Custodial Grandmothers in the Attappadi Indigenous Belt of Kerala: Towards Recognition and Action

Abstract

The phenomenon of custodial grandparents has increased in South Asia and elsewhere, partly due to the growing trend of parents migrating for work, but often because of the untimely demise of one or both parents, illness, alcoholism and related issues affecting the birth parents. Adopting a phenomenological lens, this article explores the lived experiences and perceived needs of 10 custodial grandmothers from the Attappadi indigenous belt in Kerala to discuss how they cope with multiple challenges. Data gathering through indigenous storytelling methods and an interpretive phenomenological analysis points to new forms of feminisation of caregiving through custodial grandparenting, which require further research. Within the complex socio-economic and health contexts of the selected sample, our fieldwork explores the implications of the absence of the middle generation, which creates a network of intersecting disadvantages. We argue that the resulting calls for better support networks to assist these indigenous custodial grandmothers need to be addressed effectively at the levels of policy and practice.

Keywords

ageing custodial grandmothers Kerala primary caregiving indigenous communities

Introduction

This study arises from extended field observations of the first author in the Attappadi tribal hamlets of Kerala, where she found noticeable occurrences of ‘skipped-generation households’, in which the grandparents raise grandchildren in the absence of the ‘middle generation’ (Komjakraphan & Chansawang, 2015). This initially incidental observation prompted a deeper exploration of the phenomenon of custodial grandparenting through this study.

Across the globe, three-generation households in which the grandparents support the upbringing of grandchildren are much more common in Asian and other global southern countries than in Western contexts (Burr & Mutchler, 1999; Danielsbacka et al., 2022). This reflects closer family relations, but also the widespread absence of dedicated state support in scenarios where young children need care, but no formal care institutions are available. Since normally the biological parents raise their children, grandparental care is presumed to be additional or supplementary to parental care (Yancura et al., 2016), with grandparents playing a secondary, yet often significant role in the upbringing of grandchildren.

The recently increasing participation of women in the more formal labour force further emphasises the significance of non-custodial grandparenting in multi-generation households, allowing mothers to actively pursue their careers (Ajay, 2024; Grünwald et al., 2022). However, grandparents may also step into the role of primary custodial caregivers, acting as custodial grandparents and residing with their grandchildren, in the absence of parents (Dunn & Wamsley, 2018), which is often observed in indigenous community contexts (Fuller-Thomson, 2005; Hsieh et al., 2017; Lewis et al., 2018). In Asian countries, the global rise of skipped-generation households has meanwhile become prominent as a household strategy to facilitate both internal and international labour migration of adult children (Hoang et al., 2015; Teerawichitchainan & Low, 2021), allowing parents to leave their children behind to be raised by the grandparents (Chen & Liu, 2012; Danielsbacka et al., 2022; Dommaraju & Wong, 2022).

In India, there has been long-standing awareness of the need for further research on ageing and its implications (Acharya & Das, 1989: 306) and for creating deeper consciousness of specific needs (Kumar & Saxena, 1989). While the aged ‘are emerging as a distinctive social group as a result of various contributing social forces’ (Parihar & Singh, 1994: 501), old people as caregivers have been overlooked. Dominant perspectives in research have tended to centre on Hindu joint family living and its psycho-social implications, earlier not focused on the elderly, but on the socialisation of children (Kakar, 1978). More recently, law-related studies have vigorously argued for providing wide-ranging social security for the aged and infirm (Parihar & Singh, 1994), drawing the gaze further away from the predicaments of elderly Indians who live in remote and disadvantaged parts of the country. Older studies, but also more recent work that now even extends to the Indian diaspora (Lamb, 2009), thus miss the largely hidden growing evidence of more recent intra-family care arrangements within smaller and nuclear families. In India, as well as among Indians abroad, this presents new nuances of combining traditional obligations and cosmopolitan patterns of family arrangements, which may or may not work to the benefit of the elderly. Kumar and Saxena (1989: 72) identified early on that ‘[e]ven in the rural and tribal set up the family ties and social values have been undergoing changes which are not favourable to the aged’. They provide further references to older studies but do not comment on informal care arrangements made by elderly persons for younger family members.

