How grandchildren can protect your mental health
Ask any grandparents about their grandchildren and they’re always quick to say that grandchildren are the best part of growing older – and well, life in general. The bond between grandparent and grandchild is a uniquely special one, helping keep grandparents active and young at heart, and providing grandkids with a strong connection to family heritage as well as an extraordinary love and trust that can only come from wise grandparents. It’s a relationship that’s equally rewarding as it is beneficial, not just when the grandkids are little ones but throughout the rest of their life. And now there’s scientific evidence to back it all up.
A new study shows that the quality of the relationship between grandparents and adult grandchildren has real, measurable effects on each other’s mental health and psychological wellbeing long into grandchildren’s adulthood.
Researchers from Boston College in the US tracked 376 grandparents and 340 grandchildren from 1985 to 2004. The average grandparent was born in 1917, making them 77 years old at the midpoint of the study in 1994, while the average grandchild was born in 1963, making them 31 years old. Participants filled out extensive surveys every few years, answering questions such as how often they helped each other with housework, gave or received rides, and how well they got along. They also reported their mental health including depressive symptoms.
The data revealed that grandparents and adult grandchildren who felt emotionally close to each other had fewer symptoms of depression for both generations.
“Extended family members, such as grandparents and grandchildren, serve important functions in one another's daily lives throughout adulthood,” said study researcher Sara Moorman, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and the Institute of Aging at Boston College.
“The greater emotional support grandparents and adult grandchildren received from one another, the better their psychological health.”
In an age of increased life expectancy both generations are enjoying longer relationships that weren’t possible before, making the relationships between grandparent and grandchild more important than ever. The researchers said generations are co-existing for unprecedentedly long periods of time, and they can be sources of support, or strain, across people's lives.
“Now, you can be 40 years old and still have one or more grandparents living, which is historically really new,” Moorman said.
Besides the mental health benefits of a close relationship, the study results also showed that for grandparents in particular, it was very important that they be able to reciprocate the help they receive from their grandchildren.
“Grandparents expect to be able to help their grandchildren, even when their grandchildren are grown,” Moorman said.
“There is a saying, 'It is better to give than to receive.' Our results support that folk wisdom – if a grandparent gets help, but cannot give it, he or she feels badly.”
In fact, when grandparents supported their grandchildren, even fully-grown adult one, this improved the psychological wellbeing of the grandparent rather than the child. The researchers noted that grandparents who felt independent, gave their grandchildren advice and bought them an occasional gift or paid for lunch had fewer depressive symptoms, whereas grandparents who only received help, without give help, had increased depressive symptoms.
The findings show the importance of grandkids not only staying connected with grandparents but maintaining a two-way, supportive relationship, in order to ward off the detrimental effects of ageing on the mental and emotional wellbeing of older adults.
“Most of us have been raised to believe that the way to show respect to older family members is to be solicitous and to take care of their every need,” Moorman said. “But all people benefit from feeling needed, worthwhile, and independent. In other words, let granddad write you a cheque on your birthday, even if he's on Social Security and you've held a real job for years now.”
Related links:
The growing trend that sees grandparents as the main childcare providers
6 important life lessons grandparents should teach their grandkids