‘Baby boomers’, born after the Second World War, have been portrayed as selfish and individualistic, depriving subsequent generations of the opportunities they themselves benefitted from. This debate has ignored intergenerational transfers within families, such as provision of grandparental childcare. This article explores why grandparents choose to provide childcare for grandchildren while their adult children are working. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 55 grandparents, we argue that values are essential to understanding why grandparents chose to provide childcare in the first place. These values relate to the importance of family-based childcare, familial obligations towards adult children, and intergenerational solidarity. While values shaped the desire to provide some childcare, the socio-economic and employment circumstances of adult children and grandparents influenced the nature of the childcare provided and the changes grandparents made to their lives to accommodate caring. Some grandparents significantly changed their employment and housing circumstances to provide childcare, undermining the stereotype of a ‘selfish generation’.

Recent trends in business school architecture and design have sparked significant interest in exploring the ways space is used to build organisational identity and reputation. In this article, we add to these conversations by exploring the ways in which spatial designs and practices shape student experiences of business school education. Drawing from Lefebvre’s theorisation of spatiality as simultaneously physical, social and imaginary, we conceptually link spatial designs and practices to the business school’s hidden curriculum. The empirical study we conducted at a UK business school predominately focused on student accounts of their experiences with and within the school. The findings point out three aspects of the relationship between spatiality and the student experience: (1) space is deliberately used to symbolically orientate the school, and to reflect organisational values and ideals; (2) the way in which spatiality shapes student experiences relies on the student contextualisation of spatial designs and practices; (3) student reaction to spatiality is framed by their ideal vision of business school experience. We add to the current conversations on business school spaces and the student experience by showing how spatiality plays an active role not only in student on-course experiences, but also in their conceptualisation of business school education.

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In response to concerns about the rising cost of State Pensions and the prospect of skills shortages, successive United Kingdom (UK) governments have introduced a range of legislative changes designed to extend working life. Policy discourse emphasises individual responsibility for saving towards retirement, and in recent years there has been a shift away from collective pension provision. Changes to employment regulations and pension schemes have been portrayed both as an economic necessity and as offering older workers greater choice and control over work in later life. However, gendered patterns of paid employment and unpaid caring work over the lifecourse mean that women are systematically disadvantaged in terms of employment opportunities in later life and access to pension income in retirement. Extended working life policies may also negatively impact upon older workers in poor health, since the UK does not have a disability pension and individuals cannot claim their State Pension early.

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