Negotiating a Place in the Family - A Grounded Theory Exploration of Stepgrandmothers' Enactment of Roles

Abstract

Purpose: Stepgrandparents are becoming more common, and they can, and often do, provide affective and instrumental support to families. Little is known, however, about how they negotiate and enact their roles within families, especially with stepgrandchildren. Stepgrandmothers warrant special attention because researchers have found that women experience more challenges than men in stepfamilies. Guided by symbolic interactionism, the purposes of our study were: (a) to explore stepgrandmothers' role enactment and (b) to explore the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and contextual factors that contribute to role enactment in intergenerational steprelationships. Design and Methods: Eighteen stepgrandmothers participated in semi-structured interviews, discussing their relationships with 94 stepgrandchildren. Consistent with grounded theory methods, data collection and analysis occurred simultaneously. Results: Interviews with stepgrandmothers revealed that they spend considerable time and energy defining their roles with stepgrandchildren. Stepgrandmothers' role enactment is a complex, reflexive process. A few perceived that their roles were shaped by their own dispositions, desires, and expectations (evidence for role-making), but most stepgrandmothers described their roles as reflecting the dispositions, desires, and expectations of others (evidence for role-taking). Stepgrandmothers reflected on their roles as a delicate balance of intra- and inter-personal negotiations, operating within cultural expectations. Implications: Findings draw attention to the complex nature of role-taking, role-making, and gendered, relational processes in multigenerational stepfamilies. We discuss implications for research and theory related to stepgrandmotherhood as an incomplete institution.