Intensive grandparenting: Negotiating the complexities of intergenerational relationships

Normative assumptions around age and family composition have limited our understanding of what it means to engage in family leisure and have resulted in an almost singular focus on coupled parents with children. Grandparenting can result in tensions between generativity and obligation. Drawing on the ideology of intensive mothering, this presentation explores how these discourses have collided and resulted in the norm of a “good grandparent” where leisure has contributed to an emerging ideology of intensive grandparenting.

Registration is mandatory. Sign up here.

Speaker:

Shannon Hebblethwaite is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Human Sciences and Director of engAGE: Centre for Research on Aging.