Preview

Replacement Parents And Partners: The Role Of Grandmotherhood In Single Parent Families

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1143 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Replacement Parents And Partners: The Role Of Grandmotherhood In Single Parent Families
A Critique of Sarah Harper and Iva Ruicheva Research Journal:
Grandmothers as Replacement Parents and Partners: The Role of Grandmotherhood in Single Parent Families

Lone parent families have long been analysed and researched by how they function and how children from these families are affected and develop. Drawing on a research paper from the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, Harper and Ruicheva (2010) discuss the increasing significance of grandmothers’ involvement and frequent adaptions to becoming replacement partners and parents within lone mother families (Harper and Ruicheva, 2010). This critique analyses the journal, Grandmothers as replacement Parents and Partners: The role of Grandmotherhood in Single Parent Families (Harper and Ruicheva, 2010), summarising and defining the purpose of this journal; whilst examining the information, evidence and relevance of Harpers and Ruicheva findings. This will lead to a conclusion which shall either support or disagree with the author’s research.
This journal is introduced with an abstract to provide an overview of the issues, themes and main points addressing grandmothers’ relationships within lone mother families; however it forgets to identify the
…show more content…
This enforces a view within the readers mind that partner or parent replacement roles are undertaken by grandmothers; which are implied from both parties as mostly positive. Lone mothers welcome roles to decrease feelings of guilt and taking on undesired roles (Harper and Ruicheva, 2010). Grandmothers welcome most responsibility and sometimes feel these roles help to replace missing structure within their own lives. Understanding that interviews took place between lone mother and grandmother, a sense of a misplaced view from the child respective is felt. The child could have agreed or disagreed with the views from participating lone mothers and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    “The Myth Of Co-Parenting: How It Was Supposed To Be. How It Was” by professional writer Hope Edelman, a non-fiction author, essayist, and writing instructor, tells her personal account of being a co-parent. Her main focus is on the hardships of not being in a co-parent situation, and the effort it takes to create a balanced relationship.…

    • 295 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In this essay I will be assessing the contribution of feminist sociologists to an understanding of family roles and relationships. There are different roles in families such as: Conjugal; where both the partners share task such as housework and childcare, the opposite of this would be segregated roles; where the couples have separate roles, the male is breadwinner and has the instrumental role and the female is the housewife and has the expressive role. A dual earner is a couple…. A single parent is a person who has been divorced or been widowed and has to take care of the children they had with the previous partner. Furthermore there are different types of relationships between families such as equal; where the husband and wife both have an equal say and are treated equally, however it can be one-sided; where the husband or wife are more dominant which can lead to domestic violence, it could also be democratic; where the family all vote for something instead of one person taking the decisions, but it can also be patriarchal; where the male take the main decisions and Is the breadwinner. A feminist is a person that argues that sociology has traditionally taken a ‘male stream’ perspective and ignores female viewpoint; they examine women’s experiences and study society from a female’s perspective. There are different types of feminism: Liberal, Marxists, Radical and Difference Feminism. They all tend to be critical of the nature of a women’s role and relationship inside families because they see them as grossly patriarchal, oppressive and unfair, as mentioned in Item B. On the other hand, the different types of feminist don’t agree with each other’s perspective on ideas of families and households, and they tend to clash.…

    • 1733 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    Middle-aged parents (empty nest to retirement): accepting child's independent adult role, letting go of children and couple facing each other, caretaking of elderly parents…

    • 3217 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    People often say things that sometimes can be misleading. When a father or mother tells their child "I can't wait till the day you leave", this often times is not the case. "Contrary to all we hear about women and their empty-nest problems, it may be the fathers more often than mothers who are pained by the children's imminent or actual departure".(Rubin, p.173) Due to the fathers social obligations he is the one who truly misses out his children's upbringing and growth. Lillian Rubin, points out how the father is often times the one who mourns the most when his son or daughter leaves the house. The second question being answered is different when looking at the male and female perspective of a child leaving the home. For the father it is more of a…

    • 1193 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the past 40 years the family structure within the UK has changed quite dramatically for example the number of traditional nuclear families has been steadily declining and in their place the single parent and reconstituted family type have increased in number, also people are living much longer lives so people are able to make more life changing decisions than they could do in previous years. More than 24% of the UK’s entire family population belongs to single parent families, with 1 in 4 children living in a single parent family that the mother heads 90% of. This essay aims to explore some of the reasons and factors behind the change in family structure and the factors that have contributed to greater family diversity.…

    • 2155 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Bronte-Tinkew, J., Scott, M. E., & Lilja, E. (2010). Single custodial fathers ' involvement and parenting: Implications for outcomes in emerging adulthood. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72(5), 1107-1127. Retrieved from…

