Grandparents Parenting Characteristics And Their Impact On Early Childhood Development

The grandparent-grandchild connection plays a primary role in spanning generations in the family. In our daily life, it is common for grandparent to be a caregiver. The importance of grandparents in the cognitive and social development of children is just beginning to be recognized in the same light as the importance of parents, siblings, and peers. Grandparenting research expanded rapidly during the past three decades in international. The dominant themes of grandparenting research are grandparents acting as parents in the prevalence of single-parent families and skip-generation households and their consequences for both grandparents and grandchildren in the west. Given the universal phenomenon that grandparents have been playing important role in helping rear grandchildren in Chinese families, systematic study of grandparenting has been rare in Chinese psychology. Thus this study examined the characteristics of Chinese grandparenting, intergenerational differences between grandparenting and parenting, and the influences of grandparenting on grandchildren. About 301 families of children aged 3 to 5 were investigated. Grandparens and mothers were interviewed respectively using the grandparent survey questionnaire and the mother survey questionnaire. There are 159 grandparents finished the grandparent survey questionnaire. Children were assessed by the CBCL (Teacher Report Form) as reported by teachers. The main findings are follows: 1. Chinese grandparents generally would like to involvement raising their grandchildren. Grandparents contact with grandchildren frequently. However, Parents have primary responsibility for their children; grandparents provide child care support and assistance. The most frequent grandparenting behavior is supportive behaviors; the least frequent grandparenting behavior is punishing behaviors. 2. Three factors that is gender of grandparent, the quality of the relationship between grandparent and parent, and the time of grandparent-grandchild staying together stand out as important predictors of grandparents'nurturance behaviors. In other words, grandmothers are more nurturance behaviors than grandfathers, the more...