Chinese Grandparents’ Involvement in Their Adult Children’s Parenting Practices in the United States

Abstract

This intergenerational study investigated Chinese grandparents’ involvement in their adult children’s parenting practices in the United States. The involvement was family defined and included different kinds of services, conversations, and interactions between family members (regarding adult children’s parenting). Attention was given to the cultural, familial, and individual beliefs as well as the contextual factors that influenced this involvement. We adopted tenets of ethnography as methodology and used semi-structured interviews and observations for data collection. Nine families originally from Mainland China and Taiwan were interviewed. The findings revealed the families’ life stories and indicated a positive relationship between grandparents’ involvement and their family-defined wellbeing. Further implications included culturally sensitive interventions for clinicians and researchers working with Chinese multi-generational households.