The Experiences of Grandparents Looking after Their Grandchildren: Examining Feelings of Burden and Obligation among Non-Custodial Grandparents

Olga Grunwald , NIDI
Marleen Damman, Utrecht University
Kène Henkens , Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)

A prominent view is that non-custodial grandparents embrace the task of looking after their grandchildren. Qualitative studies observe that although grandparents emphasize the rewards of grandparenting, they also hint at difficulties. Quantitative insights about potential strains of grandparenting are lacking. This study examines to what extent grandparents experience supplementary grandchild care as burdensome and obligatory, and tests – building on role strain theory – how differences in grandparents’ characteristics can explain these experiences. Analyses are based on panel data collected in 2015 and 2018 among 2,144 Dutch grandparents who look after grandchildren at least weekly. Descriptive findings show that twenty percent of the studied grandparents experienced grandparenting as fairly/ very burdensome and ten percent as fairly/ very obligatory. Ordinal logistic regression models with random effects show that more intense grandparenting situations were linked to a higher likelihood of experiencing burden and obligation. Moreover, grandparents with chronic health conditions and those with other responsibilities (e.g., paid work, informal care) were relatively more likely to experience grandchild care as burdensome. Grandparents with higher socioeconomic status were more likely to experience grandchild care as obligatory. Our findings imply that the understanding of non-custodial grandparenting as only rewarding might be one-sided, as positive and negative experiences can go together. There appears to be substantial heterogeneity in how grandparents experience looking after their grandchildren

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 Presented in Session 81. Ageing and Intergenerational Relations