Effect Of Grandparents Research Articles

The effect of grandparents’ economic, cultural, and social capital on grandchildren's educational success

This paper analyzes the effects of grandparents’ economic, cultural, and social capital on grandchildren's educational success. We analyze data from Denmark and hypothesize that grandparents’ economic capital should be of little importance in the Scandinavian context, while their cultural and social capital should be relatively more important. Our results partly confirm these hypotheses since, after controlling for parents’ capital, we find that grandparents’ cultural capital (but not their economic and social capital) has a positive effect on the likelihood that grandchildren choose the academic track in upper secondary education over all other tracks. These results suggest, at least in the Scandinavian context, that the ways in which grandparents affect grandchildren's educational success is via transmission of non-economic resources.

The Effects of Grandparents’ Providing Care for Grandchildren on Mothers’ Attitudes of Coresidence with Elderly Parents: Focusing on Differences between Parents and Parents-in-Law

The Effects of Grandparents’ Providing Care for Grandchildren on Mothers’ Attitudes of Coresidence with Elderly Parents: Focusing on Differences between Parents and Parents-in-Law

Cohabitational effect of grandparents on dietary intake among young Japanese women and their mothers living together. A multicenter cross-sectional study

We examined the cohabitational effect of the grandparents on dietary intakes among young Japanese women and their mothers, using data from a cross-sectional multicenter study conducted in 35 of 47 prefectures in Japan. Among a total of 2032 three-generation families, 1336 female dietetic students (18–20 years), 1336 of their mothers (36–59 years), and 1560 of their paternal or maternal grandmothers (59–94 years) were included. Intake of foods and nutrients was assessed with self-administered diet history questionnaires. The prevalence of students and their mothers living with the grandparents (GP) was 36%. Students living with GP had a higher intake of fruits, vegetables, total dietary fiber, β-carotene, vitamin C and potassium and lower intake of meats than those living without GP. For mothers, fish and shellfish and vitamin C intakes were higher and meat intake was lower among participants living with GP. The median correlation coefficients of food and nutrient intakes in the students–grandmothers living together was higher than in those living apart for both paternal grandmothers (PGM) and maternal grandmothers (MGM) (all P < 0.01). The median values of mothers–PGM living together were also significantly higher than in those living apart (P < 0.01). However, the values of mothers–MGM did not significantly differ between those living with and without MGM. These results may suggest that family members who live together tend to share similar dietary habits. Further, the mother's dietary habits might affect those of their children even after they live apart.

Grandparental help in Indonesia is directed preferentially towards needier descendants: A potential confounder when exploring grandparental influences on child health

A considerable body of evidence has now demonstrated positive correlations between grandparental presence and child health outcomes. It is typically assumed that such correlations exist because grandparental investment in their grandchildren improves child health and wellbeing. However, less is known about how grandparents allocate help to adult children and grandchildren, particularly in lower income contexts. Here we use detailed quantitative data from the longitudinal Indonesia Family Life Survey (data collected in 1993, 1997, 2000, 2007; n = 16,250) to examine grandparental help in a society transitioning both demographically and economically. We test the hypothesis that grandparents direct help preferentially towards those adult children and grandchildren most in need of help. This hypothesis was supported for help provided by married grandparents and single grandmothers, who tended to: provide more help to their adult children when this generation had young children themselves, provide financial help if their adult children were poorer, and provide more household help if their adult daughters worked outside the home. One unexpected result was that help from maternal and paternal grandparents is positively correlated; if one set of grandparents is helping the other set is more likely to help, counter to our predictions. These results provide support for the hypothesis that grandparents preferentially invest in some descendants over others, where married grandparents and single grandmothers tend to invest in those adult children and grandchildren with the most need. Investigating the effect of grandparents on child health outcomes may therefore be confounded by grandparent's preferential investment in needier descendants.

Do grandparents matter? A multigenerational perspective on educational attainment in Taiwan

In response to the growing interest in multigenerational effects, we investigate whether grandparents’ education affects grandchildren’s transitions to academic high school and university in Taiwan. Drawing on social capital literature, we consider potential heterogeneity of the grandparent effect by parents’ characteristics and propose that grandparents’ education yields differential effects depending on parents’ education. Our results show tenuous effects of grandmother’s and grandfather’s years of schooling, net of parents’ education. However, the positive interaction effects between grandparents’ and parents’ years of schooling indicate that grandparents’ additional years of schooling are more beneficial to students with more educated parents than for students with less educated parents. The diverging gap in the likelihood of attending academic high school or university between students with parents in higher and lower ends of the educational hierarchy, along with increased levels of grandparents’ education, supports our hypothesis that grandparents’ education augments educational inequality by parents’ education.

