Thinking about Scenarios of Grandparenthood

ABSTRACT

The term “grandparenthood” was first coined by the psychoanalyst P. Redler, to denominate the intrapsychic and interpersonal relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. Grandparenthood involves a specific relationship with specific conflict areas and with its own process of development, named by this author “grandparenthood crisis”. In this phase, grandparents must cope with different experiences of mourning. The joys of becoming a grandparent help compensate for these sorrows. For children, the figure of grandparents evolves during their development and implies different functions across each development stage.

Despite the importance of grandparenthood in the family context, this is a poorly studied topic in Child Psychology. In this paper, we make a review of the scarce literature on this subject, aiming to relate it with the theory of the “Narcissistic scenarios of parenthood” described by Manzano and Palacio (2005). We emphasize the importance not only of the figure of the grandparents in the child’s development, but also the importance of the relation with the grandchild holds for the grandparent in this life stage. We also try to explore the subject of intergenerational transmission.