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 S ingle Parent Project. Consistent with the premise that family roles ai -e learned through the culture and the interactions of family life, re sults show that the degree to which grandparents are involved in playi ng their role and the type of involvement they have with grandchildren are significantly influenced by having known their own grandparents a nd learned about them through multiple aspects of their intergeneratio nal history. In con trast, sharing a household with a grandparent made little difference in their contemporary involvement with grandchildre n.