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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Parenting attitudes and adjustment among custodial grandparents | | Author(s) | Patricia L Kaminski, Ben Hayslip, Jennifer L Wilson |
| Journal title | Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, vol 6, no 3, 2008 |
| Publisher | The Haworth Press, 2008 |
| Pages | pp 263-284 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Grandparents ; Attitude ; Grandparents as carers ; Grandchildren ; Social surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | 42 custodial grandparents (CGPs), 39 parents, and 44 non-custodial grandparents (GPs) completed measures of parenting attitudes (e.g. belief in the use of corporal punishment) and parental adjustment (e.g. parenting stress). Moreover, half of the actively parenting participants were caring for a (grand)child with emotional or behavioural problems. While CGPs and parents differed in their self-reported levels of empathy toward children's needs and opinions about appropriate parent-child role responsibilities, with CGPs scoring in the less adaptive direction compared to parents, these two groups did not differ in their attitudes about corporal punishment or on any measure of parental adjustment. The caregivers in this sample who were raising (grand)children with emotional or behavioural problems, however, reported significantly lower levels of parental adjustment than CGPs and parents whose (grand)children did not have clinically significant emotional or behavioural problems. A multiple analysis of covariance revealed that the two grandparent groups did not differ from one another in their self-reported parenting attitudes, but both scored in a less adaptive direction compared to parents. These data point to cohort effects whereby members of an older generation have attitudes that have been associated with an increased risk for poor parenting behaviours. It is encouraging, however, to find that risk for poor parenting in the form of physical intimidation or abuse is no higher among older caregivers than it is among younger caregivers. Importantly, previous reports about the negative consequences of reassuming the parenting role (for one's grandchildren) may be due, in part, to a third variable such as emotional or behavioural difficulties among custodial grandchildren. Collectively, these findings indicate that when raising a child with emotional or behavioural problems, custodial grandparents are no less resilient than similarly challenged parents. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-100929002 A |
| Classmark | SW: DP: P6:SW: SW5: 3F: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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