ABSTRACT
For many of us, the grandparent–grandchild relationship is the one relationship we can immediately point to as being truly intergenerational. In any classroom of a Western industrialized nation, if the students are asked to think about an intergenerational interaction within which they have recently participated, their interaction with one of their grandparents will be one of the first to come to mind. Whereas social scientists have only recently begun systematic explorations of the grandparent–grandchild relationship, this relationship has played a central role in the family system throughout recorded history. During the latter part of the 20th century, numerous economic, political, health-related, and structural-familial changes have occurred in our lives that have pushed social scientists to take a much closer look at the grandparent–grandchild relationship, and at the intergenerational communication that transpires within the relationship. It would not be an overstatement to suggest that many of our general conceptions of growing old and of what it may be like to be old are formed with reference to our relationships with our grandparents.
