Jorosvanne Er

LOLO’T LOLA KO NA, NANAY AT TATAY KO PA: Intergenerational Solidarity in Households where Grandparents Served as Parental Surrogates to their Grandchildren whose Parents are OFW from Selected Cities of Metro Manila

Erro, J.C. (2016). Lolo’t Lola ko na, Nanay at Tatay Pa: Intergenerational Solidarity in Households where Grandparents Served as Parental Surrogates to their Grandchildren whose Parents are OFW from Selected Cities of Metro Manila, Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

This study aims to understand how the grandparents who serve as parental surrogates perceive their roles in the lives of their grandchildren whose parents are Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) by taking into consideration the intergenerational communication within the household. Also, this study comprehends the prevalent family structure and living arrangement of the grandparents co-residing with their grandchildren from the selected cities of Metro Manila namely, Quezon City, Pasig City, Caloocan City, and Malabon City. The intricate extended family set-up of the families with an average of five to seven members is usually composed of the unmarried children, cousins, and immediate relatives. The process of entrusting the care of the grandchildren to their grandparents as well as their coping and adjustment progression was also tackled in order to comprehend the role transition of the elderly from being a grandparent to parental surrogate. Through Bengston’s Intergenerational Solidarity model, the grandparent-grandchild relationship is further probed in terms of their emotional and physical closeness, values system, mode of discipline, concurrence and deviance of the grandparent’s self perceived roles and the perspective of the grandchildren, as well as the convergence and divergence of parenting and grandparenting. This study elucidates that despite the physical absence of the parents, the presence of the grandparents as parental surrogates to their grandchildren is generally sufficient to maintain a harmonious household and elicit contentment in the lives of the grandchildren.

Keywords: Intergenerational Solidarity, Intergenerational Triad, Parental Surrogacy, Grandparent-Grandchild Relationship, OFW, Parental Migration, Living Arrangement, Extended Family Structure, Intergenerational Communication

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