Individuals brought up by their grandparents differ significantly from those brought up by their parents. It is essentialalso to admit that there are exceptions in both groups. Many of these differences can be explained regarding reasons for grandparental caregiving, cultural influences, and unique family dynamics associated with each region and country. In this regard, grandparents tend to become more lenient or less authoritarian parents, relying on softness, affection, etc. This is influenced by culture and generation, as grandparents offer traditional values and practices. Grandpas prefer an indirect and respectable communication style instead of direct approaches (Hoang et al., 2020). However, different socialization patterns exist among children raised by grandparents who may experience less mature social interaction. Extended Family plays a crucial role in grandparental care, whereby family ties are maintained and reinforced. Grandparents provide wisdom and patience, while parents focus on structured, goal-oriented support. Recognizing such generalizations emphasizes the need to consider personal circumstances in interpreting behavioral contrasts.
Discipline and Authority
Grandparents differ considerably from parents in familial relationships’ discipline and authority dynamics. In most cases, grandparents want to provide love and support. Leniency for grandchildren may appear like tolerance, which allows them to deviate from appropriate behavioral standards. A viewpoint forged through a wealth of life’s lessons, emphasizing the development of a caring bond for the grandchild, could lean toward a permissive attitude. However, parents often adhere to strict rules and punishments (Li et al., 2019). Most of the time, they show a vital concern about the child’s future. A feeling of obligation to pass down values, work culture, and morals is often behind the focus on the law and discipline. Recognizing their influence on determining a child’s direction in life, parents may prefer an orderly situation, which allows them to learn from experience and follow set rules as preparation for the greater society. The divergent forms of discipline that vary across these generations influence the distinct dynamic of generation linkages in the family system.
Cultural and Generational Influences
The caregiving styles of grandparents and parents are significantly impacted by culture and generations. Often, grandparents with their generation’s roots will bring with them such traditions and values. This covers a wide range of ideas, such as ideologies on education, masculine feminism, and culture, among others. Grandparents can pass on wisdom and customs from their childhood to add more color to the family heritage. However, contemporary opinions and methods largely influence parents who constitute themselves as members of the younger generation (Sadruddin et al., 2019). However, such generational shifts may be crucial to a child’s behavior depending on the parent’s adaptation to the modern world of changing morality standards, technology, and cultural ideals. Instead of the usual standpoint held by their grandparents, parents could opt for different progressive educational strategies, change traditional gender roles, and adjust to dynamic social values. These cultural and generational interactions define how Family is structured, forming what the child understands about the world while growing up.
Socialization Patterns
Children of grandparents and parents have unique socialization patterns that influence their development. Grandparents typically look after children exposed to a unique social setting, which entails more association with aged people. Such exposure may facilitate them to have a more mature viewpoint on life based on the wisdom and life experience of caring elders. Grandparents pass on traditional values and cultural wisdom in a distinctive socialization process facilitated by inter-generational ties. However, parents are likely to allow their offspring to participate in a greater variety of social contacts with their peers (Liang et al., 2021). Social development in early childhood largely depends on the environment the child is exposed to, including the peers among whom he/or she interacts. Most parents also tend to create a more diverse social setting that mirrors modern societal mores to prepare children for different social situations. Their varying socialization techniques make the child flexible in interaction with people across different scenarios, contributing to an evolution of the individual’s social identity development and how they interact socially.
Role of Extended Family
A child’s sense of identity and familial connection is affected by the difference in their extended grandparents and parental role in the upbringing of children. In many societies, grandparents play a significant part in passing on the family background, principles, and culture, serving as containers for intergenerational knowledge. Grand-parented children mostly understand their roots better because grand-parent stories bring out the history, which is also embedded with rituals and shared memories that create close connections with older relatives and other extended family members (Hoang et al., 2020). It creates an incredible feeling of being part of a more prominent extended family, ensuring continuity, unlike parents who prefer to concentrate on their immediate families with more interest in personal accomplishments and self-reliance. This could shape how the child sees the world by focusing on independence and achieving individualistic goals. Differential perspectives reflect the significance of the extended Family on a child’s perception of their ethnicity, traditionally held beliefs and values.
Emotional Support
Grandparents and parents’ emotional support for a child is different, nevertheless complementary. Grandparents provide emotional support not found to any extent with wisdom, patience, and nothing else but love. Grandparents usually draw on their rich life experiences, providing solace to children while sharing their accumulated wisdom. They have an unconditional love that nurtures a feeling of security and belonging. However, parental emotional support is much more of a directed endeavor, generally focused on the maturation of the child’s personal, scholastic, and social development (Rapoport et al., 2020). It could also mean setting up your expected role by giving instructions on accomplishing a goal and participating in the child’s schooling process. Institutional support/structure and incentive encouragement enhance work ethics, persistence, and “meaning” in this process. This supportive environment caters to both grandparent and parental emotional support, which leads to children’s total growth.
In conclusion, children’s behavioral differences between the parents and the grandmothers were complex and intricate, comprising varying types of factors such as supervision and generational conflict, cultural and generation gaps, communication styles, socialization methods, involvement of the extended families and the type of These disparities do not however prevent the commonality of this trend among such people as they age in the society. Such grandparents mostly use an easy-going parenting style while retaining their links to culture, leading to a warm home environment, intergenerational ties, and a nurturing and affectionate support system. Parents become the young generation with new conceptions of punishment, individual independence to achieve success, and attention toward personal progress. These interrelated elements form a very colorful piece of cloth that weaves their life perspective, value systems, and interactions within the socio-cultural context. Conceptualizations of variations in parent–grandparent relationships indicate the need for distinct understanding, considering the complexity of behavioral outcomes of parent–grandparent-child relations.
Reference
Hayslip Jr, B., Fruhauf, C. A., & Dolbin-MacNab, M. L. (2019). Grandparents raising grandchildren: What have we learned over the past decade? The Gerontologist, 59(3), e152-e163.
Hoang, N. P. T., Haslam, D., & Sanders, M. (2020). Coparenting conflict and cooperation between parents and grandparents in Vietnamese families: The role of grandparent psychological control and parent–grandparent communication. Family Process, 59(3), 1161-1174.
Li, Y., Cui, N., Kok, H. T., Deatrick, J., & Liu, J. (2019). The relationship between parenting styles practiced by grandparents and children’s emotional and behavioral problems. Journal of Child and Family Studies, p. 28, 1899-1913.
Liang, X., Lin, Y., Van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Wang, Z. (2021). Grandmothers are part of the parenting network, too! A longitudinal study on co-parenting, maternal sensitivity, child attachment, and behavior problems in a Chinese sample. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2021(180), 95-116.
Rapoport, E., Muthiah, N., Keim, S. A., & Adesman, A. (2020). Family well-being in grandparent-versus parent-headed households. Pediatrics, 146(3).
Sadruddin, A. F., Ponguta, L. A., Zonderman, A. L., Wiley, K. S., Grimshaw, A., & Panter-Brick, C. (2019). How do grandparents influence child health and development? A systematic review. Social Science & Medicine, p. 239, 112476.
write