ABSTRACT
In recent decades, we have seen a dramatic change in the age structure of families in the industrialized world. Thanks to increasing longevity and the verticalization of the family-more generations but fewer members of each generation-there are more grandparents than ever before and more kinds of grandparents than ever before. Most adults in their 30s have living grandparents, and many also have great-grandparents, step-grandparents, or grand-
parents who act as surrogate parents (Giarrusso, Feng, Silverstein, & Bengtson, 2001). The sheer availability of older adults within a family, then, makes it likely that children will have the opportunity to form a relationship with at least one grandparent well into their adult years.