Role of grandparenting in postmenopausal women’s cognitive health

Preserving aging cognition improves quality of life and delays dementia onset. Previous studies have shown that social engagement can maintain cognition; however, none has examined the effects of grandparenting, an important role among postmenopausal women. This study aims to examine the role of grandparenting in cognition among postmenopausal women. Participants were 186 Australian women from the longitudinal prospective Women's Healthy Aging Project. Cognition was assessed using the Symbol-Digit Modalities Test (SDMT), California Verbal Learning Test, and Tower of London. Amount of time spent minding grandchildren predicted differences in SDMT performance (P < 0.01). The highest cognitive scores for most tests were seen in participants who minded grandchildren for 1 day/week. Minding grandchildren for 1 day/week was also a significant positive predictor of California Verbal Learning Test immediate recall performance (P < 0.05). However, minding grandchildren for 5 days or more per week predicted lower SDMT performance (P < 0.05). The data suggest that the highest cognitive performance is demonstrated by postmenopausal women who spend 1 day/week minding grandchildren; however, minding grandchildren for 5 days or more per week predicts lower working memory performance and processing speed. These results indicate that highly frequent grandparenting predicts lower cognitive performance.

Thermal Transgenerational Plasticity in Natural Populations of Daphnia

Rising temperatures associated with global climatic change threaten the persistence of species. Determining how species adapt to environmental change is paramount. Much work has shown that environmental stressors have the potential to induce phenotypic changes that span multiple generations. Such transgenerational plasticity (TGP) represents a mechanism that may allow for rapid responses to global climatic change. Yet, our understanding of thermal TGP beyond the relationship between parent and offspring is limited. We evaluated thermal TGP in development across three generations (i.e., F0, F1, and F2) in zooplankton (Daphnia ambigua) from lakes in Connecticut. We found that the temperatures at which parents and grandparents were reared significantly influenced age at maturation in the grand-offspring. Comparisons between the F0 and F1 generation show that the offspring of parents reared at low temperatures matured significantly faster than the offspring of parents reared at a higher temperature. However, age at maturation in the grand-offspring was influenced by the interactive effects of parents and grandparents. Such an effect yielded trends that were not readily predicted from the previous generations and whose adaptive significance is unclear. Our results thus call for additional theoretical and empirical work to better understand the transgenerational effects of temperature.

A Study of the Effect of Grandparents' Caregiving of Grandchildren on the Life Satisfaction and Depressive Symptoms

A Study of the Effect of Grandparents' Caregiving of Grandchildren on the Life Satisfaction and Depressive Symptoms

The Effects of Grandparents on Children’s Schooling: Evidence From Rural China

The issue of whether the social class of grandparents affects grandchildren's socioeconomic outcomes net of the characteristics of the middle generation is much debated in the social mobility literature. Using data from the 2002 Chinese Household Income Project, we investigate the direct effects of grandparents on grandchildren's educational attainment in rural China. We find that the influence of grandparents is contingent on living arrangements. Although the educational level of coresident grandparents directly affects the educational attainment of their grandchildren, with an effect size similar to that of parental education, the education of noncoresident and deceased grandparents does not have any effect. These findings suggest that grandparents can directly affect grandchildren's educational outcomes through sociopsychological pathways. Our study not only adds an important case study to the literature but also sheds new light on theoretical interpretations of grandparent effects when they are found.

The transmission of longevity across generations: The case of the settler Cape Colony

Evidence on long-term multigenerational dynamics is often inadequate as large datasets with multiple generations remain very uncommon. We posit that genealogical records can offer a valuable alternative. Rather than exploring the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status, we rely on birth and death dates of eighteenth and nineteenth century settlers in South Africa's Cape Colony to estimate the intergenerational transmission of longevity. We find that there is a positive and significant association between parents’ and offspring's life duration, as well as between siblings. Although these correlations persist over time, the coefficients are relatively small. While the effect of grandparents’ longevity on that of grandchildren is insignificant, the cousin correlations suggest that inequality in longevity might persist across more than two generations. We suggest that family and environmental factors shared by cousins, beyond grandparental longevity, can explain these results.

孫の教育達成に対する祖父母学歴の効果

孫の教育達成に対する祖父母学歴の効果

Grandparents' Childcare and Female Labor Force Participation

In the U.S., grandparents look after one in five preschool children of employed women. Does this source of informal childcare increase female labor force participation and if so, up to what extent? The main challenge to answer this question is that a positive relationship between grandparents’ childcare and female labor force participation might not be causal. We use the maternal grandmother’s death as an instrument of grandparents’ childcare to measure the effect of grandparents’ childcare on maternal labor force participation (MLFP). We compare OLS and IV estimates and find that grandparents’ childcare increases MLFP by 15 percentage points on average. We argue that most of the effect is driven by families from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

A multigenerational view of inequality.

The study of intergenerational mobility and most population research are governed by a two-generation (parent-to-offspring) view of intergenerational influence, to the neglect of the effects of grandparents and other ancestors and nonresident contemporary kin. While appropriate for some populations in some periods, this perspective may omit important sources of intergenerational continuity of family-based social inequality. Social institutions, which transcend individual lives, help support multigenerational influence, particularly at the extreme top and bottom of the social hierarchy, but to some extent in the middle as well. Multigenerational influence also works through demographic processes because families influence subsequent generations through differential fertility and survival, migration, and marriage patterns, as well as through direct transmission of socioeconomic rewards, statuses, and positions. Future research should attend more closely to multigenerational effects; to the tandem nature of demographic and socioeconomic reproduction; and to data, measures, and models that transcend coresident nuclear families.

