The study captured everyone at a single point in time, so it cannot say which came first. Parents may hover because a young adult is already struggling, and the authors say so themselves. This is one study, not settled consensus. It is worth a close look anyway, because it fits a wider body of research on what happens when caring, well-meaning parents do too much for too long.

What “hovering” meant in this study

The researchers described helicopter parents as warm and loving but overinvolved: intrusive, closely entangled in their children’s lives, and ready to step in when things do not go to plan, such as by contacting a professor about a grade. The point of the label is that these parents are not cold. The trouble, in the authors’ account, is that their involvement can crowd out a young person’s chance to run their own life.

To measure it, the young adults first named the parent they felt closest to or spent the most time with. For about 70% of them that was their mother. They then rated five statements adapted from earlier work by Laura Padilla-Walker and Larry Nelson, such as whether that parent makes important decisions for them, including where they live, where they work and what classes they take.

The survey also asked about three more familiar sides of parenting: warmth and acceptance; psychological control, such as making a child feel guilty or withholding affection; and firm control, meaning setting limits on behavior. That allowed the researchers to check whether hovering mattered on its own or was simply standing in for these other habits.

What the young adults reported

Even after accounting for warmth, psychological control and firm control, more helicopter parenting went with three things. The young adults reported lower self-regulation, a broad measure of their ability to manage attention, emotions and behavior in pursuit of a goal. They reported a weaker sense of mastery, measured with statements such as “I often feel helpless in dealing with the problems of life.” And they rated themselves as less socially competent, for instance at heading off a disagreement before it grew into a fight.

Some expected links did not appear. Helicopter parenting had no direct association with substance use, criminal behavior or helping others. Its link with depression shrank once the other parenting measures were taken into account, though the analysis suggested an indirect route: hovering went with lower mastery and self-regulation, and those in turn went with more depressive symptoms. The authors concluded that helicopter parenting seemed to matter more for young adults’ emotional and social lives than for their behavior.

Which way does it run?

The biggest limit is direction. A young adult who has trouble organizing their life may prompt a parent to step in, and a parent who keeps stepping in may leave fewer chances to learn. A single survey cannot separate the two, and the authors call for studies that follow families over time.

There are other limits. Everything was self-reported by the young adults. Only one parent was rated, so the study could not compare mothers with fathers. About 84% of the sample was recruited online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, most participants were women and most were white, so the results may not describe every family.

What the wider research shows

Other studies help fill the gaps. A 2023 meta-analysis by Qi Zhang and Wongeun Ji in Development and Psychopathology pooled 52 articles on young people with an average age of about 20. More overparenting was linked to more depression, anxiety and related symptoms. The links were modest in size, and they held across different income levels, cultures and study designs.

A longer view comes from research that started much earlier in childhood. Nicole Perry and colleagues followed 422 US children, observing them with their parents at age 2 and checking in again at 5 and 10. Children whose parents constantly directed their play at age 2, telling them how to use toys and how to tidy up, showed poorer control of their emotions and behavior at 5, the American Psychological Association reported. Children with better control at 5 had fewer emotional problems and did better socially and at school at 10.

The longest view of all comes from Britain. A study of people born in 1946 asked them at age 43 to recall how their parents had treated them, then compared their answers with measures of well-being across their lives. Mai Stafford and colleagues found that people who remembered more psychological control, such as parents who “tried to control everything I did” or tried to make them feel dependent, reported lower well-being, including in their 60s. Rules about behavior showed no consistent link. Those memories were gathered decades after the fact, which can color them, but the pattern points in the same direction as the American studies.

Where that leaves parents

None of this research says that helping a grown child is harmful, or that warm, involved parents are doing something wrong. The West Virginia study took warmth into account, and the links with hovering held regardless. What the studies keep returning to is a narrower habit: making decisions and solving problems that a child or young adult could handle, or learn to handle, themselves.

Moilanen and Manuel suggest why that might matter. Parents may believe they are helping by stepping in, but stepping in can also take away a young person’s chances to practice managing their own life. That reasoning fits their results, which pointed to self-regulation and a sense of mastery as the routes through which hovering was linked to young adults’ emotional and social difficulties.

