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Grandparenting after parental divorce: The association between non-resident parent–child meetings and grandparenting in Italy

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Abstract

Previous studies have shown that parental divorce has negative consequences on parent–child relationships and that these effects extend to relations between grandchildren and their grandparents. After parental divorce, grandchildren have less intense and lower quality relations with their grandparents. Some studies suggest that this negative association between union dissolution in the middle generation and grandparent–grandchild relations is explained by the post-divorce residential arrangements and, to a lesser extent, by the gatekeeping role exercised by the resident parent. The role of the frequency of meetings between the non-resident parent and his/her children, however, has been often overlooked in this literature. Using cross-sectional data from the Italian Family and Social Subject Survey, our study explores the extent to which frequent meetings between non-resident separated or divorced parents and their children below age 14 are correlated with grandparent involvement in looking after their grandchildren. The results show that young children who have very frequent meetings with their non-resident parents are more likely to receive care from their grandparents than are those who meet the non-resident parents once a week or less frequently.

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Notes

  1. To be noted is that in Italy divorce is a two-step procedure in which parents must first spend a period of legal separation before being able to divorce. Only about one half of all separations eventually end in divorce. However, since all of the main socio-economic consequences of marital dissolution are already present at the moment of separation, in the present paper we do not distinguish between separated and divorced parents.

  2. Because the Italian separation/divorce legislation changed in 2006 introducing shared legal and physical custody arrangement as a default option, we conducted a sensitivity analysis including an interaction term between father–child contact frequency and the year of the separation/divorce (before or after 2006). The results showed a non-significant interaction, indicating that the association between non-resident parent–child contact and grandparents’ support was not stronger or weaker after the implementation of the law.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Marco Albertini

  2. Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Marco Tosi

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  1. Marco Albertini
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Correspondence to Marco Albertini.

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Responsible editors: Karen Glaser and Karsten Hank (guest editors) and Marja J. Aartsen (editor).

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Albertini, M., Tosi, M. Grandparenting after parental divorce: The association between non-resident parent–child meetings and grandparenting in Italy. Eur J Ageing 15, 277–286 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10433-018-0478-z

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