Family is a dynamic structure, changing over the centuries, and even over a generation. Family’s structure, performed functions and model change. Along with these changes, the role of grandparents changes as well. In many cases, the grandparents of today become a kind of educational institution supporting, to a large extent, parents in their childcare. The changes taking place in modern society including the lengthening of life, the increase of education level, professional activity of women, labour migration of parents, or even single parenthood by choice, affect the change in the role of grandparents in the family. These changes also include emotional relationships between grandparents and their grandchildren, and the intensity of the various types of mutual activity. This article is an attempt to show the issues concerning the role of grandparents in contemporary family in theory as well as an attempt to diagnose the image of grandparents in the perception of students from secondary schools – people standing on the threshold of adulthood. The studies used the semantic differential and unfinished sentences test. The semantic differential technique makes it possible to determine the emotional component of attitudes towards grandma and grandpa. The test of unfinished sentences, which is a projection technique, was applied because it is a source of information which is not completely realized by the researched students in terms of the researched aspect – in this case, grandmother and grandfather. The results received allowed obtaining and comparing the image of grandfather and grandmother in the perception of students from vocational school, technical school and high school.