Being an involved grandparent is good for the brain, according to a new study which showed that caring for grandchildren may serve as a “buffer” against cognitive decline and dementia in older adults.
“Many grandparents provide regular care for their grandchildren—care that supports families, and society more broadly—but an open question is whether caregiving for grandchildren may also benefit grandparents themselves,” said lead researcher Flavia Chereches.
This researchers wanted to see if providing grandchild care might benefit grandparents’ health, potentially slowing down cognitive decline.
Ms Chereches, a doctoral candidate at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and her colleagues examined data from 2,887 English grandmas and grandads all older than 50, with an average age of 67.
The participants answered survey questions and completed cognitive tests three times between 2016 and 2022.
The survey asked whether they had provided care for a grandchild at any point in the past year—and how frequently.
Were they watching grandchildren overnight, caring for them when they were sick, playing or engaging in leisure activities, helping with homework, driving them to school and activities, or preparing meals?
Overall, the researchers found that grandparents who provided childcare—regardless of the frequency and type of care they provided—scored higher on tests of both memory and verbal fluency compared with those who didn’t, even after adjusting for age, health and other factors.
The findings, published in the journal Psychology and Aging also found that grandmothers who provided care saw less decline on cognitive tests over the course of the study compared with those who didn’t.
“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 Chereches.
“More research is needed, but if there are benefits associated with caregiving by 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.”
Around five million grandparents in the UK regularly take on childcare responsibilities, with just under 90% of them babysitting at least once a week, according to the nonprofit Age UK.
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One in 10 look after their grandchildren at least once a day, with the majority getting involved to help their own children save money to support their young family.
Age UK says “gran-nannying” has enormous benefits for older couples, keeping them mentally and physically active and combatting loneliness, if that caregiving is not stressful or a burden.
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One CBS news host says his mom helps with their kids, and asked her on the air what she thought of the new study showing it benefits grandparents—and she wasn’t surprised.
“They energize me, more than drive me down,” she said in the cute video below…
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