Effects of role importance, satisfaction, and performance on grandparents' psychological well-being

The interactionist theory of satisfaction drawn from symbolic interactionism and Erikson's psychosocial theory of life-span identity development were used to examine the link between grandparents perceptions of their role satisfaction, role performance, and importance attached to the role, and their psychological well-being. The subsample of older adults used in the present analyses was drawn from the Generation 1 and Generation 2 adult samples of the University of Southern California Longitudinal Study of Generations at Time 4 (1991). As expected, a preliminary correlational analysis revealed that the three grandparent role variables (i.e., importance, performance, and satisfaction) were moderately correlated. Contrary to expectations, a multivariate analysis of covariance failed to yield significant differences for grandparents psychological well-being based on their scores for the role variables. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are also addressed.