The research cannot yet say how much stepping back is right, or at what age. It does suggest that one useful question for a parent is whose problem this is, and whether the child might learn more from handling it than from having it handled.

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The research, by Sonja Hilbrand, David Coall, Denis Gerstorf and Ralph Hertwig, was published in Evolution and Human Behavior in 2017. This is one study, not settled consensus, and it shows a link rather than proof that babysitting itself adds years. Read alongside other work on grandparents’ health, though, it points to something many families already sense: a fit, healthy grandparent and a close, hands-on relationship with grandchildren tend to go together, and each may help sustain the other.

What the Berlin study followed

The data came from the Berlin Aging Study, which began interviewing older residents of the former West Berlin in 1990 and kept track of who was still alive into 2009. The researchers compared people according to whether, and how, they helped others. According to the Max Planck Society’s summary of the work, about half of the grandparents who sometimes looked after grandchildren were still alive roughly 10 years after their first interview. Among people who did not help others, about half had died within five years.

The pattern was not limited to grandparents. Older adults who had no grandchildren but helped their grown children, for example with housework, showed a similar survival advantage. Childless older adults who gave emotional support to people outside the family also lived longer on average than those who did not: half were still alive about seven years later, compared with about four years for people who gave no such support.

One exclusion matters for families. The study deliberately left out grandparents who were the main or custodial carers of their grandchildren. The finding is about the grandparent who takes the children for an afternoon, collects them from school or minds them during the holidays. It says nothing about the grandparent raising a grandchild full time.

Why “allowing for their health” is the key phrase

The obvious objection to a study like this is that healthy people are simply more able to help. A grandparent with bad knees, heart trouble or little energy is less likely to be chasing a four-year-old around the park, so any comparison of carers with non-carers risks mistaking good health for an effect of caring.

That problem is real. In a large US analysis of the Health and Retirement Study, economists Peter Eibich and Xianhua Zai found that grandparents who provided childcare looked healthier on every measure in straightforward comparisons, and they attributed much of that to healthier people being the ones who take on care. A 2026 study of 5,529 American grandparent couples, by Athena Chan, Abigail Stephan and Rodlescia Sneed, likewise found that health predicted later caregiving more than caregiving predicted later health.

The Berlin team tried to deal with this by adjusting for physical health, age, socioeconomic status and details about the children and grandchildren. The lower risk remained after those adjustments. That makes the result harder to dismiss, but it cannot rule out everything. Outlook, personality and family closeness are hard to measure, and any of them could make someone both more likely to help and more likely to live longer. The study also did not test why helping was linked to longer life.

Minding grandchildren keeps grandparents moving

One plausible route is simply that looking after children gets people on their feet. A Belgian study gave 92 grandparents aged 50 and over motion sensors to wear for a week. On days they looked after grandchildren, they spent about 4 percentage points more of their waking time in light activity, such as easy walking and playing, and about 3.7 points less time sitting, Vanhove and colleagues reported in 2024 in the European Review of Aging and Physical Activity.

The increase was in gentle movement. More vigorous exercise, the kind that noticeably raises heart rate and breathing, did not change across the whole day, and it dipped slightly during the hours the children were actually there. The authors argue that the shift toward more light movement and less sitting may still benefit grandparents’ health. A morning at the playground delivers it without anyone calling it exercise.

There is such a thing as too much

Ralph Hertwig, one of the Berlin authors, has cautioned that helping should not be mistaken for a cure-all. In the Max Planck summary, he said moderate involvement appears to be beneficial, while more intense involvement can cause stress that harms physical and mental health.

A small Australian study points the same way. Researchers from the Women’s Healthy Aging Project in Melbourne tested 186 women aged 57 to 68, 120 of them grandmothers. Those who cared for grandchildren one day a week did best on two of three thinking tests, while those caring five or more days a week scored significantly worse on a test of working memory and processing speed, according to the study published in Menopause in 2014. It was an early study, and the researchers had not expected the five-day result.

The US analysis by Eibich and Zai sits less comfortably with the Berlin result. Using a statistical method designed to separate cause from coincidence, it estimated that providing 100 or more hours of grandchild care over two years worsened grandparents’ physical limitations and self-rated health, with larger effects at higher hours and mostly among grandmothers. A hundred hours over two years is not a heavy load. The two studies covered different countries, decades, age groups and methods, and the authors of the US paper caution that the size of their estimates should be read with care. The honest summary is that researchers have not settled where helping stops being good for grandparents, though the evidence for heavy, sustained care is the least encouraging.

