“Grandparents can play a vital role in the early years of a child’s life,” concluded a recent review of the influence of grandparents on young children.

The review, titled “Grandparental Involvement in Early Child Development”, was published in October this year.

It was conducted by the Centre for Holistic Initiatives for Learning and Development (CHILD). Established in August 2020 under the umbrella of the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS) together with Lien Foundation, CHILD aims to give all children in Singapore the best start to life and to help them develop optimally as they grow up.

The review was the eighth in its Evidence Insight series reviewing different areas of research.

“When grandparents provide supportive and consistent care in multigenerational households, their involvement has been associated with positive outcomes in children’s health, cognitive development, and emotional well-being,” the authors wrote.

Positive Influences in Early Childhood

Grandparental involvement has been associated with “child mental well-being, cognitive and educational outcomes, and physical health outcomes”, the review found. These influences vary depending on the caregiving arrangement, the quality of intergenerational relationships, and the broader sociocultural context in which grandparenting occurs.

Here are some of the key findings:

• Mental well-being. The review found that evidence on this was “mixed”. On one hand, there were studies that showed increased mental health challenges, but CHILD explained that these were “partially” because many of these studies involved grandparents who were raising their grandchildren in difficult situations. On the other hand, other studies reported more “positive associations” between grandparental involvement and child well-being.
  
• Cognitive and educational outcomes. Grandparents can help transfer of knowledge, experience, and practical skills, through activities such as reading, storytelling, and play. Supportive and well-educated grandparents can be particularly effective in enhancing early learning outcomes. In culturally diverse Singapore, grandparents also help nurture language and cultural heritage in grandchildren.
  
• Physical health. Evidence on physical health was again “mixed”. Non-Western studies found that grandmothers often guide young mothers on child feeding and health practices, influencing intergenerational caregiving norms. Some studies highlighted negative practices like indulgent feeding, while others found that “nurturing, home-based care” was beneficial to children’s physical health.

In its review, CHILD repeatedly emphasised the need for nuance and appreciation of the different contexts, which would affect whether the influence of grandparents was positive or not.  

CHILD’s Recommendations for Policy and Practice

CHILD considers it “essential” to formally recognise and include grandparents within early childhood and early intervention frameworks. This involves routinely inviting grandparents to participate in intake sessions, caregiver coaching, and home-based services “if they play a substantial caregiving role”.

In their view, successful grandparenting interventions should be developed into “sustainable programmes and publicly accessible resources”. These include:

• Educational workshops and toolkits tailored to grandparents, covering topics such as:
  • Early childhood development
  • Responsive caregiving
  • Strategies for reinforcing intervention goals at home with other co-caregivers
• Family-centred intervention models offered in Singapore could be inclusive of other
• caregivers, such as grandparents
• Strengthening communication and alignment between all caregivers and intervention service providers (e.g., early childhood educators)

Bearing in mind Singapore’s cultural diversity, CHILD emphasised the importance of developing multilingual, culturally inclusive resources and services.

CHILD also made some recommendations for government policy, to acknowledge “the growing number of grandparents who remain in the workforce past traditional retirement age”. These recommendations include:

• Targeted respite care options and flexible work arrangements to help them balance employment with caregiving responsibilities and opportunities
• Enhancements to the Grandparent Caregiver Relief (GCR) by linking eligibility to participation in early childhood development programmes, workshops, or health screenings, thereby encouraging lifelong learning and reinforcing evidence-based caregiving practices

How Grander Together is Helping Grandparents as Co-caregivers

Grander Together shares the concerns of CHILD and hopes to encourage better grandparental involvement in the lives of grandchildren as well as intergenerational families.

The review noted that there is currently “a small range of programmes and initiatives aim to equip grandparents with knowledge and skills to effectively support their grandchildren.” It added: “Despite growing recognition of grandparents’ caregiving roles, there remains a limited availability of targeted programmes in Singapore that are contextualised to equip grandparent co-caregivers with the skills needed to support caregiving.”

This is why Grander Together has sought to address the need, by conducting a range of programmes and activities to address the topic of grandparenting and intergenerational relationships and values.

These include:

• Our “Apparently” webinars, bringing together professional or personal perspectives, to help strengthen intergenerational families. Among the topics we have addressed include practices in child-raising, managing intergenerational differences when raising grandchildren, child abuse prevention and intervention, screen time and education.
• Multicultural, intergenerational festive celebrations (e.g. Chinese New Year, Hari Raya and Deepavali)
• Workshops to encourage and equip grandparents to engage more effectively with their grandchildren:
  • Ukulele workshop for beginners
  • Storytelling workshop
  • Story reading workshop

(Indicate your interest in our workshops here)