THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN DIVORCE AND LATE ADOLESCENT GRANDCHILDRENS RELATIONS WITH GRANDPARENTS

While researchers have documented the possible effects of divorce on c hildren's interpersonal relationships with significant others (eg., pa rents, siblings, peers), research efforts examining the role of grandp arents within these children's social networks are limited. For the pr esent study, 588 late adolescent college students (266 males, 322 fema les) completed the Network of Relationships Inventory (W. Furman and D . Buhrmester [1985] ''Children's Perceptions of the Personal Relations hips in Their Social Network,'' Developmental Psychology, Vol. 21, pp. 1016-1024) and frequency of contact estimates on each available biolo gical grandparent. One hundred sixty-eight students were from families in which their biological parents had been divorced for more than two years. The remaining late adolescents were from intact families (i.e. , biological parents still married). As hypothesized, late adolescent grandchildren from divorced families indicated less satisfactory relat ionships with paternal grandparents. In addition, granddaughters from divorced families indicated poorer relationships with parental grandpa rents when contrasted to granddaughters in intact families and grandso ns from divorced families. However, visible and phone contact with gra ndparents played a major role in sustaining relationships with grandpa rents for grandchildren from divorced families. Granddaughters, in gen eral, also reported stronger relations with maternal grandmothers, reg ardless of group status. Explanations are offered for these results, a s well as suggestions for future research.