Bridging Generations with Dr. Abigail T. Stephan

Show Notes

Intergenerational friendships enrich our worldview and create lasting legacies through the exchange of ideas, love, and support between grandparents or grand friends and young adults. Following Healthy Aging Month, we’re joined by Dr. Abigail T. Stephens, Research Assistant Professor of Psychology at Clemson University and faculty affiliate with the Institute for Engaged Aging, to discuss the value of these bonds and share ways to foster them in our own lives.

Episode Transcript

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

Hello and welcome to This is Growing Old, the podcast all about the common human experience of aging. I’m Katrin Werner-Perez, and I’ll be your host for this episode. 

We often think of wisdom as something that comes with age, but the exchange of ideas, love and support between generations is a two-way street. For young adults, these intergenerational bonds can profoundly shape their worldview and sense of identity. For grandparents and grandfriends, these connections introduce fresh perspectives, expand their community, and enhance their overall well-being. Together these relationships bridge gaps, enrich lives, and create lasting legacies. 

Joining us today is Dr. Abigail T. Stephan, Research Assistant Professor of Psychology at Clemson University and faculty affiliate with the Institute for Engaged Aging. Drawing from her personal experience in a multi-generational household, Dr. Stephan explores the vital bonds between non-adjacent generations and highlights the mutual benefit of intergenerational friendships. Thank you so much for joining us, Abigail. 

Abigail Stephan: 

Yeah, thank you for having me, Katrin. I’m excited to be here. 

I really benefited in my early childhood from these really rich, strong relationships with adults of different ages, different abilities, different interests

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

Great. Well, we can just dive right into our questions. Can you tell us about your upbringing and the experiences that have shaped your research? 

Abigail Stephan: 

Yeah, so as you noted in the introduction, I was raised partially in a multi-generational household. So when I was about two years old, my mom and my dad moved in with my paternal grandparents while my mom was going through nursing school, and so I lived in a household with four adults for several years until I was about four years old. For a year of that time as well, my great-grandmother who had dementia lived with us as well, so at one point there were five adults and then one child. 

So I really benefited in my early childhood from these really rich, strong relationships with adults of different ages, different abilities, different interests, and that was huge in learning about how to be creative and compassionate and empathetic and developing really critical social skills. So I had that relationship with my grandparents on my paternal side, and then after I moved out of their household with my parents, we still lived within five minutes, so that relationship was incredibly close throughout my childhood and adolescence. 

On the other hand, with my maternal grandparents, they lived several states away, they were older. My mom was one of seven children and she was towards the end of that bunch, and so they had more grandchildren and were just at a different life stage where they weren’t necessarily investing. At the same time, my family wasn’t in a position to invest in very strong relationships with them, and so I had sort of these two different pictures of what grandparent-grandchild relationships could look like. 

As I got older and thought about what my grandparent-grandchild relationships looked like in my own life, it made me wonder what this experience looks like for others, and so that really fueled my interest in looking at grandparent-grandchild relationships and other grandfriend relationships. We talk a lot about fictive kin and how important that is to have relationships outside of the family context as well. 

But what I ultimately learned is that families are very complicated, and so my ultimate goal is to understand the ingredients that lead to strong, meaningful intergenerational relationships, whether in families or communities, and strengthen those ingredients or add those ingredients where they might not be existing, so that people throughout the lifespan can benefit and we can all have stronger families, communities, and ultimately societies. 

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

That’s incredible. In your research, what have you found in how great-grandparent and grandchild bonds uniquely impact young adults? 

Abigail Stephan: 

Yeah, so the research has been really interesting, and I’d like to start with just thinking about young adulthood specifically as a developmental stage. So in young adulthood, people are thinking about their identity, they’re exploring who they are, what they want to be, what values they hold, and so it’s really this time of building your life, being intentional about the choices that you’re making, or making some mistakes along the way and figuring out maybe what not to do for part of that young adulthood. 

So, the grandparent-grandchild bonds come into play in two ways. The first is thinking about the relationships that have happened in the past with grandparents, whether that’s during childhood, adolescence or both, but these really serve as the foundation of that grandparent-grandchild relationship. Maybe these are times where you’ve built memories with grandparents or you’ve heard stories about grandparents, and it helps to form this sense of self and this sense of identity and form the ground on which you’re rooted in a sense. 

Then at the same time, we also have these present relationships with grandparents, which we’re at a really interesting point in history, because there are people who are living longer, the lifespan has been lengthened, and the health span or the number of years in which older adults can live healthy, meaningful, engaged lives has also increased. So, there’s a growing number of young adults who can now have really fulfilling relationships with their grandparents in ways that we haven’t seen in decades past, which is really exciting for me as a researcher to tap into and to learn about what this process looks like and what it means for people who are currently young adults who are still able to connect with their grandparents. 

One really interesting perspective that’s come through in some of my research is young adults who may not have relationships with their grandparents any longer, either because their grandparents have passed away or there have been family dynamics that have made those relationships challenging, but they have partners or friends who have grandparents who have sort of adopted them and brought them in, and they’re really benefiting from those strong intergenerational grandparent-like relationships now in their own young adulthood. 