In Kerala, such changing socio-economic family arrangements have now been observed when mothers become migrant workers to raise money for the family (Ajay, 2024), while a close female relative, often a grandmother, replaces the mother as primary caregiver. Somaiah and Yeoh (2023: 1) refer to this kind of arrangement as ‘tri-generationality of caregiving circuits’, encompassing a ‘care triangle’ of the left-behind children, grandparents and migrant parents. Combined with the challenges associated with caregiving, the expected remittances from the working adults become a crucial support mechanism for the custodial grandparents and the grandchildren they are raising, as Teerawichitchainan and Low (2021) show for Myanmar and Xu et al. (2018) researched in China. The worldwide surge in international labour migration and a shift in the notion of female domesticity have therefore prompted identity re-negotiations also in Kerala (Ajay, 2024), reshaping care roles and household living arrangements that lead to the more prominent emergence of grandfamilies (Dunn & Wamsley, 2018) as an act of intra-family solidarity.

However, such family arrangements can also result from complex and often more precarious circumstances, such as the death, incapability or unwillingness of parents to raise their children. In family-centred societies, this puts grandparents under pressure, as a kind of pious obligation, to take up sole responsibility for their grandchildren, often causing them immense stress (Choi et al., 2016; Davis et al., 2020). This prevalence of custodial grandparenting has been observed particularly among indigenous populations (Fuller-Thomson, 2005; Hsieh et al., 2017), frequently arising from situations such as maternal substance abuse, incarceration, divorce and teenage pregnancy (Brown, 2017; Hsieh et al., 2017). In indigenous populations, custodial grandparenting often intersects with other disadvantages and may then result in more severe adverse outcomes for older adults. However, the existing literature has sparse evidence regarding the lived experience of indigenous grandparents raising grandchildren, and such studies are mostly limited to indigenous communities of developed countries (Hsieh et al., 2017).

While custodial grandparenting in Asia is on the rise, mostly due to migration, the diversity of custodial grandparenting is under-researched in Asian contexts, where crisis-led grandparenting is reported as comparatively less common (Dommaraju & Wong, 2022: 6). So far, there are only few studies on South Asian grandparents and mentions of custodial grandparents raising ‘left-behind’ grandchildren in South Asian countries (Ajay, 2024; Deepak, 2005). The actual experiences of custodial grandparents, particularly within indigenous communities in South Asia, have yet to be thoroughly explored.

Against this background, this article explores the lived experiences and perceived and/or actual needs of custodial grandmothers in the Attappadi indigenous belt of Kerala. After the above brief introduction to the worldwide phenomenon of custodial grandparenting, though much of the literature from around the world has limited applicability to the legal scenario we examine here, this qualitative study then focuses on our ethnographic evidence from Kerala. We first briefly outline the indigenous local context of the study and then elaborate on the methodology employed. The main focus is on identifying the contextual reasons behind indigenous custodial grandmothering, examining grandmothers’ experiences of parenting their grandchildren amidst their own problems of ageing. The concluding analysis compares the perceived and/or actual needs and available resources, which are often scant. We thus end with policy recommendations for future research and practice, with special reference to indigenous communities in the Indian context.

Context of the Field Study, Methodology and Ethical Considerations

The indigenous populations of India, known as Scheduled Tribes (STs), have been given special constitutional protection under Article 342 of the Indian Constitution of 1950 and its various amendments over time. Attappadi, set in the Western Ghats of India, is home to three tribal groups, the Irula, Muduga and Kurumba, forming one of the largest indigenous belts in Kerala. Attappadi has been making the headlines in the last two decades due to poor health outcomes (George et al., 2020). In 2010, a concerning decline in the number of tribal people above the age of 60 was reported in Attappadi, and the average life expectancy of the community was more recently reported to be far below the state average (Athira & Nalini, 2022; Jayaraj, 2013). Government interventions, implemented through diverse developmental projects, have not sufficiently accounted for the myriad challenges experienced by the Attappadi tribal population (Edison & Devi, 2019), which has somehow been left out of the successes of Kerala’s much-discussed development model. Despite extensive research on the Attappadi tribal people, researchers have tended to overlook the specifics of the predicaments experienced by the older adults in the specific community setting that this article focuses on. Notably, elders as caregivers rather than recipients of care did not feature in any prior research in the Attappadi context.

