Abstract

This chapter focuses on men who are grandfathering and includes the stories of men whose families have been affected and restructured by divorce, either their own divorce or the breakdown of their children’s relationships. My analysis of the empirical data confirms that men do want to be involved in their grandchildren’s lives and this is achieved through various practices. It further reveals that this form and functioning of grandfathering is regulated by the quality and character of intergenerational relationships (conceptualised by Katz and Lowenstein, 2010, through models of intergenerationality solidarity), which influences how men perform and construct their identities in a variety of ways. A ‘new’ identities approach (Fairhurst, 2003) is suggested to make sense of how the contemporary context shapes the familial and intergenerational relationships of men in middle- and old-age, and consequently constructs multiple grandfathering roles and experiences. The chapter therefore focuses on grandfathering, identity construction and masculinities, and the contradictions that some men face in resolving these.