Cross-cultural differences in adolescents' perceptions of their grandparents

Partial results from a larger Finnish-Polish study on the relations between grandchildren, parents, and grandparents are presented here. The results are based on a content analysis of essays written by 731 Finnish and Polish adolescents between eleven and twenty-one. Older children used more abstract descriptions, girls mentioned more personality features and feelings than boys, and grandmothers, especially maternal grandmothers were described in the most positive terms. The central new finding was that there are highly significant cross-cultural differences in the descriptions of grandparents: the Poles describe them in more abstract terms even after controlling for age and gender. Polish adolescents make more mention of their feelings, their personality and their skills as well as of emotional/intellectual input from them; they use more positive terms than do the Finns, but make less mention of activities and appearance. These differences between the two cultures are mediated by contact frequency, which through its working on the proximal level enables co-construction of the relationship and the transmission of interactional styles.