Abstract
Emotional development is started at a young age and the people we are surrounded by at that stage play a massive role in the outcome of our development of ourselves and future relationships we have with others. Using the data that was gathered it will show the fundamental importance of how interacting with our grandparents may help our development. The survey made by google forms will show data that supports the importance of grandparent relationships. The participants answered variou questions that demonstrate the many findings of the different relationships one had with their grandparent to themselves. Different studies have also shown how grandparents give emotional support to grandchildren as parents are absent within the household.
Extended family homes involving grandparents are in many cultures for many reasons, including young parents, single parents seeking guidance, financial reasons, and also caring for one another if one is ill or just elderly. Emotional development starts at a young age, In Erikson's first stage of psychosocial development he mentions the importance of it because it’s the base of the child's future relationships. In my paper we will discuss how individuals are emotionally affected while frequently seeing their grandparents.
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There are a number of reasons why a grandparent might frequent in a grandchild's life whether it be frequent visit or living among each other. (Mullen,1996)In 1970 it was reported 2.2 million children were living with grandparents. By 1993 the number had grown significantly by 3-4 million. (Dunne,Kettler,2008)Grandchildren might live with their grandparents because of parental death, sexual, physical, alcohol abuse or mental illness. Because of these underlying trauma and the time they endured it they might have issues present. They have found that children in care of their grandparents scored lower on a delinquent scale compared to those children living with non family members. (Henderson,Hayslip,Sanders,Louden,2009) Divorce also has negative short and long term effects on children and how they might view their bonds with their parents.
Grandparents provide support for their grandchildren in many ways.(De guzman, Obmerga, Estar,2018) They are viewed as pillars of wisdom and natural educators because of their wide range of experiences. Because of their presence grandchildren were able to have a demeanor of generosity, and warmth. (Dunne, Kettler,2008)Also Thanks to grandparents frequanting in grandchildren lives negative issues such as aggression, criminal activity and withdrawn behavior was seen less in those children.(Henderson,Hayslip,Sanders,Louden,2009) Grandchildren from divorced family show positive signs from increased involvement from their grandparents because their receive normality, emotional support as they adjust.
Hypothesis
Individuals who spend more time with their grandparents tend to have more emotional stability.
Participants
There were 37 participants, 7 being male, 29 females. The majority of the participants were from Avc and a few were facebook users. The age ranged from the youngest being 19 to the oldest being 58. There was a wide range of ethnicities the largest being 24 of hispanic/latino descent.
Procedure
Once the survey was complete it was emailed to the professor if he could send it out to the other students in the class. An email was sent out to AVC students and a link was also posted to a personal facebook page. From there they could click on the link and it would direct them to a new page with the survey. Then they would answer all the given questions to the best of their ability and press submit when done. Once I received enough response I closed the survey.
Results
16 of the 37 responses answered that they never see their grandparents but the other 21 see their grandparents ranging from everyday to every few months. So the majority do see their grandparents . Participants were also asked if they feel their relationship with their grandparent is important and the majority answered Yes.
I then asked the participants if they had kids, the majority did not. The few that did evened out when answering how often their kids see their grandparents. 4 answered often and another 4 answered not very often.The participants were also asked how they feel their emotional support was with their grandparents compared to their parents 16 answered that they felt they had more emotional support, 14 felt they had the same and only 7 said they had less.
The survey then proceeds to ask the participants questions about how they viewed themselves and their surroundings. When asked about how they felt about their social support it had them look at 1-5 questions, 1 being very little/no social support and 5 being a very strong social support 12 answered with 5, 10 answered with 4 while only 2 answered with 1.
When asked if they were confident about trying new things again the majority of the participants leaned more towards 5 and 4. 1 meaning that they did not feel confident trying new things while 5 meant they were very confident in trying new things. 10 participants checked 5 while 9 checked 4. For more information on what the participants answered please check the graph below.
Discussion
In conclusion the data suggest that it's beneficial for individuals to frequently spend time with their grandparents. The data suggests that individuals do in fact find their grandparents important even though most do not visit their grandparents frequently. Most participants did show strong results in their emotional stability. In the future to achieve stronger data it will be more effective to conduct a survey to a larger network around those who have children already.
References
- De Guzman, A., Obmerga, E, M., Ester, C., Roncesvalles, C. Villareal, N, B., (2018). As You sow, Shall you reap: Understanding the social- emotional development of a select group of filipinio grandchildren reared by grandparent educators. Gerontology, Volume 44, 514-525. 10.1080/03601277.
- Dunne,G,E., Kettler,J,L., (2008). Grandparents raising grandchildren in Australia: Exploring psychological health and grandparents experience of providing kinship care. Journal of social welfare, Volume 17(4), 333-345. 10.111/J..1468-2397
- Mullen, F., (1996). Public Benefits: Grandparents, grandchildren, and welfare reform. Generations, Volume 20(1), 61-64.
- Henderson,E,C.,Hayslip,B.,Sanders,M,L.,(2009). Grandmother-Grandchild relationship quality predicts psychological adjustment among youth from divorced families. Family issues, volume 30(9), 1245-1264. 10.1177/0192513
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