Parentification and Grandparents’ Support from the Perspective of Grandchildren from Families of Various Structures

The purpose of this study was to determine the strength of the relationship between a retrospective evaluation of the experienced social support given by grandparents and the material status of the family with the quality of life of the grown-up grandchildren in families of different structures. The formulated expectations have been verified with the Social Support Scale (SSS), Student’s Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS) and an individual personal survey. The obtained results show that in families of single mothers, the emotional and informative support offered by grandparents was a significant factor improving the quality of the life of the grandchildren. In a complete family, however, the significant forms of support from grandparents were esteem support and its other forms, except for informative support. Moreover, the material wealth of the original family was shown to be an important predictor of the evaluation of the quality of life of the grandchildren; it was judged more negatively by adolescent children of single mothers.