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Resumo

Drawing on data from a study of grandparenthood, this paper examines the nature of projected action, and the value of the concept of 'rule' in both lay and sociological reasoning. The way in which people becoming grandparents for the first time defined grandparenthood is analysed through an examination of their formulations of appropriate grandparenting behaviour, as elicited in qualitative interviews. Although much was left ill-defined, grandparental involvement with the younger generations was accounted as being bounded by certain rules or guidelines which served to restrict grandparental action, and set limits to their intended behaviour. Three main restrictions on potential action were noted: 'not-interfering', 'sharing', and 'not-spoiling'; the grandparents' elaborations of these will be examined. They seemed to express underlying 'rules' which represented a way of speaking about or making sense of a future role. However, the failure of these 'rules' to perform as clear cut prescriptions for behaviour enabled the grandparents to develop a role for themselves. Nations of appropriate grandparenting behaviour were found to be based on personal experience or commonsense knowledge. Drawing on their knowledge of family life, the grandparents were able to give themselves a positive but nonetheless non-interfering role. The personal characteristics and expectations of the grandparents, as people able and willing to spend time with their families, seemed to create an inherent contradiction in their projections of a grandparental role. Yet it was such different relevances which facilitated the production of a potentially satisfactory set of practices for 'doing grandparenting'.

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