From physical fitness to doing puzzles to going out with friends, there’s a laundry list of advice out there to help protect our brains from cognitive decline as we age. Taking care of grandchildren may also help brain health, according to new research from the American Psychological Association published today in the journal Psychology and Aging.
“Many grandparents provide regular care for their grandchildren—care that supports families and society more broadly,” Flavia Chereches, a study co-author and Ph.D. candidate at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, said in a statement. “An open question, however, is whether caregiving for grandchildren may also benefit grandparents themselves. In this research, we wanted to see if providing grandchild care might benefit grandparents’ health, potentially slowing down cognitive decline.”
To take a deeper dive into how grandparenting affects the brain, Chereches and her team examined data from 2,887 grandparents. All of the participants were over the age of 50 (the average age was 67) and took part in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Between 2016 and 2022, the volunteers completed cognitive tests and answered survey questions three times.
The survey asked whether or not the participants had provided care for a grandchild at any point during the past year. It also asked them detailed questions about how frequently they provided childcare and what kinds of care they provided. Types of childcare included watching their grandchildren overnight, caring for grandchildren when they were sick, playing or engaging in leisure activities with them, helping with homework assignments, driving grandchildren to school and activities, and preparing meals.
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Overall, the team found that those who spent time with their grandchildren scored higher on tests of memory and verbal fluency compared with those who didn’t. These results held even after adjusting for age, health, and other factors. More involved grandparents also scored higher on these tests regardless of the frequency and type of care they provided.
Additionally, they saw that grandmothers who provided care experienced less decline on cognitive tests over the course of their 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 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.”
Chereches added that future studies could explore the effects of family context and other variables on the aging brain.
“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,” Chereches concluded.