Introduction

This chapter examines the range and extent of support that grandparents provided for parents and grandchildren, particularly after a marriage breakdown. We explore parents’ assumptions about grandparents’ support roles and consider the views of grandparents and their grandchildren about the help that they provided. In particular, we discuss how far grandparents were considered to be under an obligation to provide support, and how they responded to ‘a sense of duty’.

Grandparents were usually willing to support their adult children at moments of crisis. Most parents turned to their own parents for help in coping with the immediate effects of separation and divorce. Maternal grandparents were often anxious to do what they could to ameliorate the effects of the divorce. Consequently, they became more involved in childcare and saw their grandchildren more frequently.

Table 3 summarises the results of asking parents how often their children currently saw their grandparents, and how often they saw them when the couple was still married. In most cases, a parent reported their child’s contact with grandparents on both sides of the family. In 28 of the 44 families, only the mother was interviewed and in 11 families only the father was interviewed. There were five families in which both parents were interviewed. It was possible in these cases to use the evidence from two parents to confirm the accuracy of the totals provided. Information was obtained from 42 of the 44 families about maternal grandparents’ contact but the information about paternal grandparenting was less complete.

The frequencies reported have been converted to annual totals for ease of comparison. Table 3 demonstrates that there was not much difference between the frequency of contact of maternal and paternal grandparents before the divorce. However, as might be expected, there was an increase after the divorce in the numbers of paternal grandparents who rarely or never saw their grandchildren and a decline in the numbers who had very frequent contact. The evidence of this study is that maternal grandparents’ childcare duties were likely to increase after their daughter’s divorce and those who were in frequent contact before their daughter’s separation were likely to intensify their involvement. In contrast, paternal grandparents usually had to depend on their son for contact but some fathers did not have contact, and some of those who did were unwilling to take their children to their grandparents’ home.