Marital Instability and the Changing Kinship Networks of Grandparents

Abstract

The findings focus on the effects divorces of children have on the kinship networks of the older generation. In a sample of white, middle-class families, three years after a child's divorce, 48% of the kinship networks of the grandparents had expanded. A common source of expansion was among paternal grandmothers who retained relationships with their former daughters-in-law and her relatives at the same time that they added new relatives with sons' remarriages.