As most of the chapters in this collection point out, custodial grandparenting is on the increase. It is typically a consequence of traumatic events and problematic circumstances, such as health issues, substance abuse, death, divorce, incarceration or drug use, in the lives of the biological parents of grandchildren. Custodial grandparents are likely, then, to face many challenges in their new role. But through resilience and resourcefulness the challenges can be successfully managed. Instead of dwelling on the negatives, this book sets out to present a positive approach to grandparent care-giving; its stated aim is to reverse the trend of emphasising the difficulties that grandparent care-givers have and to be a resource for professionals who work with grandparents raising grandchildren.
The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 centres on the nature of resilience as a personal attribute or characteristic as well as a process. Understanding resilience in grandparent care-givers is linked to resourcefulness and benefit finding, and the antecedents as well as the consequences of resilience – as an advantage – are explored. The first part consists of six chapters. Smith and Dolbin-MacNab (Chapter 1) propose an integrated model of family stress and resilience that seeks to explain how grandparent wellbeing relates to grandchildren's adjustment. In Chapter 2, Castillo, Henderson and North explore various factors (such as care-giving and coping style) that influence grandparents' adjustment to raising grandchildren, whereas Chapter 3 by Zauszniewski and Musil focuses on custodial grandmothers and their resourcefulness – believed to bolster one's capacity to deal with stress. Hayslip Jr, Davis, Neumann, Goodman, Smith, Maiden and Carr (Chapter 4) outline their in-depth quantitative study testing a model of the role of personal resilience in successfully coping with the demands of raising a grandchild, and they suggest a number of strategies for grandparents to enhance their resilience, too. The last two chapters in this part adopt a qualitative methodology. In Chapter 5, Bailey, Letiecq, Erickson and Koltz outline themes characterising resilient grandfamilies, collected via life history interviews, and they consider the implications of these for practitioners and helping professionals. Fruhauf and Bundy-Fazioli (Chapter 6) discuss grandparent care-givers' self-care practices, self-reported in interviews and focus groups, and recommend a strengths-based practice approach to practitioners working with such populations.
In Part 2, the focus moves to resilience in the context of relationships with others, such as other grandparents in a similar situation, which can in turn enhance resilience (as reported in Chapter 6, in fact). The four chapters cover interpersonal aspects of resilience. These include cultural values favourable to fostering resilience found among Native Hawaiians (Chapter 7 by Yancura and Greenwood); mutual exchange in grandparent–grandchild relations (Chapter 8 by Kolomer, Himmelheber and Murray); formal social support delivered by professionals within an ecological framework (Chapter 9 by Dolbin-MacNab, Roberto and Finney) and factors affecting wellbeing in grandmother care-givers after grandchildren are grown up (Chapter 10 by Goodman, Scorzo, Ernandez and Alvarez-Nunez). These chapters point towards the conclusion articulated by the editors in the final chapter that ‘resilience is best understood as an individual attribute and as an adaptive process growing out of one's interactions with the environment and others in one's life’ (p. 252).
Many of the chapters recommend good professional practice on the basis of the research findings. But Part 3 focuses specifically on interventions with grandparent care-givers to achieve resilience and its enhancement. In Chapter 11, Conway and Consedine formulate a strengths-based intervention model to empower grandparents who parent. Chapter 12 by James and Ferrante, on the other hand, outlines a strength-based mentoring programme for grandparent care-givers in which they mentor others in a similar situation who then progress from mentees to mentors. McCallion, Ferretti and Kim's (Chapter 13) attention in turn is on grandparent care-givers' health and on a self-management intervention, and Zuckerman and Maiden (Chapter 14) discuss a family–systems approach together with a cognitive-behavioural model in a counselling context to build on grandparents' resilient tendencies, illustrating this with an interesting case-study. Chapter 15 by Smith, Dannison and James describes service delivery practices that develop a continuum of resiliency in grandparents. These build on the attributes summarised as the ‘5 P's': proud, positive, persistent, protective and problem-solvers, which were reported to characterise effective custodial grandparents' behaviour. Lastly, Whitley, Kelley and Campos (Chapter 16) report on a correlational analysis of empowerment in which perceptions of empowerment, perceived family support and community resources were investigated among African American grandmothers.
The Epilogue by the editors provides a very useful overview and summary of the main theoretical points made in the collection. It helps make the case for the study of resilience in this familial context, as well as clarify its definition. The concluding chapter provides coherence after such numerous chapters with slightly different takes on the concept of ‘resilience’ and different theoretical stances, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative studies.
The collection has an exclusively US focus with all but one of the contributors based in the United States of America (including Hawaii). This gives it coherence but also raises the question of whether a strengths-based approach is strictly a US perspective on grandparent care-giving. The specific geographical focus contrasts markedly from other recent collections on grandparenting, such as that by Arber and Timonen (Reference Arber and Timonen2012) which adopts a global perspective (see the review in Ageing & Society, 33, 908–10, 2013), albeit covering grandparenting in its myriad of forms, in addition to parenting.
Resilient Grandparent Caregivers offers an in-depth resource for practitioners working with custodial grandparents. Many of the chapters would not be very accessible to laypeople (such as grandparents), but academics interested in grandparenting practices more generally, and custodial grandparenting in particular, will find much food for thought in this collection, both theoretically in terms of its strengths-based approach, as well as methodologically.
