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This study adopts a narrative approach to understanding women’s life experiences from a feminist perspective. How Taiwanese women of different generations have lived their lives and what has and has not changed was investigated through a gender lens. The narrators include the author and her grandmother, born in 1975 and 1927, respectively. They each re-experience and reconfirm the markings of their pasts, psychological conditions, and bodies through deep dialogue. The two stories span approximately 50 years and manifest the patriarchal culture in Taiwanese society at different times.

This study finds that although the stories of these two women from different generations appear distinct in their own way, similar ‘dilemmas’ can be observed in their gender experiences: for example, women get married to men’s family; the value system of lineage and succession creates a tendency to expect to have boys; women need to get married to get their status recognition; and through home, women learn gender roles and gender norms.

However, the study shows progress: women’s education brings economic independence and yields a sense of accomplishment from work or school; women of different generations have different perceptions during the awakening of gender consciousness. The current findings contribute to understanding the working principles of gender relations, which reinforce the patriarchal system despite its appearance changing over time.

Purpose: In recent decades, it has been a burgeoning trend in South Korea that older women are more actively engaged in grandparenting (i.e., caring for grandchildren) as they are living longer and healthier lives. The present study examines how grandparenting is associated with the mental health of grandmothers.

Design/methodology/approach: Drawing from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (2008–2012, N = 2,814), we used growth curve models to estimate the trajectories of grandmothers’ depressive symptoms by grandparenting type.

Findings: The results show that caregiving grandmothers in multigenerational households experience a decline in depressive symptoms with age, despite having a higher mean level of depressive symptoms than non-caregiving grandmothers at age 47; whereas the non-caregiving grandmothers experience an increase in depressive symptoms with age. Grandmothers who provide non-coresident grandparenting (i.e., babysitting) are not significantly different from non-caregiving grandmothers in the rate of increase in depressive symptoms.

Originality/value: Grandparenting in multigenerational households may have a beneficial effect on older women’s mental health over time in South Korea. This finding is robust after we control for socioeconomic status, health behaviors, and social support.

Popular self-help pregnancy literature suggests a “generational disconnect” between pregnant women and their mothers, emphasizing the incommensurate experiences of the two generations. Based on longitudinal, in-depth interviews with a diverse group of 64 pregnant women and 23 grandmothers-to-be, this chapter explores how different generations of women negotiate the idea of a disconnect and its implications for the medicalization of pregnancy. My findings showed limited support for the generational disconnect. Nearly all of the pregnant women I interviewed who were in contact with their mothers consulted them to assess issues related to pregnancy embodiment. Black and Latina women and white women with less than a college degree disregarded or even rejected the disconnect; they tended to frame their mothers’ advice as relevant. Their mothers attended prenatal care appointments and frequently expressed skepticism about medical directives. By contrast, I found that highly educated white women tended to endorse the generational disconnect when it came to matters related to pregnancy health behaviors – what to eat, how much to exercise – and their obstetric care. The mothers of these women not only largely supported the generational disconnect, but also bonded with their daughter over a shared appreciation for scientific understandings of pregnancy. Foregrounding women’s perspectives provides insights into meaning-making in pregnancy and the ways that mothers of pregnant women can both stymie and deepen medicalization of childbearing.

This paper aims to examine the interplay of emotions and consumption within intergenerational exchanges. It shows how emotions pervade the trajectories of grandmothers’ relational identities with their grandchildren through consumption practices.

This study analyses qualitative data gathered via 28 long interviews with French grandmothers and 27 semi-structured interviews with their grandchildren. This study draws on attachment theory to interpret the voices of both grandmothers and their grandchildren within these dyads.

This study uncovers distinct relational identities of grandmothers linked to emotions and the age of the grandchild, as embedded in consumption. It identifies the defining characteristics of the trajectory of social/relational identities and finds these to be linked to grandchildren’s ages.

This study elicits the emotion profiles, which influence grandmothers’ patterns of consumption in their relationships with their grandchildren. It further uncovers distinct attachment styles (embedded in emotions) between grandmothers and grandchildren in the context of their consumption experiences. Finally, it provides evidence that emotions occur at the interpersonal level. This observation is an addition to existing literature in consumer research, which has often conceived of consumer emotions as being only a private matter and as an intrapersonal phenomenon.

The findings offer avenues for the development of strategies for intergenerational marketing, particularly promotion campaigns which link either the reinforcement or the suppression of emotion profiles in advertising messages with the consumption of products or services by different generations.

This study suggests that public institutions might multiply opportunities for family and consumer experiences to combat specific societal issues related to elderly people’s isolation.

In contrast to earlier work, which has examined emotions within the ebb and flow of individual and multiple social identities, this study examines how emotions and consumption play out in social/relational identity trajectories.

