PhD position Perils and Promises of Grandparenting: Grandparents as a Source of Support and Distress for Parents of Young Children (0.8 - 1.0 FTE)

Utrecht University, Netherlands

Updated: almost 2 years ago
Deadline: 29 May 2022

Do you have an interest in clinical and/or developmental psychology? Are you interested in the development of intergenerational relationships during the transition to (grand)parenthood, and how this affects the individuals in these relationships? Do you have the ambition to contribute to societally relevant scientific research? Then an interdisciplinary PhD position, integrating pedagogical expertise on relationships and development with expertise from clinical psychology on individual distress at the departments of Youth and Family and Clinical Psychology might be just the right job for you.

Apart from feelings of joy and happiness, parenthood can be associated with distress. Grandparents can buffer parental distress, but their involvement may also disturb power dynamics and raise conflicts. In this PhD project, you will work on unraveling the influence of grandparental involvement on the (system around) the developing child and on identifying possible supporting and distress-enhancing effects of grandparental involvement on parents’ and children’s wellbeing.

The project has four main aims, i.e.:


  • identify the roles that grandparents fulfil in child care;
  • examine how and when grandparental and parental distress are associated over time;
  • analyse the longitudinal associations of grandparent-parent relationship characteristics with parents’ general distress (anxiety and depression symptoms) and parenting-specific distress; and
  • unravel how grandparent-parent relationship characteristics and characteristics of parents and grandparents affect each other and child development (e.g., internalizing problems).

    • Within these broad aims, you will have a lot of freedom to pursue your own research interests.

    This project will enable you to work with data from the ongoing (multi-informant) RADAR G3 cohort study, in which three generations are followed: RADAR participants, their children and their parents (now grandparents). Additionally, you will be able to use data from collaborators and publicly available multigenerational datasets. Moreover, you will be invited to design a mixed-methods study, including in-depth interviews with grandparents and parents, and you will be asked to coordinate data collection for RADAR G3.

    This is an interdisciplinary PhD project, and you will be embedded within two departments: Youth and Family and Clinical Psychology. You will be supervised by an interdisciplinary team, consisting of Dr Marjolein Missler and Dr Sanne Geeraerts (daily supervisors). Dr Marjolein Missler focuses on distress during the transition to parenthood and the association with child development. Dr Sanne Geeraerts specializes in intergenerational relationships and early socio-emotional development. Prof Susan Branje and Prof Paul Boelen will be the promotors. Your work will also include 10% teaching tasks, with an extension possibility to 20%.


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