Science suggests sharper mind comes from looking after grandkids
LOS ANGELES: Caring for grandchildren may help protect grandparents against cognitive decline, new research shows, with grandmothers the biggest beneficiaries.
And it doesn’t seem to matter how much caregiving is done, it is the fact of just being involved that leads to this positive health benefit, the research, published in the journal Psychology and Aging, finds.
Using data from nearly 2900 grandparents in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, including survey questions and cognitive testing over six years, the Dutch researchers found grandparents who provided childcare scored higher on tests of memory and verbal fluency than those who didn’t.
This finding held true after adjusting for the age of the grandparent, their health and the frequency and type of care provided.
The types of care included overnight sitting, caring for an ill child, playing or engaging in leisure activities, helping with homework, driving grandchildren to school and activities, and preparing meals.
“What stood out most to us was that being a caregiving grandparent seemed to matter more for cognitive functioning than how often grandparents provided care or what exactly they did with their grandchildren,” said lead researcher Flavia Chereches, from Tilburg University in the Netherlands.
“More research is needed to replicate these findings, yet, if there are benefits associated with caregiving for grandparents, they might not depend on how often care is provided, or on the specific activities done with grandchildren, but rather on the broader experience of being involved with caregiving.”
The study also finds a gender difference, with a slower cognitive decline for grandmothers caring for their grandchildren than other grandmothers, while for grandfathers who provided care the effect wasn’t as pronounced.
The study says the difference may lie in how the respective genders engage with their grandchildren.
“Grandmothers are often viewed as the primary co-ordinators of childcare, with a greater emphasis on family support,” it says.
“Grandfathers, in contrast, are reported to provide grandchild care more often in the presence of their spouse compared with grandmothers, suggesting a more peripheral and supportive role. Consequently, the level of cognitive stimulation from caregiving may be lower for grandfathers.”
While the study finds no direct link between the different childminding activities undertaken by the grandparents and their cognition, it says “a greater variety of caregiving activities was associated with better verbal fluency and episodic memory functioning”.
“Engaging in diverse activities likely stimulates multiple cognitive domains, as different tasks can involve unique cognitive processes, such as planning or problem-solving.”
The study accepted its limitations, including the circumstances in which a grandparent is acting as a carer to their grandchildren.
“Providing care voluntarily, within a supportive family environment, may have different effects for grandparents than caregiving in a more stressful environment where they feel unsupported or feel that the caregiving is not voluntary or a burden,” Ms Chereches says.
Being diverted from paid work or more preferable activities may have a different impact on a grandparent’s mental acuity.
“Past research suggests that high involvement in grandchild care may divert time that grandparents typically allocate to other forms of social involvement,” the paper says. “When care replaces other meaningful occupations, grandparents might feel distressed.”
And it flags that it can’t exclude the possibility of “reverse causality” in the findings, where individual grandparents may have reached older age with a higher cognitive ability and therefore the capacity to engage in more grandchild care.