Among U.S. children, research indicates that early childhood experiences, including the child care environment, affect later educational outcomes. Yet, research on educational stratification in low-income countries rarely features the preschool years. We investigate the organization of child care among preschoolers in China. In-depth interviews reveal that grandmother care and formal care are highly desirable. Formal care, in particular, is perceived to provide educational advantage. Using China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data, and mixed random effects logit models, we explore the determinants of grandmother care and formal care. Results suggest poverty is associated with gender bias; in low-income households, boys without siblings are especially likely to receive formal care. These results call for greater attention to early childhood in research on educational stratification in China and other low-income settings.

Purpose: Grandparents are common providers of childcare within the Caribbean region. Yet research on the implications of grandparent caregiving for older adults’ well-being is limited. This study examined gender differences in the relationship between grandparent caregiving and the life satisfaction of older adults in Jamaica.

Methodology: Using a sample of 1,622 grandparents 60 years and older drawn from the 2012 study “The Health and Social Status of Older Jamaicans,” we estimated binary logistic regression models to examine the association between the frequency of grandparent caregiving and the life satisfaction of grandparents.

Findings: Grandmothers were more likely than grandfathers to provide care. We did not find a statistically significant gender difference in the life satisfaction of caregiving grandparents. Yet, gender differences in the patterns of association between grandparent caregiving and life satisfaction were evident. Among grandmothers, both occasional and regular caregiving was associated with higher life satisfaction relative to non-caregivers. Among grandfathers, however, only regular caregiving was positively associated with life satisfaction.

Originality: This is the first population-based study within the Caribbean to examine gendered patterns of grandparent caregiving and the association with grandparents’ well-being. The findings of this study suggest that grandparent caregiving is beneficial to the well-being of older Jamaican men and women. This study challenges assumptions of gender norms that typically do not position men to be involved in caregiving roles, and to derive satisfaction from such roles, within Caribbean households. The authors suggest more attention should be given to interventions to encourage men to be actively involved in family caregiving.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework on the experience of cross‐border shopping. This experience is constructed on narratives, rituals, and intergenerational transfers that move beyond the simple description of experienced events to provide explanatory frameworks of family identity construction.

Nine in‐depth interviews are conducted with three generations of North Mexican women from three families who shop frequently across the border.

The findings highlight different processes associated with the experience of cross‐border shopping. First, each family works throughout the years to construct its own identity using the tales of their shared experiences. Second, an intergenerational transfer of knowledge going from grandmothers to mothers to granddaughters in each family occurs as result of the experiences lived together. Third, common knowledge is developed both by Mexican consumers and North American retailers that translates into particular commercial practices. Finally, all our contributors are immersed in a national culture, the North Mexican, sharing and transmitting values like thriftiness, malinchismo, and the relevance of family ties. These values affect their shopping patterns, generating important consequences for both the Mexican and North American economies.

The authors' intent is to contribute to the understanding of the process of family identity construction through consumption. This consumption occurs in a particular context; cross‐border shopping. The experience is singular in the sense that families spend considerable amount of time together while traveling and establishing their shopping routines. This work depicts the shopping rituals passed down from generation‐to‐generation and the derived construction of meaning within the family.

This chapter shares the stories of a Mi'kmaq grandmother's reflections of stories from Elders of the Mi'kmaq Nation to share with Masie, born at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in Mi'kma'ki. These stories form a story-net of teachings and reflections to help guide Masie on her journey as a Mi'kmaq girl growing up in a kind and sometimes unkind world. These stories represent a gift in a written form from a grandmother to a beautiful soul who will need help to navigate a world of uncertainty, but a world with tremendous beauty when seen through a Mi'kmaq historical perspective.

In recent years, the topic of maternal imprisonment has experienced a significantly raised profile, generating new knowledge and understanding surrounding the impact of maternal imprisonment on mothers and their children (Baldwin, 2015, 2017, 2018; Baldwin & Epstein, 2017; Booth, 2017; Lockwood, 2017, 2018; Masson, 2019). However, the long-term impact of maternal imprisonment and subsequent resettlement, particularly in relation to maternal identity and emotion, is less well-researched or understood. This chapter, drawing on the authors research from across two projects with 46 post imprisoned mothers, highlights the significant impact, as described by the mothers, on their reintegration into their families and the persistent pains of maternal imprisonment. Mothers sometimes, decades post release, describe their ongoing trauma at being separated from their children, sometimes permanently. Those who remain in their children's lives describe how they feel ‘tainted’, ‘watched’, ‘judged’ and ‘permanently changed by their imprisonment’. For the mothers in the study who were also grandmothers, the effects appeared magnified, producing what grandmothers described as ‘layers of shame’. The chapter describes how this change, often negative perception of themselves as mothers, can interplay with mothers' ability to engage in rehabilitative processes and ultimately their desistance.

The chapter concludes with recommendations to avoid, wherever possible, the criminalisation of mothers, resulting in fewer imprisonments. In the event of imprisonment, greater consideration must be afforded to maternal experience and emotions. To maximise success, early resettlement work, starting within and continuing through the prison gates is essential. Failure to do so may impact negatively on mothers' themselves and their ability to engage in rehabilitative planning/supervision and therefore desistance, which will ultimately broaden the impact to their children and wider society.