Introduction

The intensity and style of care for grandchildren, as well as the precipitating conditions of grandparental involvement vary substantially across countries and regions of the world. The basic functional typology used to describe grandparents who devote substantial time to the care of their grandchildren generally classifies them into two types: ‘child savers’, who provide extensive childcare when parents are incapacitated or unavailable to raise their children (Minkler and Roe, 1993), and ‘mother savers’, who provide childcare so that parents (usually mothers) are able to work for pay outside the home or pursue educational opportunities (Gordon et al, 2004) (see Chapters One and Two). However useful this dichotomy, it does not comfortably fit patterns of grandparenting in parts of the developing world where grandparents are simultaneously child and mother savers, and may personally benefit as a result of their efforts.

Grandparent caregivers in rural China present examples of what might be called ‘family maximisers’, as they are embedded in an integrated multigenerational, multihousehold economic system within which resources are mutually shared. This type of caregiver is exemplified by grandparents caring full time for the children of their migrant sons in China from whom significant financial support is received in the form of remittances. Childcare provided by these grandparents enables the family to maximise its economic potential from which grandparents also materially gain (Cong and Silverstein, 2008, 2011). However, less is known about the emotional costs and benefits to grandparents associated with custodial caregiving in societies where such a role is culturally meaningful and economically rewarding, as in China.

In this chapter we examine the psychological wellbeing of grandparents in rural China who provide custodial care to their grandchildren, taking into account the unique social circumstances that have positioned them as pivotal family actors. In doing so, we investigate how the emotional wellbeing of grandparent caregivers is shaped by the positive factors that have selected them into the caregiver role and by the remittances provided by migrant sons and their wives who have left their children behind in natal villages and in the charge of grandparents. To draw attention to rural China as a distinct social context, we also compare grandparent caregivers in rural China to those in the United States, a group that experiences custodial grandparenting under starkly different societal conditions and family circumstances.