Commentary on 'Grandparental care and child mental health: a systematic review and meta-analysis'.

Abstract

The manuscript by Wang etal. contributes mightily to our limited understanding of grandparental care and children's mental health problems. As the authors document, despite the growing number of families worldwide where grandparents serve as the sole primary caregivers or reside with the children's parents to share caregiving responsibilities, and the growing number of studies examining associations between grandparental care and children's mental health-related outcomes, systematic reviews and meta-analyses integrating this literature are missing. There are meta-analyses on relations between grandparental care and such child outcomes as physical health, nutrition and obesity, education, and even resilience, but the extant literature on child outcomes has been limited to more qualitatively oriented reviews and has typically focused on child internalizing and externalizing problems. Thus, the current meta-analysis adds a novel and critically missing quantitative component to our broad understanding of the associations between grandparental care and children's problem behavior. In addition, beyond studies examining children's internalizing and externalizing outcomes, the authors also report on several studies (n = 7) that examine children's positive well-being and overall mental health. Overall, among the 38 studies deemed acceptable for review, the meta-analysis included findings from nearly 345,000 children, with a mean age of 10 years and slightly more female (51%) than male children.