{"id":255,"date":"2026-09-10T06:47:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T06:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/?page_id=255"},"modified":"2026-09-10T07:04:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T07:04:45","slug":"grandmothers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/index.php\/project-strands\/grandmothers\/","title":{"rendered":"Grandmothers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What do you call your grandmother? Gran? Grandma? Nanny? Perhaps you use a word from her first language, or maybe there\u2019s a family \u2018in joke\u2019 which results in a cute nickname. Does she live in another country, or some distance away? Or perhaps she\u2019s just down the road, and picked you up from school when you were young, to help your parents out with childcare? Does she fit the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZZo1iEoPntc\">\u2018knitting nannas\u2019<\/a> stereotype promoted in a breakfast cereal advertisement in the UK, or would she be horrified by such a depiction of grandmotherhood? This strand of the project will explore the social and cultural history of the grandmothers in modern Britain, thinking in particular about what the idealised grandmother figure might suggest about expectations of women, aging, caregiving, and respectability at particular moments in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Key research questions include:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>How have relationships between children, mothers, and grandmothers shifted across the life cycle?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>To what extent have the roles and expectations of grandmothers, for example as childcare providers or advice givers, changed across twentieth century Britain and beyond?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Who is the \u2018idealised grandmother\u2019, and to what extent has this (invented?) figure been influenced by social class, local cultures and communities, race, religion or generation?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In what ways have grandmothers acted to police and enforce \u2018family values\u2019, respectability and\/or shame, particularly around unmarried or single motherhood?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"787\" src=\"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Grandmothers-1024x787.jpg\" alt=\"A 21st century photograph of an older Black woman holding a Black baby dressed in a white christening gown. They are stood in front of a vibrant, multi-coloured stained glass window.\" class=\"wp-image-268\" srcset=\"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Grandmothers-1024x787.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Grandmothers-300x231.jpg 300w, https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Grandmothers-768x590.jpg 768w, https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Grandmothers-1536x1180.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Grandmothers-2048x1574.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Grandmothers-676x520.jpg 676w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Image courtesy of Ayodele Adeniyi via UnSplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do you call your grandmother? Gran? Grandma? Nanny? Perhaps you use a word from her first language, or maybe there\u2019s a family \u2018in joke\u2019 which results in a cute nickname. Does she live in another country, or some distance away? Or perhaps she\u2019s just down the road, and picked you up from school when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":228,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-255","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269,"href":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/255\/revisions\/269"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voicesofmotherhood.wp.worc.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}