There’s a relationship that often gets sidelined when we talk about child development — not the one with parents, but the one with grandparents. Yet according to recent research, it may be one of the strongest predictors of emotional wellbeing in adulthood.
A study published in Frontiers in Psychology in October 2025 by Jane Stephenson and Laura L. Carstensen (Stanford University) followed young adults aged 18 to 29, looking for a link between the support they received from grandparents during childhood and their emotional wellbeing as adults — measured through life satisfaction, resilience, and positive emotional experience, against symptoms of anxiety and depression. People who had a close bond with at least one grandparent as children showed higher wellbeing scores years later. A 2026 study in Family Relations (Wiley), led by Fu and colleagues, added another piece: digital contact too — video calls, messages, shared photos — between young adult grandchildren and grandparents reduced depressive symptoms and feelings of isolation, especially when physical distance made visits difficult.
You don’t need to live under the same roof or see each other every week. What matters, according to this data, is the consistency of small gestures: a regular phone call, a voice message, time spent listening rather than just updating. Grandparents often offer something parents, caught up in daily logistics, struggle to give: unhurried time, family memory, a calmer perspective on hard moments. Even a small recurring ritual — the Sunday video call, a photo of the grandchild sent every week, the retelling of an old family recipe — builds over time the kind of emotional security these studies measure years later, once the child has become an adult.
If you have children, this bond needs active nurturing — it doesn’t happen on its own. And if you’re the adult grandchild, that call you’ve been putting off for weeks might matter more than you think, for both of you.
Time spent with grandparents is never wasted time. It’s one of the quietest, and most solid, investments a family can make.
Sources
- Stephenson, J., Carstensen, L. L. (2025). “Grandparent support during childhood is associated with emotional wellbeing in emerging adulthood.” Frontiers in Psychology. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1680383
- Fu et al. (2026). “Young adult grandchildren’s intergenerational and digital solidarity with grandparents and depressive symptoms during the pandemic.” Family Relations, Wiley. DOI: 10.1111/fare.13195
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