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

Your work also highlights bidirectional teaching between grandparent-grandchild relationships. What does that look like? 

Abigail Stephan: 

Yeah, so I have several favorite words. One of them’s bidirectional, another is reciprocal equal, and that’s really the basis of grandparent-grandchild relationships. So when we think about family systems and we’re thinking about grandparent grandchildren, they’re sort of inherently that parent generation. Grandparents and grandchildren are uniquely able to have different privileges within that family system where they’re freer, they can engage in different ways, they have fewer responsibilities in some cases. 

Obviously this is not the case across the board, but generally speaking, grandparents and grandchildren can engage in more recreational ways. So, this idea of bidirectional or mutual engagement just means that they are entering into the relationship with the idea that they can learn from each other, but also teach each other things, and so there’s this back and forth that happens naturally where everyone benefits, and it’s really for the purpose of building the relationship. 

So this could look different, and this could change day by day. So sometimes within a single conversation or a single activity, a grandchild and a grandparent might take on the role of teacher or learner, and it can also ebb and flow across the lifespan. So when children are very young, the grandparent may be acting as more of a teacher, but moving into young adulthood, there are a lot of people who I’ve talked to who say that they’re the tech support person for their grandparents, and so then they take on more of a teaching role in that sense. 

So I think in addition to the bidirectionality, there’s also that fluidity of being both an expert and a novice in different areas and at different times, and that’s really critical to the grandparent-grandchild relationship. 

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

That’s great. Well, just to expand upon that more, what other positive effects can intergenerational connections have, more so in mental wellness for both younger and older generations? 

younger and older people are uniquely positioned to benefit from intergenerational relationships

Abigail Stephan: 

Yeah, so one of my other go-to sayings, in addition to one of my favorite words being bidirectional, is that there is an intergenerational solution to that. So if you think about any kind of challenge that’s happening in the world or any current issue, I would bet money on the fact that it would be improved by having an intergenerational solution that brings together generations. That’s because of the really powerful ways that it can influence psychological, social, cognitive outcomes for those involved and make people stronger as a whole. 

So when we’re thinking about the term intergenerational, it quite literally means between generations or between people of different ages. So I like to think of this as a link, and we’re always stronger when we can be linked together and have a chain of positive outcomes that result from those relationships. 

So both younger and older people are uniquely positioned to benefit from intergenerational relationships, so based off of the U.S. Surgeon General’s recent 2023 report, those two groups face the highest rates of social isolation and loneliness, which was equated to your risk of mortality being the same as about smoking 15 cigarettes a day. So, this is an incredibly important area to target and make sure that we’re thinking about the mental health and wellbeing of younger and older generations. 

When we’re able to engage intergenerationally for younger people, it enhances confidence and self-esteem. Going back to our previous conversation, it also helps provide this grounding presence as younger adults are thinking about building their lives, and it situates them within a historical context. Then for older adults, it provides them with a greater sense of meaning and purpose when they’re able to engage in these relationships and feel as though they can not only contribute, but also get something back out of those relationships. 

So ultimately, it’s a win-win for everyone to engage in intergenerational relationships and have connections with people of different ages, because it really reinforces the importance of empathy and perspective-taking. 

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

What barriers have you observed in fostering meaningful connections across generations? 

Abigail Stephan: 

Yeah, so when we talk about all of these great benefits, it’s true that we need to acknowledge the reality of the fact that sometimes there are obstacles in our way that make it a little bit trickier to facilitate those in a meaningful way. So I’m going to start with the barrier that unfortunately is pervasive and is an issue that people within families, but also within communities need to overcome, and that’s stereotypes in ageism. 

So oftentimes we are afraid to engage with people from different generations, because we’re worried that we won’t have something in common with them, or we have these ideas about their disposition or the way that they feel or think about the world, and this goes both ways. There are younger people who hold stereotypes towards older people and are ageist towards older people, and there are also older people who believe things about younger people that might not necessarily be the case. So, one of the biggest barriers is just understanding that we’re all individuals and moving past some of those stereotypes by really connecting with people and realizing, okay, we’re all unique in our own ways, and it doesn’t help to lump people into groups with these ageist ideas attached to them. 

Another challenge is just natural opportunities. So, we live in a very age segregated society where all of the children go to school with children, all of the young adults may be in college or at another work setting, older adults are typically in their own communities. We think about the fact that there are 55+ communities or assisted living, and this is where these people congregate, and so having natural ways for people across generations to connect can be really challenging. 

Within the family we have a natural opportunity to connect with people from other generations, because families are built on these generations, but there are some challenges that exist. For example, geographic separation. As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t particularly close with my maternal grandparents, because they lived so far away, and so that can be a challenge for many people. When we don’t have the opportunity to engage in-person face-to-face, it can be tricky to build those really strong connections that we then want to continue. 

