Grandparenthood, grandchild care and depression among older people in 18 countries

Due to the increasing central role of grandparenthood in later life, sound knowledge about its effects on older people’s health is more and more important. This paper examines the impact of becoming a grandparent, having more grandchildren, and engaging in grandchild care on depressive symptoms. Moreover, based on the structural ambivalence theory, we expect that such effects differ across contexts as (grand)childcare is differently organised across Europe. Taking advantage of the longitudinal structure of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we estimate fixed-effects models. Our results show that women face a decline in depressive symptoms when becoming grandmothers, but neither an increase in the number of grandchildren nor changes in grandchild care are associated with changes in depressive symptoms. The analyses by country highlight differences across Europe, without, however, drawing a clear pattern. Our results show that depression consequences of grandparenthood also vary between countries characterised by similar roles of grandparents. This suggests the need to make available more refined questions about grandparenthood in surveys on older people.