The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.
Authors’ contribution
Conceptualization: Alexandra Rafael. Data curation: Alexandra Rafael, Lídia Sousa. Formal analysis: Alexandra Rafael, Lídia Sousa. Investigation: Alexandra Rafael, Lídia Sousa. Methodology: all authors. Software: Alexandra Rafael, Lídia Sousa. Validation: all authors. Writing—original draft: Alexandra Rafael. Writing—review & editing: all authors.
Author | Study design | Sample | Grandparental child care | Outcome:cognition | Results |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Arpino and Bordone [33] | Observational, Retrospective, Repeated Cross-sectional | Noninstitutionalized (N=5,610 women and 4,760 men, ages 50–80 y.o. who had at least one child) from SHARE (waves 2004, 2006) | Supplementary grandparental child care in the previous 12 months (none or very low, 0–0.25; low, 0.25–0.8; medium, 0.8–2.5; high, >2.5 hours/day) | Cognitive function tests: verbal fluency; numeracy; immediate recall; delayed recall | Grandparents who were more intensively engaged in child care showed the lowest average cognitive scores in all the four tests. |
Considering all the control variables trough an instrumental variable approach (2SLS), providing child care had a positive effect on verbal fluency, tending to increase with the amount of child care provided (low, p<0.05; medium, p<0.01; and high care, p<0.001). Not significant on the other three tests. | |||||
For the same level of engagement, results were similar for women and men. | |||||
Burn et al. [34] | Observational, Retrospective, Cross-sectional | Community sample (N=186 postmenopausal women, ages 57–68 y.o.) from WHAP (wave 2002/2004) | With and without grandchildren. Minding grandchildren (never, once every few months, once per month, once every couple of weeks, few hours per week; 1, >1, ≥3 or ≥5 days/week). | Verbal episodic memory (CVLT), working memory and processing speed (SDMT), Executive function (Tower of London) | No significant differences in cognitive tests between grandmothers or them and non-grandmothers were found. |
Minding grandchildren for ≥5 days/week predicted lower working memory and processing speed (SDMT) performance (p<0.05). | |||||
Minding grandchildren for 1 day/week predicted higher verbal episodic memory (CVLT) immediate recall performance (p<0.05). | |||||
Burn and Szoeke [35] | Observational, Retrospective, Cross-sectional | Community sample (N=224 postmenopausal women, ages 64–77 y.o.) from WHAP (wave 2012/2014) | With and without grandchildren. Minding grandchildren (1 or >1 days/week). | Verbal episodic memory (CVLT, COWAT); Executive function (DST, Verbal fluency test); Visuospatial function (RCFT) | Participants who were minding their grandchildren exhibited higher EF scores than those who were not minding grandchildren or non-grandparents (p<0.05). |
Minding grandchildren 1 day/week predicted higher EF scores than those who were minding for >1 day/week (p<0.05). | |||||
Jun [36] | Observational, Retrospective, Longitudinal | Sample of middle-aged and older adults (N=2,341 older adults (N=2,341 grandmothers, ages 50–74 y.o.) from KLoSA [FU=2008 (Time 2) to 2010 (Time 3)] | Grandchild care (<10 or ≥10 hours/week) | Global cognitive functioning (K-MMSE) | Grandchild care more intense and frequent at Time 2 was positively associated with cognition at Time 2 (p<0.05) (instantaneous effects of child care) but not at Time 3, revealing no longitudinal effects. However, it was both instantaneously and longitudinally (p<0.01) beneficial to cognition for grandmothers with higher education. |
Reinkowski [37] | Observational, Retrospective, Longitudinal | (N=29 461 grandmothers who reported having ≥1 grandchild aged ≥16, ages 45–90 y.o.) from SHARE (waves 2004/2005, 2006/2007, 2011/2012) | Occasional grandchild care (no care, 0; almost daily, 38.7; almost every week, 11.3; almost monthly, 5.8; less than monthly, 2.4 mean hours/week) | Cognitive test for immediate recall and delayed recall assessment | A small but statistically significant positive correlation between grandchild care and cognitive function was found (p<0.01), using OLS correlations. |
Exploiting a panel character of the data and using an instrumental variable approach (2SLS), grandchild care did not have a significant causal effect as OLS correlations suggested. |
CVLT: California verbal learning test, COWAT: controlled oral word association test, DST: digit span task, FU: follow-up, EF: executive function, KLoSA: Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging, K-MMSE: Korean version of the Mini-Mental State Exam, OLS: ordinary least squares regression, RCFT: Rey-Osterreith complex figure test, SMDT: Symbol-Digit Modalities Test, SHARE: Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe, WHAP: Women’s Healthy Ageing Project, y.o.: years old, 2SLS: two-stage least squares estimation