ABSTRACT
One clear message of this book is that multigenerational family relationships are increasingly common occurrences in modern society. The previous two chapters concentrate on older adult child–elderly parent relationships and grandparent–grandchild relationships. The intergenerational communication that transpires in these two familial relationships is often performed within a rather complex and dynamic family structure. Parents sometimes have their own parents present when they talk to their children, who in turn may have their own children present during the same interaction. In other words, the simple dyadic relationships often discussed by scholars in the empirical literature, and highlighted in the previous two chapters of this book, take place within a larger triadic or quadratic family-relationship system. Grandparents, parents, and children have a remarkable habit of interacting simultaneously or, at the very least, of modifying their communicative behavior because of the fact that others in the family are active participants in everyone else’s lives. The simple dyad of parent–child or grandparent–grandchild operating in an interactive vacuum without being affected by various other intergenerational relationships occurring around them is a convenient but rather simplistic way to begin the study of such relationships—it is not reality. Families increasingly consist of several levels of intergenerational interaction affecting each other in complex and hitherto underexplored ways. For example, family members’ identities across the life span are constructed in these multiple communication contexts—in a system of interlinked dyadic, triadic, and other multiple-interaction structures. The scholarly literature has produced only a minimal amount of discussion concerning multiple, intergenerational relationships, simultaneously affecting and being affected by one another. As part of this multilevel systemic structure we are as much affected by interactions that we do not have a direct part in as those that we do. For example, we are not always privy to those conversations other family members have about us in which they can construct scenarios and make decisions that affect us directly. This sandwich effect of a grandparent–parent relationship with consequences for a parent–child relationship, and vice versa, is the topic of this chapter.
