Miller, Daniel and Garvey, Pauline (2022) Grandparenting as the resolution of kinship as experience. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 28. pp. 975-992. ISSN 1359-0987

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Abstract

This article argues that a population of relatively affluent retired people in a small Irish town have employed the possibilities of grandparenting to resolve many of the tensions of contemporary kinship. This includes the tension between the obligations of prescriptive relationships as against the voluntarism of friendship. This is considered against a background shift in kinship studies towards a distinction between kinship as a category and kinship as experience. Kinship as experience often now comprises a series of deep fluctuations during the life course. Experience is also extended by the growth in life expectancy. This makes it still more important that the legacy of an individual’s prior experiences of kinship may be partially resolved through the experience of grandparenting. The profound consequences of grandparenting lie not in the relationship to the grandchildren but in the possibilities that grandparenting offers to recalibrate all other kinship relations. These include the relationship with one’s own children, the relationship with partners, the legacy of one’s prior experience of being a parent, and even the memory of the way one was parented when a child.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	grandparenting; resolution; kinship; experience;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology
Item ID:	18263
Depositing User:	Dr Pauline Garvey
Date Deposited:	12 Mar 2024 11:49
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Publisher:	Wiley-Blackwell
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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