Maria Karlene Shawn Cabaraban, Valeria Bordone, Damiano Ucceddu, Daniela Weber:
Grandparental childcare and cognitive functioning: Entry, accumulation, and the role of gendered work-family life courses in Europe (Flash Session on Family Relationships, Social Networks, Health and Wellbeing in Later Life)
Grandparental involvement in childcare often unfolds dynamically across later life, involving entry, exit, and accumulation over time. However, these dynamics have been overlooked in existing research on its benefits for cognitive functioning. Using retrospective and prospective data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this study examines whether cognitive performance (in tests of memory recall and verbal fluency) changes when grandparents enter and continue to engage in “any” and “at least weekly” grandparental childcare. We provide new insights by showing how this relationship differs across gendered trajectories of paid work and family experiences throughout the life course. Findings show improvements in memory recall are associated with “any” grandparental childcare. Yet, heterogeneity across gendered work-family life courses emerge: benefits hold true only among men with a stable partnership history and continuous full-time employment, and among women whose work-family life courses were centred on a limited set of roles (continuous full-time employment or unpaid domestic work). Regular (weekly or more) childcare engagement is associated with improved memory recall only among lifelong homemakers. However, additional caregiving episodes yield no further improvements, with benefits plateauing after entry.
Project: Cognitive Health in an Ageing Society (CHIAS)
Melanie Wagner, Anna Karmann, Caroline Berghammer, Valeria Bordone:
Repartnering after Union Dissolution. A Study of Same-Sex and Different-Sex Couples in Austria
Repartnering after union dissolution has become increasingly common in many Western societies. Using newly available Austrian register data, this paper examines repartnering patterns after union dissolution. We compare men and women from previous different-sex and same-sex unions over the period 2011-2020 using discrete-time event-history models. The results show gender differences in repartnering, but these patterns are not uniform across union types: after different-sex unions, women repartner less often than men, whereas after same-sex unions, women repartner more often than men. The study contributes to the still-limited research on repartnering among same-sex couples, provides new evidence from Austria, and suggests that repartnering does not follow a single general gender pattern.
Project: Consequences of Divorce (CONDIV)
Valeria Bordone, Tobias Wiss, Marta Moroni, Giorgio Di Gessa:
Attitudes to climate change risk among older people in England: the role of intergenerational relationships
Drawing on theoretical and empirical research on the association between parenthood and political preferences as well as on socio-demographic studies on the effects of grandparenthood, this paper explores heterogeneities in attitudes towards climate change risks across intergenerational relationships – in particular (grand)parenthood status and involvement in grandchild care. We hypothesise that intergenerational kin availability and exchanges with family members positively influence climate attitudes. We use data from the latest wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA, 2023/24), where respondents are asked for their level of agreement with six statements on climate change risks (N = 6,670). Multinomial regression modelling was used to investigate how intergenerational relationships were associated with different levels of climate change concern, accounting for socio-demographic characteristics. Preliminary results show that grandparents who look after their grandchildren at least weekly report the highest levels of climate change concern, after controlling for age and educational attainment. Overall, this study highlights the importance of intergenerational ties in increasing climate concern, overcoming barriers to climate action and, thus, in handling the socio-ecological change of our time.
