Document Type
Journal Article
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Faculty
Faculty of Health, Engineering and Science
School
School of Medical Sciences
RAS ID
18430
Abstract
Across human cultures, grandparents make a valued contribution to the health of their families and communities. Moreover, evidence is gathering that grandparents have a positive impact on the development of grandchildren in contemporary industrialized societies. A broad range of factors that influence the likelihood grandparents will invest in their grandchildren has been explored by disciplines as diverse as sociology, economics, psychology and evolutionary biology. To progress toward an encompassing framework, this study will include biological relatedness between grandparents and grandchildren, a factor central to some discipline's theoretical frameworks (e.g., evolutionary biology), next to a wide range of other factors in an analysis of grandparental investment in contemporary Europe. This study draws on data collected in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe from 11 European countries that included 22,967 grandparent-child dyads. Grandparents reported biological relatedness, and grandparental investment was measured as the frequency of informal childcare. Biological and non-biological grandparents differed significantly in a variety of individual, familial and area-level characteristics. Furthermore, many other economic, sociological, and psychological factors also influenced grandparental investment. When they were controlled, biological grandparents, relative to non-biological grandparents, were more likely to invest heavily, looking after their grandchildren almost daily or weekly. Paradoxically, however, they were also more likely to invest nothing at all. We discuss the methodological and theoretical implications of these findings across disciplines.
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0084082
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
Coall, D. A., Hilbrand, S., & Hertwig, R. (2014). Predictors of Grandparental Investment Decisions in Contemporary Europe: Biological Relatedness and Beyond. PLoS ONE, 9(1), e84082. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0084082. Available here