (by Tarrant). Tarrant's English qualitative study allows grandfathers to present expressions of their identity as a grandparent in particular masculine ways. Chapter 10 shifts the perspective again, this time to consider grandparenting from the point of view of adolescent grandchildren, recognising that agency can be a reciprocal relationship. Matos and Neves show how adolescents influence their grandparents in a variety of ways, adopting the terms ‘buddies’, ‘carers’, ‘playmates’ and ‘companions’, based on a declining scale of influential relationships with their grandparents, with buddies exerting the most influence, and companions the least.
Chapter 11 (by Mahne and Huxhold) offers a complex analysis (addressing the methodological challenges with clarity) of the three-generational dataset of the German Ageing Survey (DEAS). They conclude with a statement which sums up the rationale for the book as a whole, as well as their own study: ‘Since being a grandparent is a rewarding and valued role for many older people, the factors supporting or hindering the enactment of the grandparent role can provide important insights into the conditions for the quality of later life’ (p. 239).
The early tradition of considering the functional contribution of grandparents (as ‘family savers’, ‘mother savers’ or ‘family maximisers’) is reinforced by this collection. Similarly, the widening empirical basis for theories of intergenerational solidarity (in all its various dimensions) is evident, alongside consideration of aspects of conflict and ambivalence. Grandparental ‘styles’ are also explored, and reciprocal ways of being a grandchild are added, and shown to vary by age, gender, structural position within the family, in rapidly changing geographic and historical contexts. The complexity and fluidity of intergenerational relationships, including the directions of transfers of various forms of capital, makes this field of family and social research both challenging and necessary, if gerontological research is to take seriously claims to adopt a lifecourse perspective.
The overall integration between the papers, introduced and concluded by the editors, Arber and Timonen, shows the benefits gained from their initial presentation (for all but two of the papers) at the Gothenburg conference of the International Sociological Association in 2010, within the Research Committee on Ageing. The publication of the book thus adds enduring and shared value to the various communities of interest in this topic. It will make a significant contribution to students and researchers in family studies as well as in the sociology of ageing.