Since the study aimed to capture the lived experiences of custodial grandparents, a qualitative inquiry built on a phenomenological approach, combining indigenous storytelling for data collection (Thomas, 2005) and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) for data analysis (Smith & Osborn, 2015) was employed. Storytelling as an indigenous method ensures that the researcher works ‘with’ the respondents rather than ‘on’ them, ensuring that the research honours the indigenous worldview (Chan, 2021). Storytelling allows participants to share what they choose in their tales, what they perceive as significant and want to be documented, so that the person telling the story controls the knowledge-sharing and the researcher acts only as a facilitator or listener (Thomas, 2005). The data collection and data analysis were conducted by the first author from March to September 2022 under the supervision of the second author. The third author significantly contributed to refining the themes and writing the article.

Cultural sensitivity was considered central to obtaining better rapport and increased cooperation from the storytellers. The data generated was then analysed using IPA (Smith & Osborn, 2015), which facilitated a detailed exploration of the meaning particular events hold for the storytellers and explored the lived experiences of indigenous grandmothers while raising grandchildren all by themselves. IPA also enabled the exploration of lived experiences by analysing participants’ personal accounts to reveal the meanings and interpretations they attach to them (Smith & Eatough, 2007; Smith et al., 2009).

To recruit participants for this study, criterion sampling was employed. Indigenous grandparents who were primary caregivers of a grandchild or grandchildren for more than one year and were aged 60 or above constituted the respondent group. The study intentionally focused on such grandparents to draw a fairly homogeneous sample in accordance with interpretive phenomenological analysis methodology (Pietkiewicz & Smith, 2014). Since the respondents were a ‘difficult-to-locate population’, a list of potential participants was prepared with the help of ‘tribal promoters’ working for the local Integrated Tribal Development Programme. A preliminary screening of potential participants was done in six randomly selected tribal hamlets equally representing the three indigenous communities of the region. All potential participants meeting the screening criteria were found to be women, confirming the highly gendered nature of caregiving.

A total of 10 respondents who met the study criteria were included. This sample size was considered appropriate for the study, as IPA recommends a sample size range of 3–10 participants, emphasising in-depth exploration of the idiosyncratic nature of their lived experiences (Smith & Eatough, 2007; Smith & Osborn, 2015; Smith et al., 2009). A semi-structured interview guide facilitated the storytelling. The participants’ responses were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, followed by translation into English. The translated version was then back-translated into the vernacular language and compared with the original transcripts to standardise the quality of the translated content. After necessary revisions, the final documents were analysed using the software QDA Miner. An extensive review of translated transcripts was done case by case, following an idiographic approach to analysis. Initial themes, clustered themes and final themes were listed for each case. By converging the final themes of all cases, a master list of themes for the group was obtained. The five master themes thus obtained are elaborated in the findings section.

Regarding ethical considerations, the Institutional Ethics Committee (Human Studies) of Pondicherry University (PU/IHEC/1/2023/39) granted ethical clearance for this study, which has also adhered to the national ethical guidelines for research involving human participants as outlined in ICMR (2017). The participants were informed regarding the purpose and goals of the study and informed consent was sought from all participants prior to data collection. Confidentiality of the data and anonymity of the participants were assured by using alpha codes instead of personal identifiers. The data collected were safely stored and accessed only by the authors.

Participant Characteristics

While the phenomenon of migration-induced skipped-generation households is observed among some indigenous communities of India as well (Philip & Soletti, 2023), none of the participants in this study assumed the role of primary caregiver due to their children’s migration. Hence, we did not delve further into this phenomenon. Instead, participants shared poignant stories of untimely death, alcohol addiction, illness and abandonment that underscored their transition to the role of custodial grandmothers. These narratives revealed the multitude of challenges associated with being the sole providers for their grandchildren, exacerbated by the intersection of multidimensional marginalisations, encompassing gender, old age, indigenous status and socio-economically disadvantaged background. The presence of grandfamilies in this context itself could be a consequence of the historical and ongoing social inequalities and injustices faced by the Attappadi indigenous people (Bijoy, 1999; George et al., 2020).

