People With This Relative In Their Life Are More Resilient, According To Research
Few people understand just how valuable maternal grandmothers really are.
fizkes | Shutterstock Having the support of family is important to so many people. Many would say they couldn’t have made it to where they are today or couldn’t get through day-to-day life without support from their family members.
While all family relationships are important, one group of researchers set out to discover if certain family members are more beneficial than others. Turns out, maternal grandmothers actually take the cake when it comes to our biggest and best influences.
A Finnish study found that people who have their maternal grandmother in their lives are more resilient than those who don’t.
A team of researchers from the University of Turku in Turku, Finland, set out to learn what the effects of maternal grandmothers were on their grandchildren. Their findings just might surprise you.
According to a press release that announced the results of the study showed that "investment by maternal grandmothers can improve the well-being of grandchildren who have faced adversities in life. The positive effects can last well into adulthood.”
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Historical analysis has shown that grandmothers, not grandfathers, have a greater impact on the health and welfare of grandchildren.
The study, which was published in the journal Scientific Reports, included 1,197 participants between the ages of 11 and 16.
“As commonly done in previous research, we also excluded from the analyses those children who were co-residing with their grandparents,” researchers said. “This was done because we cannot separate the cases where grandparents were the sole caretakers of grandchildren (in which case their involvement is much more obligatory) from those cases of three-generation households.”
Because grandparents who lived with their grandchildren were in a position in which they were essentially obligated to care for them, these adolescents were excluded from the study because any care on the part of the grandparents was less voluntary. Researchers continued, “In traditional and historical populations (or subsistence societies) with multiple environmental stressors and high child mortality rates, the presence of grandmothers has often been found to be associated with improved early-life survival of children.”
The same cannot be said for grandfathers. “In most cases, the presence of grandfathers has not been found to be similarly associated with improved grandchild survival in past populations, and in some cases, the association is actually negative,” they said.
One of the main goals of the research was to determine the effect of grandparents on children who experienced adverse early life experiences, or AELEs.
“Investment by maternal grandmothers is likely to reduce emotional and behavioral problems in children resulting from adverse childhood experiences,” the press release said. “These experiences may include the death or alcohol problem of a loved one, for example.”
Senior researcher Samuli Helle explained, “The results show that support given by maternal grandmothers can improve the well-being of children who have experienced adversities in life. The positive effects could be expected to last into adulthood.”
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The researchers concluded that maternal grandmothers who were invested in their grandchildren’s lives could decrease the impact of AELEs, although they could not fully remove them. “No such effect was found for other grandparent types,” they pointed out. “As shown in the current study, [maternal grandmothers] are, to some degree, able to buffer their grandchildren from suffering from increased emotional and behavioral problems when facing multiple AELEs,” researchers noted.
Researchers were not surprised by these findings as they already knew that maternal grandmothers tend to invest the most in their grandchildren out of all grandparents. This investment can impact grandchildren well into adulthood.
Grandparents are a vital part of their grandchildren’s lives.
Writing for Psychology Today, Dr. Thomas R. Verny pointed out that grandparents play a very important role in their grandchildren’s lives as they are the bridge between the past and the present. He also confirmed that maternal grandparents are typically closer to their grandchildren.
If you are lucky enough to have your maternal grandmother in your life, it’s best to work on nurturing your relationship with her. You never know how much good she’ll do for you.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.