Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society Vol. 21, No. 10, pp. 1032/1034 DOI: 10.1097/gme.0000000000000331 * 2014 by The North American Menopause Society
EDITORIAL Grandmothering and health in midlife
A
s baby-boomer women are becoming grandparents, there arises yet another opportunity to assess the effects of women’s life roles on the health of a cohort of individuals who experienced a discontinuity of roles with their mothers’ generation. Baby boomers have been unique in entering the labor force and remaining in it during the course of their reproductive years while simultaneously parenting children.1 The Women’s Movement of the 1960s and 1970s encouraged women to pursue individual goals and selfactualization, to demand opportunities in the workplace equal to men’s, and to engage in egalitarian relationships with men.2 During the 1970s, women learned that their performance of multiple roles (employment, parenting, and partnering) during their young adult years did affect their health, but that these effects were contingent on the broader context of their lives, including their norms on what was an appropriate role for women in the society and the support they received from their partners.3
EDITORIAL Grandmothering and health in midlife
A
s baby-boomer women are becoming grandparents, there arises yet another opportunity to assess the effects of women’s life roles on the health of a cohort of individuals who experienced a discontinuity of roles with their mothers’ generation. Baby boomers have been unique in entering the labor force and remaining in it during the course of their reproductive years while simultaneously parenting children.1 The Women’s Movement of the 1960s and 1970s encouraged women to pursue individual goals and selfactualization, to demand opportunities in the workplace equal to men’s, and to engage in egalitarian relationships with men.2 During the 1970s, women learned that their performance of multiple roles (employment, parenting, and partnering) during their young adult years did affect their health, but that these effects were contingent on the broader context of their lives, including their norms on what was an appropriate role for women in the society and the support they received from their partners.3
