Grandparents matter, but they do not improve grades at school

Grandparents: a backbone of informal family welfare, in Italy and in Europe. They take care of grandchildren, support parents, help with housework. But does the time spent with them have an impact on the educational achievements of girls, boys and teenagers?

According to the study The effect of grandparental involvement on grandchildren's school grades: Heterogeneity by the extended family characteristics, the answer is no: grandparental involvement, while valuable in daily life, neither improves nor worsens grades at school.

The research, published in the journal Social Science Research, involved Francesca Zanasi, researcher at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the Alma Mater, and Valeria Bordone, professor of Sociology at the University of Vienna. The scholars analysed over 3,000 cases of girls, boys and adolescents between the ages of 8 and 15, using the German Family Panel (Pairfam), a large representative survey of the German population that may, however, offer useful insights for the European context.

Three aspects of grandparent involvement were examined: direct care (e.g. babysitting), frequency of family contact, and financial support offered to parents.

The results speak for themselves: none of these dimensions is associated with significant changes in school grades, measured in mathematics and German. The figure remains unchanged even when taking into account socio-economic differences such as educational level, occupation and migratory origin of the families.