Adolescent grandchildren’s perceptions of grandparents’ involvement in UK: an interpretation from life course and evolutionary theory perspective

In this article, we study grandparental involvement from the viewpoint of evolutionary theory and sociological life course
perception. We have used ‘the Involved Grandparenting and Child Well-Being 2007’ survey, which is the first nationally representative
sample of British and Welsh adolescents aged 11–16 (n = 1,488). First, we explore with the descriptive statistics the amount of grandparental involvement reported by adolescents.
The result follows the predicted pattern: maternal grandparent is reported to involve in a grandchild’s life the most, second
maternal grandfather, third paternal grandmother and the last paternal grandfather. Second, we focus more closely on separate
grandparents and show with four linear regression models which factors are connected to each grandparent’s involvement. Grandchild’s
age, grandparent’s health, grandparent’s labour force participation and distance between a grandparent and a grandchild were
factors that have similar effects in relation to all grandparents. Marital status mattered only for grandfathers, whereas
family structure of a grandchild has opposite effects in relation to maternal and paternal grandparents. Grandchild’s sex,
grandparent’s age, the number of grandchildren and the number of living grandparents all mattered, but only with respect to
some grandparents. The study shows that it is advantageous to merge sociological and evolutionary viewpoints when studying
a grandparental involvement in a modern society.