Toward an integrative framework of grandparental investment

AbstractThis response outlines more reasons why we need the integrative framework of grandparental investments and intergenerational transfers that we advocated in the target article. We discusses obstacles – from misconceptions to poor measures – that stand in the way of such a framework and of a better understanding of the effects of grandparenting in the developed world. We highlight new research directions that have emerged from the commentaries, and we end by discussing some of the things in our target article about which we may have been wrong.

Are humans cooperative breeders?: Most studies of natural fertility populations do not support the grandmother hypothesis

AbstractIn discussing the effects of grandparents on child survival in natural fertility populations, Coall &amp; Hertwig (C&amp;H) rely extensively on the review by Sear and Mace (2008). We conducted a more detailed summary of the same literature and found that the evidence in favor of beneficial associations between grandparenting and child survival is generally weak or absent. The present state of the data on human alloparenting supports a more restricted use of the term “cooperative breeding.” Human stem family situations with celibate helpers-at-the-nest can be described as cooperatively breeding, but the term is a poor fit to many human family systems.

Marriage Timing over the Generations.

Strong relationships have been hypothesized between the timing of marriage and the familial environment of the couple. Sociologists have identified various mechanisms via which the age at marriage in the parental generation might be related to the age at marriage of the children. In our paper we study this relationship for historical populations. We use a dataset consisting of several hundreds of thousands of marriages contracted in three of the 11 Dutch provinces between 1812 and 1922. We identified the generational links between the brides, grooms, their parents, and grandparents. We studied (a) whether there is a relationship between ages at marriage of (grandfathers) fathers and sons, and ages at marriage of (grandmothers) mothers and daughters and (b) whether this relationship might be explained by social class. We find evidence for a clear effect of the family on age at marriage and substantial intergenerational transmission. The impact that the family of origin has on age at entry into marriage can partly be attributed to social class. We also observed positive effects of grandparents' age at marriage on their offspring's age at marriage.

Grandchildren's Perceptions of Grandparents' Health

Young adults (N= 153) completed a questionnaire about their relationships with grandparents they perceived to live with illness, disease, and/or disability. We investigated (1) the extent to which participants reported worrying about 12 causes of concern related to their grandparents' health and well-being (e.g., the grandparent dying in the near future) and (2) their perceptions concerning the extent to which their grandparents' health problems have affected nine areas of their own lives (e.g., the cohesiveness of their families). The results provide the foundation for the development of a descriptive base of knowledge useful in guiding further exploration of young adults' perceptions of the effects of grandparents' health on their own lives and their relationships with affected grandparents.

All in the Extended Family: Effects of Grandparents, Aunts, and Uncles on Educational Attainment

All in the Extended Family: Effects of Grandparents, Aunts, and Uncles on Educational Attainment by Linda Datcher Loury. Published in volume 96, issue 2, pages 275-278 of American Economic Review, May 2006

Designs of reference families for the construction of genetic linkage maps

The reference family panel is the foundation of a gene mapping program because it affects the cost and quality of the genetic linkage maps, and should be designed to yield reliable linkage detection and locus ordering at minimal gene mapping cost. A map cost function was defined as the number of genotypes required per marker per unit of genome coverage and was used to obtain optimal designs with respect to linkage detection. An ordering reliability function was defined as the likelihood ratio of the most likely order to the second most likely order of genetic markers and was used to find optimal designs with respect to locus ordering. Optimum levels of recombination frequency were found to be in the neighborhood of 0.11‐0.15 for linkage detection and were in the region of 0.05‐0.20 for locus ordering. Therefore, recombination frequencies optimal for linkage detection are also optimal for locus ordering. Based on the optimal detection levels, sample size (number of offspring) and map cost requirements were derived for six representative designs, assuming gender‐specific linkage maps and two alleles with equal frequency for each marker. The sample size required for linkage detection ranged from 168 to 432 offspring for full‐sib designs and ranged from 350 to 600 offspring for half‐sib designs depending on the family size and the target LOD score, with corresponding minimal map costs of 10‐20 genotypes per marker per centiMorgan map coverage. Locus ordering generally requires more genotypes than linkage detection. For full‐sib designs, meioses from both genders should be used for locus ordering even when the maps are gender‐specific. For half‐sib designs, additional families may be needed for locus ordering. Sample size for ordering closely linked loci as required by positional cloning were provided. Effects of family size, grandparents, and marker polymorphism on design efficiency were analyzed.

Predictors of nurturant parenting in teen mothers living in three generational families.

Direct and indirect effects of grandparents on maternal nurturance in teen mothers (TM) living in three-generational families were explored with path analytic techniques in a sample of 107 working-class families. Perceived support from the teen's mother, grandparents' nurturance toward the baby, and the presence of the grandfather as a father figure in the home were hypothesized as increasing TM nurturance. TM nurturance was found to be positively predicted by grandparent nurturance and negatively predicted by TM perceived support from her mother. The strongest predictor of TM nurturance was grandfather nurturance toward the baby.