Over 2 million grandmothers provide either primary or supplemental care to grandchildren living in their homes. These caregiving roles are sometimes in flux as living arrangements change and parents assume more or less responsibility for their children, but such changes in grandmothers’ caregiving status to grandchildren have received little attention. The purpose of this study was to learn how grandmothers perceive these changes in family composition. The philosophical framework underpinning this qualitative study was hermeneutic phenomenology which seeks to elicit and describe the meaning of human experiences. Changes in caregiving status provide an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of caregiving. This phenomenological study is part of a larger, longitudinal study of primary/custodial caregiving grandmothers, grandmothers in intergenerational homes and grandmothers without caregiving responsibility. Of 421 grandmothers, 86 have reported changes in caregiving status between Time 1 and Time 3. Twenty one of these grandmothers participated in semi-structured telephone interviews. A grand-tour question, “Tell me the story of the changes in your family during the past year” guided the interviews which were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using the Giorgi method of thematic analysis. Lincoln & Guba’s (1985) criteria were used to insure the rigor of the study. The 15 Euro-American and 6 African-American grandmothers ranged in age from 32 to 66 years (M=56.8). The majority of status changes were from intergenerational to non-caregiving status (n=11). The meaning of the changes differed by status groups. Analysis identified themes including Getting My Life Back, Devotion to Grandchildren, Unpredicted Changes, and Spirituality as Strength. The frequency of caregiving changes and the unique meanings that such changes hold extends our understanding of grandmothers as caregivers to children. Increased understanding of this caregiver role is important knowledge for nurses as they provide health care for this growing population
Session #1190 - Life Span
The 29th Annual MNRS Research Conference (April 1-4, 2005)