There’s also challenges at times with different family dynamics, and so a lot of my work has shown that parents act as gatekeepers in the grandparent-grandchild relationship. So if at any point your parents have a challenging relationship with their parents, they may not have wanted you to have access to your grandparents, and that can be particularly tricky to overcome in young adulthood when you may have more agency in that relationship. 

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

So, what do we do about it? How can families and communities foster stronger intergenerational bonds and enhance this healthy aging for everyone? 

…society tries really hard to keep people together in these different age segregated or age divided units

Abigail Stephan: 

Yeah, so I think my biggest tip is to be intentional in your relationships. So take a pause and think about who’s around you, who’s in your life. This could be both physically who’s around you, but also maybe emotionally or within your network, who’s around you? Who can you be more intentional about connecting with and fostering a strong relationship with? Think too about maybe people who you think would benefit from having more connections with you and be that person to reach out and foster a relationship. 

As I noted before, society tries really hard to keep people together in these different age segregated or age divided units, and so think about ways that you can either encourage more cross-generational connections in the spaces that you’re in, or advocate for policy or practice that incorporates things like a children’s nursery being incorporated into assisted living. There are a lot of really great intergenerational shared sites that are coming on the scene, so if you’re interested in that, I encourage you to look into it and learn more about what it means to have intergenerational shared sites and shared activities in your own community and within your family. 

I think too it helps to build these into the fabric of our daily lives, so think about ways that you can reinforce connections with people in a way that makes it routine. So whether that’s having a weekly or monthly family dinner or maybe a dinner with your neighbors speaking to grandfriends, is there a way that you can make this just a part of what you do? So you don’t even have to think about it, it’s just part of your life. I would really encourage that and be intentional about those. 

Then the last piece that I want to encourage people to think about is just being creative and thinking about how you can leverage technology. So especially for things like geographic distance, could you set up a weekly Zoom call or a weekly phone call with your grandparents or with grandfriends who may now live far away from you? And think about how that can help to bring together people of different generations. 

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

Well, what advice do you have for people taking that first step in developing a meaningful relationship with your grandparents? It can maybe seem intimidating, it can maybe seem like it’s going to be awkward. Do you have any go-to icebreakers? 

Abigail Stephan: 

Yeah, so I would like to encourage people here, it’s never too late to build or strengthen a relationship. So regardless of what maybe the past has been, or if there are some of those challenging family dynamics, or if you don’t have any current intergenerational connections in your life, now is the time to start building those, because they’re so important, not only for you, but also for those other people in your life. 

So, something that I love and I’ve researched is this idea of intergenerational storytelling or intergenerational narratives. So, these are the types of stories you could think of like family lore or things that have been passed on from generation to generation that are really important in creating what a family is and what it means to be both an individual, but also a member of this family. 

So, these can be really great tools for capturing the wisdom of people that you’re trying to build relationships with, and also providing the foundation for some common ground within which you might be able to navigate. So maybe someone has a story about a baseball game they went to, and you’re also interested in baseball. Just asking about past experiences is a great way to build those connections. 

I would say too, don’t be afraid to ask questions, and you can have questions that are tailored to the depth and comfort that you have within those relationships. So maybe instead of asking a question that’s really deep like, what are you most proud of? Or is there anything that you regret having done in your life? You could ask a question like, what was your favorite song growing up? Or what movies do you like? Or what’s your favorite food? It can be something really surface level to just help build that relationship and establish that common ground and possibly common interest through which to continue building the relationship to a deeper level. 

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

Well, now we have two questions that we ask all of our guests. The first is, when you were younger, what did you imagine growing older would be like? 

Abigail Stephan: 

Yeah, I love this question a lot, because to be completely honest, I don’t know that when I was younger I really thought about getting older. Despite having all of these really great intergenerational and older influences in my life, I don’t know that I had intentionally thought about it, but I think in reflecting on it, getting older to me meant having everything figured out. 

I have very much learned and continue learning every single day that having it all together is not necessarily a one-to-one correlation with age. It’s really reinforced the idea that we’re all human and we’re all still learning as we go and doing the best that we can, and it’s also really reinforced the importance of having a village behind you and having a strong support system who can help to fill in those gaps, and maybe also help to just reinforce the fact that sometimes we don’t know what we’re doing and we’re all just doing what we can to get by. So, relationships are everything. 

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

Yeah. Well, as an adult, what do you enjoy most about growing older? 

Abigail Stephan: 

Yeah, so I think one of my favorite things is being able to be a mentor to others. So I have benefited so much from mentors of all different ages and all different facets of my life thus far, and growing older to me means that I’ve now accumulated enough wisdom and experiences, and I’m still learning every single day, but I have just enough where I feel like I can give back and contribute in a meaningful way, and that has been really special to get to do that. 

Katrin Werner-Perez: 

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Abby, for joining us. This was an incredible conversation. As always, be sure to check out the Alliance’s website, agingresearch.org, to stay updated on the policy team’s work in this important area. Abby, thank you so much for this great information, and thank you for our listeners to tuning in. 

Abigail Stephan: 

Thank you, Katrin.