What healthy grandparents pass on

Health runs in the other direction too. A 2017 systematic review led by Stephanie Chambers at the University of Glasgow pulled together 56 studies from 18 countries on grandparents who were not children’s main carers. Overall, grandparents had an adverse effect on grandchildren’s risk factors for later illness, particularly weight and diet, through treats, overfeeding and low physical activity, as well as smoking around children and ignoring parents’ rules on second-hand smoke. Chambers stressed that these risks were unintentional. Most of the studies reflected parents’ views, and the review did not weigh the emotional benefits children get from time with grandparents.

The more hopeful side shows up in Australian research. In a 2024 survey of 1,190 grandparents who regularly cared for a grandchild aged 3 to 14, Michelle Jongenelis and colleagues found that grandparents who supported activity had grandchildren who did more structured activity, more unstructured activity and more outdoor play. Grandparents’ own activity and screen habits were also linked to their grandchildren’s. Because it was a one-time survey, it shows an association, not proof that the grandparents’ example shaped the children’s habits.

A relationship that works both ways

Put together, the research describes a loop. Grandparents who are fit and well are more able to take the grandchildren. Time with the children keeps grandparents moving. And grandparents who stay active, and who keep treats and smoke away from children, model habits the children may carry with them. The Berlin study adds the most striking piece: among people in their 70s and older, occasional care was linked to a meaningfully longer life even after their health was taken into account.

What none of these studies can say is how much help is right for any one family, or exactly why the link with longer life exists. The evidence so far leans toward regular, manageable involvement over heavy, daily care. For many families, a more useful question than whether grandparents help may be how much help a grandparent can keep up comfortably, year after year.

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In a 2014 paper in Frontiers in Psychology, a team led by Jane Barker, with senior author Yuko Munakata, asked the parents of 70 six-year-olds to record how their children spent their time over a week. The children who spent more of that time in less-structured activities did better on a test of what psychologists call self-directed executive function: setting a goal and working out how to reach it without an adult telling them what to do next.

This is one study, not settled consensus. It found a link, and the authors are clear that it cannot show the free time caused the difference.

What the study actually measured

The researchers sorted each child’s week into two kinds of time. Structured time was anything outside school that adults organized and supervised: sports practice, music or art lessons, tutoring, homework, chores and religious activities. Less-structured time covered free play alone, free play with others, visits to family and friends, parties, outings, museum and zoo trips, reading and screen time.

To measure self-direction, each child was asked to name as many animals as they could in a minute, then as many foods. Nobody told them how to go about it. Children who organized their answers into clusters (for example, farm animals, then sea creatures) and switched between them on their own scored higher. It is a narrow task, but it captures something parents recognize: a child deciding how to tackle a problem without being steered.

According to the University of Colorado’s summary, the more time children spent in less-structured activities, the better they did. Structured time pointed the other way, though in the paper that link was weaker. Munakata described the results as “suggestive and intriguing” and called the work “a first step.”

Free time included friends

The detail most easily missed is what counted as unstructured. It was not just a child alone with a stack of books. Playing with other children, visiting friends and going to parties all sat in the same category. In the paper’s exploratory analyses, social events with family were among the activities that predicted better self-direction, and play with others showed a weaker, borderline link.

So the study does not set “following your own interests” against “having friends.” What it separates is time a child shapes for themselves from time an adult runs for them. A child building a fort with a neighbor and a child reading about volcanoes alone were on the same side of that line.

Interests children choose for themselves

Other research suggests children’s own interests start early and are worth noticing. In a 2007 study in Developmental Psychology, Judy DeLoache and colleagues surveyed and interviewed the parents of 177 young children and found that roughly a third had an extremely intense interest, such as trains, vehicles or tea sets. These passions were much more common in boys.