As noted, a significant observation in the initial stage of the study was the highly gendered nature of custodial grandparenting. All 10 participants were grandmothers, between 61 and 73 years, with a mean age of 67 years. Seven were widows, two were married and one was separated. All participants belonged to the below-poverty line (BPL) category, and seven were illiterate. Their primary source of income was the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), a social welfare programme that promises to provide at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment every financial year for an adult household member willing to do unskilled manual labour and has been surprisingly successful in involving women (Pankaj, 2023). Six participants were paternal grandmothers, while four were maternal grandmothers. The care provision in years ranged from two to 17 years. The ages of the children under care ranged from nine to 15 years. Participant H’s granddaughter, who is now 20 years old, is taking care of her grandmother.

All participants followed an informal ‘living-with-grandmother arrangement’ without the involvement of a court or child welfare authorities. In fact, they were unaware of the formal and legal aspects of custodial grandparenting. Five main themes emerged from the data analysis. They centred on the inevitability of custodial grandmothering, caregiving as a reciprocal intergenerational obligation, the physical cost of caregiving, the toll on mental health and perceived or actual resource constraints. These themes are not mutually exclusive but intersect and overlap, highlighting the lived experiences of grandmothers. We discuss these five themes in turn.

The Inevitable Transition to Custodial Grandmothering

All respondents had a unique story regarding their transition as custodial grandmothers, but all emphasised how it was inevitable for them to be(come) custodial grandmothers. In all cases, the responsibility came unexpectedly after the demise of one or both of the parents of the grandchildren. Most grandmothers recalled that they were unprepared for such a responsibility. Some did not even get enough time to grieve the loss of their adult child, but immediately had to step up for their grandchildren. All cases except one had either of the parents alive, but unwilling or incapable of assuming the parenting role. For instance, participant A commented how her son abandoned his child after the death of his wife, forcing the paternal grandmother to take up the caregiving role:

His mother died after giving him birth. My son married another woman and moved to her hamlet. My son does not take care of this child or provide any money. I am bringing up my grandson. He is twelve years old now.

Participant E also had a story of her son not taking charge as a parent, telling us: ‘My son is a drunkard. He has two children. My daughter-in-law and I were taking care of the children. The grandchild’s mother died of COVID-19 two years ago. Now the kids have become my responsibility.’

All households except two were ‘skipped-generation households’. In the remaining two cases, fathers also resided in the household. However, one was an alcoholic, and the other was a tuberculosis (TB) patient, making the grandmother a primary caregiver. In two cases, where the grandchildren resided with both grandparents, the grandmother assumed the caregiver role, as one of the grandfathers was bedridden and the other was an alcoholic. Participant F shared:

My daughter was murdered by her husband. He said it was suicide, but I do not believe that. He married another woman. This kid was just three years old when my daughter died. I took him home. It has been six years…you know what? My grandson calls me Mother!

Poor health outcomes in tribal settings and family-level problems sometimes intersect to induce situations that result in grandparents becoming custodial grandmothers. Participant A stated:

My son had TB and had been in and out of treatment for five years. He got better with treatment but could not work because of health issues. His wife left him a few years ago. She has another family now. I am taking care of my son and also my grandchildren.

The reasons for taking up the caregiving roles also reflect the complex sociocultural situations of the indigenous community. Two related issues that should be highlighted here are the prevalence of alcoholism and the rising number of people dying at a young age in this indigenous population. These issues make it inevitable for the participants to take up custodial grandmothering, but also indicate that living by oneself and ignoring one’s family would violate basic expectations of family solidarity, which these women were aware of, even if it remained unexpressed in so many words. Obviously, this links to the next section.

Caregiving as a Reciprocal Intergenerational Obligation

The intrinsic motivation to take up the parenting role for the grandchildren shows the grandmothers’ love for their grandchildren and reflects the strong acceptance of grandparental responsibilities that these caregivers uphold. However, these obligations are not uni-directional, especially in a cultural context that views reciprocal intergenerational commitments as a value. Hence, the stories from these grandfamilies display symbiotic caregiving where grandchildren reciprocate in multiple ways. Grandparents gain reciprocal benefits, particularly in psychological terms, from raising grandchildren. Some grandmothers find their grandchildren the only driving force in their life. For instance, participant D commented: ‘The only person I trust and like is my grandchild. I am still living just because of my grandson, for his sake’.

