Transition to Grandparenthood and Job‐Related Attitudes: Do Grandparental Sex and Lineage Matter?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12307 |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| Author | Christian L. Burk,Dalit Jaeckel,Bettina S. Wiese |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
B S. W RWTH Aachen University, University of Basel, and University of Zurich
C L. B RWTH Aachen University∗
D J University of Zurich and Swiss Association for Nursing Science∗∗
Transition to Grandparenthood and Job-Related
Attitudes: Do Grandparental Sex and Lineage
Matter?
This study investigated the impact of the transi-
tion to grandparenthood on employees’ psycho-
logical involvement in their job, attitude toward
retirement, and retirement-related hopes and
concerns, taking into account sex and lineage.
The participants were 152 maternal and pater-
nal grandparents who were assessed at 2 time
points (approximately 2 months before and 3
months after the birth of their rst grandchild)
and 76 control participants who completed the
same assessments with an interval of 6 months.
Both grandmothers and grandfathers were less
involved in their job and had morefamily-related
hopes and fewer retirement-related concerns
about health, nances, and dependence than
control participants. The analyses also revealed
lineage effects: Maternal grandparentswere less
Institute of Psychology, RWTHAachen University,
Jaegerstrasse 17–19, D-52056 Aachen, Germany
(wiese@psych.rwth-aachen.de).
∗Institute of Psychology, RWTHAachen University,
Jaegerstrasse 17–19, D-52056 Aachen, Germany.
∗∗Swiss Association for Nursing Science, Haus der
Akademien, Laupenstrasse 7, CH-3001 Bern, Switzerland.
This article was edited by Linda Waite.
Key Words: adult development and aging, family and work,
gender, grandparents/grandparenthood, parenting grand-
children, retirement.
psychologically involved in their job and had a
more positive attitude toward retirement, in par-
ticular fewer fears of uselessness and loneliness,
than paternal grandparents.
Grandparent and employee are two central roles
in the lives of many adults in advanced mid-
dle adulthood. Because people are typically still
employed when they become grandparents for
the rst time, in this study we examined the
impact of the transition to grandparenthood on
the working life of men and women expecting to
become grandparents. The transition to grand-
parenthood may result in a partial shift in pri-
orities away from work to family; for example,
work may become less central, and retirement
may appear more attractive than before. This
motivational shift could be affected by both
sex and lineage. More precisely, in this study
we investigated the effects of the transition
to grandparenthood on psychological involve-
ment in one’s job, attitude toward retirement,
and retirement-related hopes and concerns. The
identication of such effects would support a
key concept of life course theory, namely, the
idea that the life events of different individuals
are interdependent (“linked lives”; Elder, 1994,
p. 6). Although becoming a grandparent is not
within one’s control but a consequence of an
830 Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (June 2016): 830–847
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12307
Transition to Grandparenthood 831
adult child’s decision to become a parent, it may
nevertheless inuence the grandparent’s activi-
ties in the family domain (e.g., taking care of the
grandchild, providing nancial support) and in
other life spheres, in particular the work domain.
The evolutionary mechanism underpinning of
the concept of linked lives is the maximization
of inclusive tness; this is, of course, not a con-
scious motive for action but a reection of a
behavior that has proven its effectiveness in a
(Pleistocene Age) constellation of environmen-
tal regularities that existed long enough to have
an impact (EEA =Environment of Evolutionary
Adaptedness; cf. Tooby & Cosmides, 2005).
T G
Grandparenthood is deemed to be a central
element of generativity in middle and older
adulthood (Perrig-Chiello & Perren, 2005). In
the social sciences generativity is dened as
establishing and guiding the next generation
(Erikson, 1963); the archetypal generative activ-
ity is thus raising children. Generativity not
only motivates grandparental investment but
may also contribute to grandparents’ well-being
(Hoppmann & Klumb, 2010). Spending time
with grandchildren is therefore a desirable
activity, and being a grandparent may give
a new sense of meaning to late middle life.
Perrig-Chiello and Perren (2005) showed that
in adults’ retrospective views becoming a
grandparent was seen as a particularly posi-
tive transition. In addition, Thiele and Whelan
(2008) reported that psychological aspects of the
grandparent role (e.g., a sense of generativity)
correlated more strongly with grandparental
satisfaction than the mere number of hours of
contact with grandchildren.
Generativity is a concept mainly discussed in
the social sciences. In evolutionary science there
is a similar concept known as inclusive tness,
which represents the outcome of both direct
reproduction (classic tness) and of supporting
the tness of close kin who transfer shared genes
to their offspring (Hamilton, 1964). It is relevant
to inclusive tness that grandmothers (in partic-
ular, maternal grandmothers) have been shown
to improve child survival rates in historical pop-
ulations as well as in natural fertility populations
(see Sear & Coall, 2011). Research on the impact
of the presence of grandfathers has, in con-
trast, produced inconsistent results (see Sear &
Coall, 2011). Note, however, that given the low
childhood mortality in modern Western soci-
eties survival rates are no longer the optimal
tness criterion. It seems more appropriate to
look at grandparental inuences on, for instance,
grandchildren’s psychological adjustment and
well-being.
As Coall and Hertwig (2010) pointed out,
today’s middle-aged and older adults typically
have much experience as grandparents and can
easily have a shared life span with their grand-
children of two or three decades. But there is,
of course, substantial heterogeneity regarding
the age at which people become grandparents,
which varies according to the age at which one
became a parent as well as the age at which
one’s children become parents. This study con-
cerns the larger subgroup, grandparents-to-be
who face the transition before (not after) they
have reached retirement age.
O E T A
T W R
The need to improve our understanding of
the aging workforce is widely acknowledged.
Despite widespread negative perceptions of
older employees (Bal, Abigail, Rudolph &
Baltes, 2011; Finkelstein & Farrell, 2007),
overall they report higher work satisfaction
than younger employees (see Barnes-Farrell &
Matthews, 2007). Among the explanations for
this are that older employees have gravitated
toward work environments that better t their
needs or that they have lowered their work
expectations (see Barnes-Farrell & Matthews,
2007).
The evidence on associations between age
and psychological involvement in one’s job is
less consistent (see Barnes-Farrell & Matthews,
2007). Subjective commitment to a job might
be affected by the availability of other roles,
such as retiree, which is a socially acceptable
alternative for older but not younger employ-
ees (see Barnes-Farrell & Matthews, 2007).
Some researchers have argued that relationship
needs play a particularly important role in older
employees’ work motivation (Kooij, de Lange,
Jansen, Kanfer, & Dikkers, 2011), and Kooij,
de Lange, Jansen, and Dikkers (2013) showed
that age is, in fact, positively associated with
generativity motivation at work. This also con-
verges with the life span–theoretical view that
aging individuals prefer to selectively invest in
emotionally meaningful relationships because
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