Extended Family Parenting: Many Styles, One Child It is not uncommon for grandmothers to become caregivers for their grandchildren, whether they become surrogate mothers to these children or act as a joint caregiver ( Silva, Pires, Guerreiro, Cardoso, 2012). However, the peculiarity of this situation is that although Stella does not live with her daughter and mother, she has gradually become more and more involved in their lives. Although Stella is grateful to her mother for providing love and care to her daughter while she was in recovery, she revealed to me that it has been difficult to negotiate her role as a parent as she returns to her daughter's life, after having been partially absent for most of her life. part of the time. In addition to his maternal grandmother, Drew's family home also contains his maternal grandfather, biological aunt and uncle, as well as his paternal great-grandmother. Stella also lived in her family's home with Drew, however, at the time Stella was still in the early stages of recovery and struggling to stay sober. This caused conflict between her and her family and Stella decided that she would get her own apartment. Reflecting on this period of her life, Stella explains: "I wasn't in a good state of mind. I didn't want her [Drew] to see me that way, so that's why I would stay away." Stella also adds that it's only in the last year that she's had regular contact with Drew, spending weekends with her daughter and going on mother-daughter outings. With so many family members contributing to Drew's upbringing, Stella explains that there is a lot of disjunction between parenting styles, especially in the area of ​​discipline. For example, some members of his family will resort to shaming and corporal punishment for… middle of paper… struggling with addiction. In Stella's words: When you become that person, you do certain things out of necessity, [but] because I had strong morals and standards, I didn't go that far, because you know, I was raised differently... I was raised better than Even while Stella believes that her strong morals and values ​​ensured that her addiction did not lead to acts such as theft or violence against others, they did not protect her from becoming involved in drugs. As Stella adds, “somehow everything went to shit… and I don't want that to happen to her [Drew].” Therefore, Stella would like to see her daughter grow up similar to her, but with the added insight of her life experiences, in the hope that her son will make better choices than she did. Part of this education involves Drew being a member of the Greek Orthodox Church and attending “Greek school”.."