For some respondents, like participant F, it was an opportunity to erase past parenting regrets. She said: ‘I could not save my daughter; I could not put him [the daughter’s husband] in jail. At least I should take care of her child. I would not have a peaceful death otherwise’. Grandmothers acknowledged that the caregiving involved a give-and-take bond that instilled a sense of purpose in them. The caregiving process provided them with companionship, opportunities to compensate for past parenting mistakes and a channel to pass on the indigenous culture and traditional knowledge. Conversely, the grandchildren helped the grandmothers with daily tasks such as household chores, collecting wood and going to shops. Some grandmothers shared that their grandchildren took care of them when they were sick. Participant G said: ‘They wash my clothes, cook food and check on me now and then. I rely on my grandchildren the most. They are my only happiness’.

Indigenous grandmothers are also a source of traditional knowledge and try to pass this knowledge on to their grandchildren. Lewis et al. (2018) have emphasised how indigenous custodial grandparents perceive their role as an opportunity to enculturate the grandchildren they raise by transmitting indigenous songs, stories, values as well as traditional knowledge of history, culture, language and also of traditional medicines and herbal remedies. This, in turn, contributes to positive psychological experiences by fostering cultural continuity. Our research aligns with such findings, emphasising the strong bond between grandmothers and the grandchildren they bring up. This benefits both sides in terms of emotional satisfaction and bonding, making the transmission of knowledge smoother and mutually beneficial. Participant C stated:

I am a tribal healer and people come to me for medicine. I shared my knowledge with my grandson, and he is helping me. He collects herbal plants from the forest, and I make medicines out of that. I hope my grandson can earn something through this even if I am no more.

These grandmothers also believe their grandchildren will be there for them in the last days of their life. One story reflects how this symbiotic relationship can extend to multiple generations. Participant H raised her granddaughter, who is now married and is now living with her married granddaughter, the husband and a great-grandson. She babysits the two-year-old great-grandson when her granddaughter and the husband go to work. Her story illustrates the intergenerational bonds and responsibilities:

My daughter died in the hospital a week after delivery. I gave bottled milk and brought up my granddaughter. I felt satisfaction as my granddaughter grew up. She is married now and I stay with her family. I do not do any job now. I cannot do much. My granddaughter and her husband go to work and I care for my great-grandchild. That is all I do. I love this child very much.

The result is, clearly, that everyone benefits from adhering to these traditional family obligations, even if it means added burdens.

The Physical Cost of Caregiving

The undeniable commitment of these grandmothers to protect their vulnerable grandchildren is coupled with the harsh reality of the toll it takes on their physical health. Despite the existing symbiotic bond between the custodial grandmothers and grandchildren, assuming the caregiving role often leads to adverse physical health outcomes for these older women. While none of the participants explicitly described the role as a burden, they admitted to grappling with fulfilling the caregiving demands alongside their own health issues and their ageing bodies. They stated how frailty was compromising their ability to perform some tasks associated with caregiving, expressing that doing intensive physical work despite declining functional capacity affected their health, while raising grandchildren somewhat accelerated their own health deterioration. The participants shared a range of health challenges they faced, including diabetes and high blood pressure, as well as joint and knee pain, backaches, body aches and dizziness. Many attributed their musculoskeletal pain to the strain caused by the demanding tasks that they undertake. Participant D said:

I cannot wake up early these days. I feel a burning sensation on both my hands and feet quite often. I cannot bear much sunlight and heat. If I get up from the bed a bit quickly, I feel dizzy. But I must wake up and work. How can I feed my grandson and send him to school otherwise?

In addition, some participants also had to take care of their aged husbands or deal with an alcoholic husband/son, which further drained their physical energy. Participant F shared:

My husband has been sick for some years. I have to take care of him. I have to take care of the child…I have to go with the cattle and do the household chores. Some days, I even wonder how I am managing all this together and how my body can take it all.

The delicate balance they maintain between caregiving demands and the challenges imposed on their ageing bodies takes a substantial toll on their physical well-being and vitality. This theme mirrors the unfortunate fact that these grandmothers do not receive the essential rest and respite they deserve during their later years.

The Toll on Mental Health

Non-custodial grandparenting can be rewarding, as it leads to better mental health outcomes and promotes intergenerational bonding within families (Adhikari, 2019). However, the adverse physical and mental health outcomes of custodial grandparenting have also been reported from various cultural settings (Chen et al., 2015; Musil et al., 2011; Sampson & Hertlein, 2015), while Taylor et al. (2016) highlight that the mental distress encountered by custodial grandcaregivers is interwoven with grief, financial strain and social isolation. Similarly, the psychological distress faced by our participants is not solely tied to caregiving but is compounded by enduring stress resulting from the loss of their children, pressures associated with community substance abuse, persistent poverty and health inequities.

