Abstract

Purpose
To demonstrate how generational as well as gendered
identities impacted on researcher-researched relationships built during
the interview process, engendering specific insights about contemporary
British grandfathering.
Methodology/approach
An ‘ad-hoc’ reflection of interview transcripts and
researcher field notes generated from 31 qualitative interviews with men who
are grandfathers, to reflexively interrogate how various identity markers operated
within my encounters with them, as a young female researcher.
Findings
Men positioned me within a grandparent-grandchild relationship
during the interviews, which afforded specific insights into contemporary
grandfatherhood, including the socio-historical context in which
grandfathering takes place. Whilst perceptions and assumptions about
gender influence how participants perceive researchers, focusing too
rigidly on gender is problematic. It risks re-enforcing potentially stereotypical
assumptions about men and women, thus downplaying the contradictions
and paradoxes inherent in men’s constructions and performances
of their diverse later life identities, as well as obscuring the complex
intersectionalities and power relations that operate in the field.
Originality/value
To argue that the concept of ‘betweenness’ aids in
developing a more robust understanding of the complex and knowable
negotiations of similarity and difference within research encounters.