The grandparental role as replacement parent is found to be highly appreciated and strongly desired by the lone mothers. Grandmothers often adopt this role for a specific period due to special circumstances and after that period return to a more secondary role.
Grandmothers often adopt this role for a specific period due to special circumstances and after that period return to a more secondary role.
For example, a popular view is that if the daughter can perform the role of the main and only active parent, grandparenting practices should be sporadic, only when convenient for the grandmother. In case of inability of the daughter to fulfill her role as a parent (e.g., during sickness), the grandmother completely takes over the role of the mother and becomes a replacement parent. Once the daughter can take back her responsibility, the grandmother shifts back to her initial grandparenting role practices.
An important aspect of the replacement parent role, for example, is the grandmother as discipline figures. Lone mothers place significant importance on the help their parents provide in the actual bringing up of the children and especially in disciplining them and telling them off.
Lone mothers place significant importance on the help their parents provide in the actual bringing up of the children and especially in disciplining them and telling them off.
Both roles are of intrinsic importance not only for the lone mothers but for the grandmother as well. It is well known that grandparenthood is sometimes not only an important part of life and of the ego-identity but is a substitute for the losses grandmothers have already experienced or are currently experiencing in their lives, such as dealing with new life structures (e.g., the empty nest), social isolation, separation from/loss of partner, etc. Thus the responsibilities as grandmothers and, moreover, the intensified grandparental involvement, applies in both of these roles; the increased sense of emotional bond and family belongingness as well as the feeling of someone depending on you and providing unconditional love to you can often be of substantial meaning in life.
Therefore, in a sense, in certain cases, the grandchildren and the lone-parenting children can themselves have the role of a “replacement partner,” and a “replacement family” for the grandmothers. That reciprocity could also be one reason why relationships between daughters/lone mothers and mothers often improve after the birth of grandchildren. Interviewees state that the relationship “strengthens” because of the awareness of all family members involved that they have only one another and that this relationship is of equal importance for both sides and is a ground for reciprocal support.
Besides the subjective, psychological value that both lone mothers and grandmothers place on the grandparental roles as replacement parents and replacement partners, it might be that there are also relationship dynamics that could be causing and encouraging their incorporation. Often, the changes in family and life structure, the stress surrounding these changes, and the desire for all additional tensions to be avoided in order to build a stable new structure of family relationships enforce the incorporation of new behavioral patterns and attitudes.
Often, the changes in family and life structure, the stress surrounding these changes, and the desire for all additional tensions to be avoided in order to build a stable new structure of family relationships enforce the incorporation of new behavioral patterns and attitudes.
Such new patterns of behavior on the side of the actively involved grandmothers are, for example, the practice to simply offer or to straightaway provide certain support rather than to wait to be asked for it in advance, as they acknowledge having to ask for help will be highly uncomfortable for the mothers and will enforce time and organizational constraints.
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