| Sumario: | A study was conducted to investigate patterns of change in grandparents' perceptions of affection and in-person contact and geographic proximity with adult grandchildren over five points of measurement between 1971 and 1994. Data were obtained from the Longitudinal Study of Generations. Results of hierarchical linear modeling revealed quadratic trends in both growth curves. It was observed that affection decreases over the first 14 years and then modestly reverses, and that contact and proximity decrease at an accelerating rate. Older grandparents were found to have higher average levels of affection than younger grandparents, but it was noted that they show sharper rates of decline in contact and proximity over time. It was found that when cohorts are equated on age, later cohorts of grandparents decline more rapidly in contact and proximity, which suggests that the grandparent role has changed in recent history.
|
|---|