Madonna Harrington Meyer, Syracuse University

Title

Grandparenting Children with Disabilities: Impacts on Retirement
Madonna Harrington Meyer, Syracuse University

Abstract

Because of the paucity of social programs, US grandparents provide a great deal of care, particularly for grandchildren with disabilities. Helping with feeding, bathing, dressing, play, schoolwork, therapies, supervision, and medical care may impact grandparent financial, social, emotional, and physical well being. 

Fifty in-depth interviews suggest that while grandparents with good health and substantial resources may be able to provide such care with minimal impacts, those with more health conditions and fewer economic resources may find it difficult to juggle paid work and care work; feel pressured to retire early, change jobs, or move to other cities; or feel pressured to delay retirement due to increasing expenditures, growing debt, and the need for health insurance.

BIO

Madonna Harrington Meyer is University Professor at Syracuse University. She is co-author, with Ynesse Abdul-Malak, of Grandparenting Children with Disabilities (2020). She is co-editor, with Ynesse Abdul-Malak of Grandparenting in the United States (2016). She is author of Grandmothers at Work: Juggling Families and Jobs (2014), winner of the Gerontological Society of America’s Kalish Book Award. She is co-author with Pamela Herd of Market Friendly or Family Friendly? The State and Gender Inequality in Old Age (2007), which also won the Kalish Book Award. 

Her work appears in American Sociological Review, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Gender & Society, and Social Problems. Her research has been reported in New York Times, NPR, and US News and World Report. She is the 2016 winner of the ASA Section on Aging and the Life Course Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Award.