A 2025 study in the Journal of Child Language, by Rajalakshmi Madhavan and Nivedita Mani at the University of Göttingen in Germany, followed a small group of toddlers. Parents’ ratings of how interested their child was in categories such as animals or vehicles at 18 months predicted how many words the child knew in those categories at 24 months. The sample was small, the measures relied on parent reports, and the authors note they cannot tell whether interest drives learning or early knowledge sparks interest. Still, it fits a familiar picture: children tend to learn most about what they care about.

Friends still matter, and one good one counts

None of this means friendships are optional. In a 1993 study in Developmental Psychology, Jeffrey Parker and Steven Asher surveyed 881 American children in grades 3 to 5. Having a best friend, the quality of that friendship and how well a child was accepted by classmates each predicted loneliness independently. Many children who were not popular still had a best friend and were satisfied with that friendship.

A Dutch study points the same way. Ellen Peters and colleagues measured the stress hormone cortisol in the saliva of nearly 100 fourth graders across two school days, reporting in Child Development in 2011. Children who were left out by classmates showed higher cortisol at school, and the effect was stronger for those with few friends or low-quality friendships. As co-author Marianne Riksen-Walraven put it, friends “cannot completely eliminate the stress of exclusion at school,” but “they do reduce it.”

I get the feeling that parents push their kids to have friends from school.

The research here gives some context for that. Both of these studies counted friendships within a child’s class, so they say little about where friends ideally come from. What they do suggest is that a close friend matters a great deal, and that a child does not need to be the most popular in the room to benefit.

When a child prefers time alone

Some children are happy on their own for long stretches. That is not automatically a warning sign. Researchers distinguish between shy children, who would like company but feel anxious, and children who simply enjoy their own pursuits. In Western studies, that second pattern, often called unsociability, is generally described as a relatively benign form of withdrawal in young children, a summary that draws on work by Robert Coplan and colleagues.

A larger study of older children adds a useful qualifier. Writing in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence in 2023, M. E. Borg and Teena Willoughby followed 1,071 young people aged 10 to 16. Time alone was linked to worse adjustment only when it came with a lack of sociability. Young people who enjoyed solitude but also liked being with others did not show the same problems.

That distinction may be the most practical one for parents. A child absorbed in a project for an afternoon is in a different position from a child who seems to have stopped wanting company at all.

What this does not prove

All of these studies describe links, not causes. The Colorado sample was small and drawn from families who had volunteered for research, and the authors raise the possibility that the effect runs the other way: children who are already good at directing themselves may simply be given, or seek out, more free time. Lessons and team sports are not shown to be harmful. And a verbal fluency game is a long way from a child’s whole capacity to plan and persist.

Taken together, the evidence does not ask parents to rank independent interests above friendships, or the reverse. It points toward giving children time that belongs to them, some of it spent alone with whatever they are curious about and some of it with a friend they actually like.

What fills that time is often best left to the child.

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This is one study, not settled consensus. Its authors describe it as exploratory and say plainly that it shows a link, not proof of cause. The families who volunteered were also better off, and that shapes how the result should be read.

What the study measured

Sharon Kukla-Acevedo and Emma Powell, both at Central Michigan University, published the analysis in the Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs. Their data came from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a survey that has tracked a representative sample of American families since 1968, along with several of its add-on modules.

Joining those modules let the researchers follow one set of families across three stages. Parents reported their volunteering in 2003 and 2005, while their children were under 18. Children who were 10 or older in 2002 or 2003 were asked about their own volunteering. Then, from 18 into their late twenties, the same young people were asked again in up to six survey waves.

Complete information was available for 3,894 young adults. The plainest comparison is this: those whose parents had volunteered reported volunteering in an average of 1.84 survey years, while those whose parents had not averaged 0.64.

That is a wide gap. It is also not the whole story.

The families differed in more than volunteering

Households where parents volunteered had an average income of about $86,000, compared with about $44,000 for the others. Those parents had roughly two more years of schooling, and their children were more likely to have grown up with two parents at home. Volunteering takes time, transport, and often a job with some give in the schedule, so money could explain a good deal of the difference.

The researchers adjusted for family income across childhood, parents’ education, whether the parents were married, the young adult’s own earnings, race and ethnicity, sex, and whether the young adult had children of their own. After those adjustments, the link remained. Each extra year a parent volunteered was associated with about a fifth more years of volunteering by their child as a young adult. Higher family income and more parental education were each tied to more volunteering as well.

