Parenting exercised by grandparents: challenges and impacts on family dynamics
Parenting; Grandparents; Family
Changes in society's understanding of the issues of parenthood and filiation place grandparents on the scene as important actors in family dynamics. Thus, within families, grandparents assume a position both in a place of family support and in a role of parenting in the absence of parents. The practice of parental function is driven by situations such as socioeconomic conditions, death of parents, biological parents with compromised health, teenage parents, among other reasons that call on grandparents to take over the role of parenting. These situations in which parenthood occurs place grandparents facing challenges that directly interfere with their relationship and bond with their grandchildren, family dynamics and bring significant psychological repercussions. This work aims to outline a discussion about the challenges and impacts of parenting carried out by grandparents based on the presentation of two clinical cases that will be discussed in conjunction with psychoanalytic theoretical concepts. To this end, in the first part of the work, the relational paradox that was established in the bond of a grandmother, who took over the parenting of her grandson, due to the death of her son, will be discussed. In the second part of the work, the contemporary challenges that permeate parenting carried out by a grandmother who assumes the parental role to her granddaughter due to the mother's abandonment will be discussed. In this part, transgenerational transmissions will be discussed, as well as family repetitions and the reparation movement that the grandmother carries out in the family. The work showed that grandparenthood brings challenges that are related to the reasons for exercising this role, generational differences and the new positions that grandparents begin to occupy in the family. However, these challenges enable grandparents to continue a movement of libidinal investment, through psychic work that takes place in intergenerational contact with grandchildren in the face of assumed parenthood.