This article argues that a population of relatively affluent retired people in a small Irish town have employed the possibilities of grandparenting to resolve many of the tensions of contemporary kinship. This includes the tension between the obligations of prescriptive relationships as against the voluntarism of friendship. This is considered against a background shift in kinship studies towards a distinction between kinship as a category and kinship as experience. Kinship as experience often now comprises a series of deep fluctuations during the life course. Experience is also extended by the growth in life expectancy. This makes it still more important that the legacy of an individual's prior experiences of kinship may be partially resolved through the experience of grandparenting. The profound consequences of grandparenting lie not in the relationship to the grandchildren but in the possibilities that grandparenting offers to recalibrate all other kinship relations. These include the relationship with one's own children, the relationship with partners, the legacy of one's prior experience of being a parent, and even the memory of the way one was parented when a child.

中文翻译：

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祖父母作为亲缘关系的解决作为经验

本文认为，爱尔兰一个小镇上的一群相对富裕的退休人员利用祖父母的可能性来解决当代亲属关系的许多紧张关系。这包括规定性关系的义务与友谊的自愿主义之间的紧张关系。这是在亲属关系研究的背景转向区分亲属关系作为一个类别和亲属关系作为经验的背景下考虑的。现在，作为经验的亲属关系通常包括生命过程中的一系列深刻波动。预期寿命的增长也延长了经验。这使得更重要的是，个人先前的亲属经历的遗产可以通过祖父母的经历部分解决。祖父母的深远影响不在于与孙辈的关系，而在于祖父母为重新调整所有其他亲属关系提供的可能性。这些包括与自己孩子的关系、与伴侣的关系、作为父母的先前经验的遗产，甚至是对自己小时候养育子女的方式的记忆。