Doing Family over Time: The Multilayered and Multitemporal Nature of Intergenerational Caring through Consumption.

The article focuses on intergenerational caring through consumption (ICTC) in grandparent–grandchild relationships, presenting a processual framework that reveals its multilayered and multitemporal nature. Drawing on qualitative narrative interviews with Finnish grandparents and grandchildren, the study conceptualizes ICTC as encompassing three layers of care—family, socio-ecological, and self—and three generative acts: creating, transmitting, and protecting. It highlights how caring practices extend beyond the nuclear family and present time to include past and future generations, societal values, and environmental concerns, all framed by the culturally shared master narrative of generativity. The findings contribute to family consumption research by broadening the understanding of care as a dynamic, reciprocal, and temporally complex process that sustains family continuity and societal ideals across generations.