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This fascinating book, written by Judith Edwards, explores the role, or the potential role, grandmothers can play within a family. This feels highly relevant in today’s world of complex childcare arrangements, multicultural families and stretched family budgets. The book examines the grandparenting position through a number of different lenses, as it explores how precarious and uncertain the role can sometimes be.
In general, the book is written in such a way as to reach a wide audience and is not limited to those professionals who are psychoanalytically trained, concentrating more on the emotional aspects of the relationship than on a psychoanalytic construct. This makes the work a valuable asset for teachers, mothers, aunties, and anyone within the community who wants to be able to reach in and access the richness of ideas that Grandmotherland offers.
Edwards’ research is extensive, crossing timelines and cultures, to illustrate her investigations into one of the most intimate of family relationships. She doesn’t just focus on the positives, but also examines the catastrophe when these relationships fail and the stress of the modern legal attempts to resurrect them, illustrating how fundamentally important these relationships are or can be.
The author draws on the actual experiences of individuals and families which are described in unusual detail to try to capture the essence of what it means to be ‘a grandmother’. Each chapter takes a different facet of the role of the grandmother,
sometimes leaving the reader feeling that the grandmother herself has but a small voice in defining what is actually a very important role within a family.
Chapters are organised in terms of subjects, allowing the reader to delve into the book at any point when looking for information or support in specific situations. Following the introduction, Edwards, via the voice of those she has interviewed or spoken with, brings to the table various aspects of the role of grandmothers. One part