Compounding Complexity: Examining Multiple Factors Leading to Challenges Within Grandfamilies

Grandparents who are raising their grandchildren in the absence of the biological parents, often referred to as custodial grandparents, are prevalent across the United States. The objective of this project was to establish a grounded theory as a tool for practitioners and researchers to understand the experiences of members of grandfamiles.

In-depth, unstructured interviews with custodial grandparents and grandchildren from 15 grandfamilies were conducted. Classic grounded theory was the methodology used to ask the question, "What are the challenges within grandfamilies and how do they respond to these challenges?"

The theory emerging from the data, Compounding Complexity, provides an explanatory framework of three interrelated categories of factors that affect complexity in grandfamilies: situational, relationship, and emotional complexity. Conflict and change were found to be consistent across the categories of Compounding Complexity.

Next steps include adding data from interviews with biological parents to Compounding Complexity and applying the theory. Understanding relationship, situational, and emotional complexity in the context of conflict and change enables practitioners to advance their work with grandfamiies.