Authors

• Fågel, Stina (Family Federation of Finland. Population Research Institute)

Keywords

ageing, children, elderly, families, grandchildren, grandparents

Abstract

The data comprise 185 texts written by people taking part in the writing competition titled "Isovanhemmuuden uudet haasteet" [New Challenges of Grandparenting]. The invitation for the competition was published in a Finnish magazine.

Especially those grandparents who were born in the 1940s and 50s were invited to participate, but texts from grandparents in general were accepted. The participants were asked to write about their experiences as grandparents as well as the joys and sorrows related to being a grandparent. The participants were provided nine different topics to write about, such as what it means to be a grandparent, how often the participants saw their grandchildren, how grandparenting had changed over the years, and whether the participants felt they had succeeded or failed as grandparents.

Most of the texts in the dataset were written by people who had biological grandchildren, but some texts were written about the experiences of not having biological children or grandchildren and having a close relationship with the children of relatives or friends instead. The dataset also contains a few texts written by younger persons who wrote from the grandchild's point of view.

The dataset is only available in Finnish.