In the midst of nurturing their grandchildren with boundless love, these grandmothers also bear the burden of role-induced stressors and fears, which frequently impose a toll on their mental well-being. Such fears shared by the participants were mostly regarding their grandchildren’s future in the event of their own demise, alcoholism, the safety of the grandchildren and raising them properly. One of the most common fears related to uncertainty of the future. Grandmothers were worried about their own deaths, they wanted to live long enough to raise their grandchildren and were deeply concerned by the lack of caregiving options for their grandchildren in the event of their demise. They also worried that their declining physical health adversely affected their ability to work to provide for their grandchildren. Participant A expressed: ‘I am scared about growing old, my difficulties are increasing. Now that I am alive, I take care of my grandchildren. But when I die, who will be there for them? It saddens me when I think about it’.

Another fear raised by the participants concerned the dynamics of the community in which they live. Here the major concern was the rampant alcoholism in the local community and they worried that their grandchildren would also become alcoholics. Grandmothers raising granddaughters expressed safety concerns as well that reflected on their own biographies. Participant D said:

In my childhood, my biggest misery was my father. He used to drink a lot and beat my mother. My husband is also addicted to alcohol. My son moved out with his second wife and left his son with me. I hope at least my grandson will be a good man. I do not want him to drink and destroy his life like others.

Another concern for the grandmothers was their conflicting role as caregiver and disciplinarian. Some grandchildren, especially teenagers, refused to listen to their grandmothers. These conflicts sometimes make the caregivers question their ability to guide the children, creating much pressure on the grandparents in instances of conflicts with their grandchildren. This can be detrimental to their mental and physical health as well. Participant J shared:

My grandson studied till the seventh standard. He was supposed to join the eighth standard this year. He says he is not interested in going to school anymore. I told him many times. I do not know what to do now. I am very worried about his future.

Some grandmothers also conveyed that overwhelming responsibilities at times lead them to emotional outbursts, as shared by participant J: ‘Experiencing all these struggles, pain and effort, it sometimes seems I would hardly have a peaceful old age’. The narratives of grandmothers underscored the significant toll that custodial grandparenting takes on their mental health, serving as an additional hurdle to finding peace in their later years.

Perceived and/or Actual Resource Constraints

All participants were practising an informal care provision and lacked access to resources, reiterating findings from previous studies on custodial grandparenting (Davis et al., 2020; Van Etten & Gautam, 2012). The absence of a formal legal relationship poses hurdles, causing limited access to services, inadequate financial aid, difficulties pursuing educational options for children and exclusion from the essential child welfare system (Van Etten & Gautam, 2012). While Fernandes et al. (2021) frame custodial grandparents’ invisibility and poor access to services as issues of inequity and injustice in Australia, it remains a fact that observations about various aspects of ageing from across the world have ‘limited applicability’ (Kumar & Saxena, 1989: 73) in most parts of the Global South, including South Asia.

Our field study confirms that, more so in peripheral parts of India, ‘[t]he extended family provides the only life insurance most Indians have’ (Kakar, 1978: 121). Participants in this study highlighted the lack of formal and informal support and the need to rely on self-help. Engagement in informal care can become further complicated due to the absence of formal legal relationships, exacerbating barriers to accessing the limited services that might be available. As noted, all participants in this study belonged to the BPL category and a sense of monetary stress was widespread among these grandmothers; everyone was struggling to meet even basic needs. The provision of food through ‘community kitchens’ run by the Integrated Tribal Development Programme and food items through the public distribution system was helping to some extent. However, lack of savings and any regular income caused perpetual economic insecurity and worry.

To aggravate the situation, being a primary caregiver forced them to engage in forms of employment that might be detrimental to their health. Many respondents had no choice but to engage in manual labour. Notably, these grandmothers primarily relied on part-time work under MGNREGS, which also in Kerala involves high participation rates of women (Pankaj, 2023). Most respondents had more than one job, which in turn had adverse health impacts. Participant A summarised such precarities:

I just get ₹1,600 as a monthly pension. Will that money be enough to live for a month? I go for MGNREGA work, and I also rear goats. Now I earn at least a little money. But, after some more years, I will not be able to work like this. If we have money, daily life will go on, but if we do not, we always worry about how to pass the next day.

