Women's work: the role of grandparents in inter-generational transfers1

This article surveys the role of grandparents in providing a continuing level of material support in 61 households with dependent children in an inner city area. It concludes that assistance is structured by gender, income level, household financial organisation, residential proximity, need and ideology. In terms of the provision of continuing support to households with young children, grandparents are important but grandmothers give more assistance than grandfathers and they direct it where it is most needed. It is important for grandmothers to have access to paid work. The ideology of assistance is differentiated by class. In professional families the married couple is the unit of transfer but for working class families the solidarity of female relatives, in particular, of daughters and mothers and mothers-in-law, is more important.