title: Grandparenting across borders: American grandparents and their Israeli grandchildren in a transnational reality.
abstract: Families are increasingly dispersed across national borders. Americans in Israel are one migrant group that represents the worldwide phenomenon of transnationalism. Grandparents separated geographically from their grandchildren develop new means of communication with them and new kinds of relationships. This study uses ethnographic interviews with the grandparents of transnational, American-Israeli children and youth to offer an in-depth examination of the experience of grandparenting across borders. We find that grandparenting children who are both geographically distant and raised in a foreign culture necessitates the development of new ways of maintaining relationships with grandchildren. This study considers the impact of transnational migration on the extended family, on those left behind, who struggle with redefining their roles as grandparents and with the sense of being deprived of the roles they had expected to play.
authors.affiliation: University of Haifa, The Center for the Study of Society, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. Electronic address: laura.sigad@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Laura I
authors.initials: LI
authors.lastname: Sigad
authors.forename: Rivka A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Eisikovits
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001010:Anxiety, Separation / Q000523:psychology; D001290:Attitude; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016901:Intergenerational Relations; D007557:Israel; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D010465:Perception; D014171:Transients and Migrants / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014481:United States; D014857:Warfare
keywords: American migrants in Israel; Transnational grandparenting; Transnational migrants; Transnationalism; Transnationalism and the family