A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Investment by maternal grandmother buffers children against the impacts of adverse early life experiences
Authors: Helle Samuli, Tanskanen Antti O., Coall David A., Perry Gretchen, Daly Martin, Danielsbacka Mirkka
Publisher: Nature Research
Publication year: 2024
Journal: Scientific Reports
Journal name in source: Scientific Reports
Article number: 6815
Volume: 14
Issue: 1
eISSN: 2045-2322
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-56760-5
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-56760-5
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/387700566
Exogenous shocks during sensitive periods of development can have long-lasting effects on adult phenotypes including behavior, survival and reproduction. Cooperative breeding, such as grandparental care in humans and some other mammal species, is believed to have evolved partly in order to cope with challenging environments. Nevertheless, studies addressing whether grandparental investment can buffer the development of grandchildren from multiple adversities early in life are few and have provided mixed results, perhaps owing to difficulties drawing causal inferences from non-experimental data. Using population-based data of English and Welsh adolescents (sample size ranging from 817 to 1197), we examined whether grandparental investment reduces emotional and behavioral problems in children resulting from facing multiple adverse early life experiences (AELEs), by employing instrumental variable regression in a Bayesian structural equation modeling framework to better justify causal interpretations of the results. When children had faced multiple AELEs, the investment of maternal grandmothers reduced, but could not fully erase, their emotional and behavioral problems. No such result was observed in the case of the investment of other grandparent types. These findings indicate that in adverse environmental conditions the investment of maternal grandmothers can improve child wellbeing.
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Funding information in the publication:
The study is part of NetResilience consortium and INVEST flagship. Financial support was received from the Strategic Research Council (Grant Number 345183) and the Academy of Finland (Grant Numbers 320162 and 325857 and 331400 and 338869).
