The legacy of grandparenting: Childhood experiences with grandparents and current involvement with grandchildren

Childhood experiences with grandparents are an important factor in the current involvement of men and women with their own grandchildren. We rest this proposition with data from two related longitudinal studies of rural families, the Iowa Youth and Families Project and the Iowa Single Parent Project. Consistent with the premise that family roles ai-e learned through the culture and the interactions of family life, results show that the degree to which grandparents are involved in playing their role and the type of involvement they have with grandchildren are significantly influenced by having known their own grandparents and learned about them through multiple aspects of their intergenerational history. In con trast, sharing a household with a grandparent made little difference in their contemporary involvement with grandchildren.