Arpino, Bruno & Bordone, Valeria. 2014. “Does Grandparenting Pay Off? The Effect of Child Care on Grandparents’ Cognitive Functioning.” Journal of Marriage and Family 76: 337-351.
It has been widely acknowledged that grandparenting produces benefits for younger generation (i.e. helps mother balance work and family) and for society as a whole. But is grandparenting also beneficial for the grandparents? The authors examined whether the provision of child care helps older adults maintain better cognitive functioning. Descriptive evidence from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (n=5610 women and n=4760 men, ages 50-80) shows that intensively engaged grandparents have lower cognitive scores than the others. Using an instrumental variable approach, they found that providing child care has a positive effect on verbal fluency. For the other three cognitive tests, no statistically significant effect was found. Given the same level of engagement, they found very similar results for grandmothers and grandfathers.
在欧美国家，隔代抚养，即祖父母或者外祖父母照看孩子，也是非常普遍的现象。根据数据显示，50%的老年人多多少少参与到抚养孩子的过程中。隔代抚养对于年轻父母和社会的贡献已经被讨论过很多了。但是，换个角度，我们并不十分了解抚养孩子的过程对于祖父母和外祖父母的生活到底有什么影响，尤其是他们的认知能力。作者分析了欧洲健康、老年和退休数据库（该数据库有5610名女性和4760名男性，他们的年龄介于50到80岁），并且发现，抚养孙辈的过程本身会促进老年人的语言流利程度，但是对于其他认知方面的能力却并没有显著的帮助。另外，如果参与程度相同的话，抚养孙辈对于祖父和祖母的认知能力帮助是没有显著性差别的。比较有意思的是，文章里也提到，作为辅助性的抚养孙辈和“全职抚养孙辈对于老年人的生活影响也是完全不同的。