A multiplicity of income sources existed, including in Kerala a widows’ pension scheme since 1963 (Parihar & Singh, 1994: 485), yet our research participants voiced latent apprehensions. Participant I focused on health concerns:

My sickness is getting worse. If my health is a little better, I can earn for some more years. I am taking free treatment from Kottathara hospital [a government tribal speciality hospital], but it is not helping. Sometimes I feel I might get better if I go to a private hospital. I do not have money for better treatment.

The participants were disappointed that they received no financial support from the community in navigating their difficulties. Participant E said: ‘If we can work and earn, we can live. It is like that. I do not ask others for money. Who is there to help anyway?’ The government welfare services offered exclusively for older adults are limited, mostly involve only a nominal welfare pension and occasional distribution of food kits. There are no government policies that cater specifically to the needs of custodial grandparents other than the welfare pension offered to all older adults. In fact, indigenous grandparents raising grandchildren are not acknowledged by government authorities or non-government organisations. These grandparents are found to be particularly aware that they lack protection mechanisms for their grandchildren after their own demise, whether in terms of financial security, mental health support, schooling of the grandchildren and legal support structures.

Conclusions

This study of custodial grandmothering has also revealed how it becomes a symbiotic caregiving strategy, where the grandmothers and grandchildren mutually benefit by being there for each other in the face of adversities. In addition, our findings show the potential for reciprocation of caregiving when older grandchildren start to care for their grandmothers. By shedding light on both the challenges and positive facets of custodial grandmothering in Attappadi, this study offers a balanced perspective, providing a nuanced exploration of the phenomenon.

This article highlights the need to acknowledge the existence of grandfamilies in the context of culturally diverse and socio-economically vulnerable communities around the world, particularly in India’s numerous tribal communities. Such family structures in indigenous communities display unique sociocultural factors, including the potential to show considerable resilience (Fuller-Thomson, 2005; Mendoza et al., 2020). The present study also shows, however, how a combination of tribal status, alcoholism, health inequities and economic deprivation leads to precariousness and lurking scenarios of emergency. Another important aspect, not addressed in this study as it was absent in the field site, is the increasingly prominent presence of custodial grandparenthood in South Asia due to worker migration, both internal and external. Further research is needed to increase our understanding and knowledge of the diverse circumstances in such scenarios, where dependency on remittances becomes crucial.

The disproportionate burden of custodial grandparenthood on indigenous communities, as evident from the literature, should also be given due importance in policymaking. Globally, grandfamilies, as a family unit, often go unrecognised within policy frameworks (Gair et al., 2018). Given the very limited recognition and policy support for custodial grandparents in India and the diversity of factors leading to custodial grandparenting, policymaking should seek to address the pertinent issues step by step, integrating any required support by exploring potential synergies with existing policy infrastructures for the benefit of older adults. In light of the present study, it will be important to look for opportunities to gather extra support for grandmothers who act as caregivers for their grandchildren. Presently, the first step towards a comprehensive system in addressing custodial grandmothering would be to acknowledge first of all the presence of this phenomenon in different sections of Indian society. This acknowledgement should be followed by targeted research on the causative factors and possible remedial mechanisms. The resulting research findings should then guide specific actions aimed at providing some form of targeted and more easily available comprehensive social and maybe also legal support systems to cater for the unique circumstances and rights of custodial grandparents and the grandchildren in their care. One could even argue that this is a matter of constitutional obligation to protect such individuals’ right to life under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. Meanwhile, interpersonal solidarity at the level of the family and doggedly determined self-help remain the major avenues to ensure dignified survival and the welfare of the children who, as we found, may even call their grandmother ‘mother’.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The first author is a senior research fellow of the Indian Council of Medical Research in New Delhi, and the research was carried out as part of her doctoral study on healthy ageing. Sincere thanks go to all the participants for their contribution. We are also grateful to the Integrated Tribal Development Project of Attappadi and the Scheduled Tribe Development Department of Kerala for granting necessary administrative permissions for the study. We extend our gratitude to the anonymous peer reviewers for their invaluable contributions to the final version of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This research is supported by the Indian Council of Medical Research (Grant no. 3/1/3/JRF-2019/HRD (SS).

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