Grandmothers pay the price
Research findings
|Published
Grandmothers work less, have lower incomes, and experience respiratory infections more often. But they have fewer mental health problems compared with people of the same age who have not yet become grandparents. This is shown in a new study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI).
There has been extensive research on how becoming parents affects us psychologically and financially, however less is known about what happens when people become grandparents. A new study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health has examined how becoming grandparents affects health and attachment to working life.
Financial impact
The study shows clear changes in labour market participation among grandparents. Grandparents work less and have lower incomes after they have grandchildren. The effect is greatest for women.
“We already know that women are more likely than men to experience weaker wage growth when they become parents. It is therefore interesting that we see a similar pattern when they become grandparents as well. On average, both grandmothers and grandfathers have lower incomes after the birth of their first grandchild, but the decline is clearly larger for grandmothers. In other words, women experience this effect twice,” says Maria Lyster Andersen, a PhD research fellow at the Centre for Fertility and Health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
Ten years after the birth of a grandchild, grandmothers earn on average about 14 per cent less than women who have not yet become grandmothers. For grandfathers, the corresponding figure is about 9 per cent. One reason for the lower income may be that grandparents retire earlier or reduce their working hours.
When the grandchild is ten years old, grandmothers are 12 per cent less likely to work full-time compared with if they had not yet become grandmothers. The corresponding decline for grandfathers is 2 per cent.
“Many grandparents probably want to prioritise time with their grandchildren. They may also want to ease the burden on their children in everyday life or help out when the grandchildren are ill or the kindergarten is closed,” Andersen says.
More sore throats, coughs and runny noses, but also fewer mental health problems
Young children bring more germs into the home. This is something first-time parents notice, but grandparents notice it too.
The results show a clear increase in respiratory infections in the years after the first grandchild is born. The increase is greatest in the second and third years after birth, which is the age when children bring infections home from kindergarten. Two years after the birth of a grandchild, nearly one in four grandmothers visit the doctor with such an infection, compared with about one in eight grandfathers.
Before the grandchild arrived, around one in seven future grandmothers and one in ten future grandfathers had at least one medical consultation for a respiratory infection during the year. The increase is therefore greatest for grandmothers: 56 per cent, compared with 31 per cent for grandfathers.
On the positive side, the study shows that grandparents are 4.5 per cent less likely to visit their general practitioner for mental health problems.
“Becoming a grandparent can bring a great deal of joy and meaning, and it is entirely understandable that many people want to work less in order to have more time with their grandchildren. At the same time, society should recognise the unpaid care work this may involve, especially when the costs appear to be so unevenly distributed between grandmothers and grandfathers,” Andersen concludes.
About the study
The study is based on Norwegian registry data for the entire population born between 1950 and 1960. It includes more than 213,100 people who became grandparents for the first time during the period 2007–2018. The researchers used a so-called event study, in which they followed developments in health and work before and after the birth of a grandchild. The data include, among other things, GP visits in primary care and income and employment from national registries.
PhD research fellow Maria Lyster Andersen is the first author of the study, which is part of the FRIPRO-funded PARMENT project, led by Senior Researcher Fartein Ask Torvik, both at the Centre for Fertility and Health, FHI. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).