Parenting and Grandparenting

Parenting refers to the activities that parents engage in to raise their children and the skills involved to facilitate child development (Lee et al. 2014). When children are young, parenting behaviors often focus on “nurturing, stimulating and socializing children…(and) monitoring their activities” (Furedi 2002, p. 5). As children enter adulthood, parenting in parents’ mid- and later life usually involves granting children autonomy and helping them to achieve independence in emerging adulthood as well as providing instrumental and emotional support to adult children when needed.

Grandparenting concerns the support and care that grandparents, typically grandmothers, provide to their grandchildren (Timonen and Arber 2012). Scholars tend to view grandparenting broadly also to include contact, shared activities, emotional attachment, and overall relationship quality between grandparents and grandchildren.