    • 1797 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to society, it is always natural for the women to be the nurturers and the father to be the provider. Hope Edelman expresses her need for an evenly split marriage hoping her husband would abide.Edelman believed that co-parenting was an attainable goal. She has always thought of co-parenting as a shared responsibility. She clarifies that her husband work hours increased, so she had to cut back on her work hours. Edelman pointed out that she had to pick up the slack around the house due to her husband’s lack of home time. She then discusses the struggles her mother experienced as she was forced into being a housewife. Her father worked constantly and her mother was the chauffer, maid, and cook.”When I was growing up in suburban New York, my mother seemed to do everything. Everything Carpooling, haircuts, vet appointments, ice cream cakes, dinners in the Crock-Pot, book-report dioramas—the whole roll call for a housewife of the 1960s and 1970s” (52). As a result, Edelman barely knew her father. With this in mind, she did not want the same outcome for her daughter. She then sadly speaks about how truly difficult it is to split marriage equally.…

    • 571 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The rate of single-guardian families has duplicated in the past three decades, yet that rate tripled sometime throughout the 1900 and 1950's. Separation moreover is not a late wonder since it must be more fundamental in the eighteenth century. Among various changes around then, people had less control over their adult married youths in light of the fact that there was little land or other property to obtain and the essentialness of wistful reverence extended. Families are diverse, yet in the meantime are amazingly flexible, disregarding different troubles. They adjust with normal nerves and guarantee their normally weak individual the disabled, ill, old, or young. They overcome monetary related hardships. They handle routinely hard times and…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “In Defense of Single Motherhood”, Katie Roiphe argues that single motherhood can be just as suitable as the “typical” American family . Roiphe states that, “…There is no typical single mother any more than there is a typical mother. It is, in fact, our fantasies and crude stereotypes of this “typical single mother” that get in the way of a more rational, open-minded understanding of a variety and richness of different kinds of families” (58). Roiphe is correct in her argument, because my observations have shown that single motherhood can be just as good as the ‘typical” American family. The ideal family has to be financially stable, educated, and loved. A single mother is able to processes these three components, just like the “typical” American mother of a family would be able too.…

    • 515 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Issue Paper

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Growing up, children need to be influenced by others in order to learn and mature. They need parents to be there and support the children’s every step in development. In some families, children are able to grow up with the same biological parents and learn to have a sense of comfort, in that there will always be “mom and dad,” waiting for them when they get home. However, in the United States “forty or possibly even fifty percent of marriages will end in divorce” (Marriage101). Leaving many children with questions that single parents sometimes just cannot answer. Even though most children from broken household do well in life, there still are lasting effects on the child.…

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Sole Parent Research Paper

    • 2396 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Fathers tend to have an older age profile than mothers, and this was observed for both lone and partnered parents. Overall, lone and partnered mothers were distributed in a similar pattern by age, as were lone and partnered fathers. The peak age group was 35–44 years for each of these groups of parents. However, this peak age group accounted for slightly fewer lone than partnered mothers (41% compared with 50%), with lone mothers distributed slightly more to both younger and older age groups. This meant that lone mothers accounted for a greater proportion of all mothers in both younger and older age groups than in the 35–44 year age group, where they accounted for 16%. Notably, although only 10% of lone mothers were aged 15–24 years, they accounted for 39% of mothers of this…

    • 2396 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Mother and Parent Family

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages

    As a single parent of a teenage daughter with an absent father, I can relate to the many problems facing most single parents today. The bonds my daughter and I have formed are stronger than I could have ever prayed for, however I often ponder the pros and cons of a two parent family. Whether the burdens and joys of parenting lie on a single parent or a two parent family, the bond of parent and child is one of Gods greatest gifts.…

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In the last three decades, family life in the United States has changed dramatically. Currently over eight point five million families with children under eighteen years of age are maintained by single parents, eighty percent of which are single as a result of separation or divorce (Hamner & Turner, 1990). A significant contributing factor to single parent households is the estimated…

    • 1848 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    All parents can benefit from any helpful information, guidance, and resources as they encounter the challenges of parenthood and family life. A “Historically, family reunification has been regarded as an “either–or” process, in which children are either reunified with their families or placed into other permanent families such as kinship or adoptive placements”. A “However, contemporary arguments calling for a less compartmentalized approach have transformed the meaning of family reunification into a continuum that might include varied outcomes such as physical reunification of the family, periodic visitation with the family of origin, or maintaining partial contact via written or telephone correspondence. This perspective considers family reunification to be a dynamic process, and it acknowledges that each child and family has unique needs, that not every parent can be a full-time caregiver, and that families can still maintain attachment ties even when living apart”.…

    • 506 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Family and Grandparents

    • 3824 Words
    • 16 Pages

    McLanahan S.S. and G. Sandefur. (1994.) Growing Up with a single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.…

    • 3824 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics