Přehled o publikaci

While the gender aspects and gender differences have been studied in the Czech Republic with the results that roles, activities or experiences of ageing and older age as well as expectations are highly gendered, only limited attention was paid to men specifically. The aim of our project is to explore the contemporary situation of older people, who might be experiencing the situation of role overload (combining various roles in later life, such as paid work, home care etc.). The main research question was how are the structural aspects of changing roles (age of retirement, economic strains, work after retirement or providing care) incorporated, manifested, experienced and interpreted on the level of personal biographies. In this paper we would like to focus more particularly on the experiences of contemporary grandparenthood based on the 11 in-depth interviews with men and 21 interviews with woman. As we see the gender categories as relational and performative, we will focus not only on the self-perception of the grandparents themselves, but also on the ways they make gender meaningful in their narratives, how do they relate to other figures and partners and through which activities (or withdrawal from activities) is the gendered grandparental role performed on everyday level.