La voce dei nonni. La condivisione emotiva come strategia di coping nel sistema familiare allargato

Abstract

The supportive, practical and emotional contribution of grandparents within families has gained, in contemporary society, an increasing weight, due to the numerous changes that have affected
the ontological, semantic and structural dimension of the family. In family situations where a child with a disability is present, the role of the grandparents can be even more decisive both actively, through the care of the nephew, and indirectly, through the support to the parents. However, the special pedagogical literature that examined family relationshipsfacing disability has devoted little space to deepening the intergenerational relationship. The contribution wants to illustrate the data that emerged from a qualitative research, which compared with those of international surveys, allowed to open further heuristic tracks that take into account the preciousness of the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren with disabilities within the family frameworks and, in particular, of the adaptive function that intergenerational relations can cover, activating virtuous circuits of emotional sharing.