The authors write that the study “does not provide conclusive evidence” that a parent’s example causes a child’s later volunteering. They did not have measures of family wealth or debt, or of the neighborhoods and schools children grew up in, and any of those could influence both generations at once. They also note that the young people with complete records were slightly more advantaged than the full group, which could make the parental link look stronger than it is.

An earlier study points to the same tension. Writing in the Journal of Marriage and Family in 2004, Sarah Mustillo and colleagues followed two generations of American women, 1,848 in all. Daughters whose mothers volunteered gave more hours early on. Over the longer run, though, family socioeconomic status was what predicted rising volunteering, and the authors concluded their evidence favored the passing on of resources over the passing on of an example.

A child’s own early volunteering mattered too

One of the more practical findings in the new study concerns children’s own experience. Young people who had volunteered when they were 10 or older were more likely to volunteer in their twenties, and this held alongside their parents’ example. In the statistical model, the two were separate influences.

The authors point out that the line between them is blurry. A child’s early volunteering may itself be a form of parental influence, since a parent who helps at a school event or food drive may well bring a child along.

Where parents volunteered made a difference

The type of organization mattered. Of the kinds the researchers could compare, parents’ volunteering at youth-serving groups, such as schools and community youth programs, was the only kind linked to their grown children volunteering at the same kind of place. Parents’ volunteering at religious organizations was tied to their children volunteering somewhere as young adults, but not specifically at religious organizations. The authors found this surprising and note that younger Americans hold fewer religious affiliations than earlier generations.

Money shows a related family pattern. A 2008 study in the Journal of Public Economics by Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm and colleagues, using the same national survey, found that parents’ and adult children’s religious giving was strongly correlated, about as strongly as income and wealth are passed between generations. Giving to secular causes was less closely linked.

Why the example may matter

Volunteering is only one narrow, measurable piece of how parents shape the adults their children become, and it is easier to count than most. Survey researchers can ask how many hours someone spent at a shelter. It is much harder to measure whether a child learned to listen, to question, or to help a friend.

For my part, I don’t think the value of good role modeling can be overvalued. Kids need to learn to ask questions, to weigh up different ways of approaching a problem, and to be supportive of others.

That is a view, not a finding. The study speaks only to formal volunteering, reported in a survey.

What this does not prove

The research does not show that volunteering as a parent will make a child a volunteer, or that children of non-volunteers will not become generous adults. It does not measure kindness or helpfulness in everyday life. Some volunteering likely went unreported, which the authors say would make their estimate cautious rather than inflated.

What it does offer is a clear pattern in one large, well-documented group of American families: the children of volunteers were volunteering far more in their twenties, the link held once income and education were counted, and helping at schools and youth programs seemed to carry over most directly. Whether that comes from example, opportunity, money, or some mix of the three is the question the authors say a future study will need to be designed to answer.

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For years, that kind of morning may have seemed almost unimaginable. Work and family gave the day its shape. You knew what needed doing, who was relying on you and, usually, what tomorrow would look like too.

Then, gradually or all at once, things change. Your children build their own lives. You leave work or reduce your hours. Some responsibilities ease, while others arrive in forms you hadn’t anticipated.

You may welcome the freedom. But somewhere between enjoying the slower morning and deciding what to do next, a question can appear: What do I actually want my life to look like now?

The freedom can be welcome and still take some getting used to

We often hear about the empty nest as though sadness is inevitable. Yet the research tells a more varied story.

An Australian Institute of Family Studies report, drawing on 12 years of HILDA survey data, found relatively little overall change in life satisfaction when parents became empty nesters. Satisfaction tended to improve gradually around this stage, with some improvement beginning before the last child left. Retirement was also associated with a slight improvement over time.

Of course, averages cannot tell us how any individual feels. Some parents miss the noise and everyday companionship. Others discover that they quite enjoy knowing where the scissors are because nobody has borrowed them.

Many of us experience a mixture. We can miss our children and appreciate having more time to ourselves. We can be relieved to leave work and miss the familiarity of being part of it.

It makes sense to give ourselves time to discover what this freedom means in practice.

