Religiosity as a Health-Promoting Resource for Custodial Grandparents

Grant Description:

Merril Silverstein, Ph.D., Syracuse University Professor of Sociology and Human Development & Family Science and Cornell University’s Rachel Dunifon, Ph.D., Department of Policy Analysis and Management.

This project will examine religiosity as a coping resource that protects the physical and mental health of grandparents who are raising their grandchildren and/or living in skipped generation households in the United States. We take a multi-method approach that makes use of in-depth interviews of custodial grandparents and their families in New York State and multiple waves of quantitative data on this sub-population from the Health and Retirement Study. We will produce a mixed methods paper on the topic that will from the basis for a wider project on the resilience factors among custodial grandparents.