The roles change before we have worked out what comes next

Being a parent continues when children become adults, but its daily expression changes. The conversations are different. Sometimes help is welcomed; sometimes the most useful thing we can do is listen and resist offering six solutions.

Work can change just as significantly. Along with the tasks, we may lose familiar company, a routine and the satisfaction of contributing something we know how to do well.

These transitions don’t always happen together. Children may have left home years before retirement. Even so, leaving work can bring the question of how we spend our time into sharper focus.

For some people, family commitments quickly fill the available hours. For others, the calendar becomes surprisingly quiet. Either way, it is reasonable to pause and consider what matters to us now, alongside what matters to the people we love.

I had plans for retirement but still felt ungrounded

When I retired after a long career in education, I thought I had prepared for the change. I had plans and things I wanted to do. Yet I experienced anxiety and a sense of being ungrounded that took me by surprise.

It took time to understand how much my work had contributed to my sense of who I was, as well as to the shape of my days.

My three sons live in Asia, so family life also means loving people whose everyday lives happen at a distance. We are close, but we don’t share the ordinary routines that families living nearby might take for granted.

Over time, I began thinking more carefully about what helped me create a satisfying life where I actually was. That reflection helped shape the four ingredients I now explore in my writing and courses: energy, connection, purpose and vision.

They give me a way to ask useful questions when life changes. I can return to them when something feels missing, or when a new opportunity makes me reconsider my priorities.

Energy includes having room to enjoy your life

After years of fitting your own needs around other people’s, it can feel unfamiliar to give your wellbeing a proper place in the week.

There may still be plenty of demands. Adult children can need support. Grandchildren may arrive. A partner or relative may need care. Having retired doesn’t necessarily mean having unlimited capacity.

I find it helpful to consider what leaves me feeling refreshed and engaged. Walking and dancing are part of that for me, along with having some quiet time.

A six-year study of 1,101 older adults found that more frequent participation in physical and social leisure activities was associated with greater happiness and life satisfaction. It doesn’t mean we need to fill every spare hour with activities. It does give us a reason to make room for things we enjoy.

What would you like to have more energy for? That question can be more inviting than another list of things you ought to do.

Connection can grow beyond the roles we already know

Our children remain important to us, however old they become. But their lives have demands and rhythms of their own, and our opportunities to spend time together may be limited by distance or circumstances.

Friendships, neighbours, shared interests and community can bring other forms of companionship into our days. These relationships have room to develop alongside family life.

A 2022 University of Queensland meta-analysis, drawing on data from more than 78,000 participants, found that social participation had the strongest positive association with retirement adjustment among the five categories examined. Physical health followed closely.

For me, connection doesn’t require a crowded social calendar. I enjoy smaller gatherings and conversations where there is time to get beyond the polite opening questions.

It may begin with returning regularly to somewhere you feel comfortable, inviting an acquaintance for coffee or joining something you would enjoy even before you make a friend there. Familiarity gives relationships a chance to grow.

Purpose can become more personal as responsibilities change

When people have relied on us for years, being needed can become a familiar measure of whether the day was worthwhile.

It is understandable to miss that feeling. We may also discover interests that have been waiting a long time for our attention.

In a 2019 study of older adults, Andrew Steptoe and Daisy Fancourt found that feeling the things one did in life were worthwhile was associated with stronger relationships, less loneliness and better mental and physical health. The findings show connections between these experiences; they don’t establish that a sense of purpose causes better health.

What interests me is the attention to worthwhile everyday activity. Purpose can be expressed through family, volunteering or work we choose to continue. It can also involve learning, making something, tending a garden or developing an interest that absorbs us.

Writing and creating courses give me a sense of purpose now. Someone else’s answer will look very different. What do you find yourself caring about, even when nobody is asking you to do it?

Vision begins with the week you would like to live

When we think about the future, holidays and special occasions are often the easiest things to picture. They give us something to look forward to. But most of life happens in the weeks between them.

This is where vision becomes useful to me. I want to think about how I would like an ordinary week to feel: time for family, movement, writing, companionship and quiet.

You might picture more time outdoors, a class you have been curious about or a regular afternoon with a friend. You might want room for a new challenge, or a gentler pace after years of pressure.

There will be practical limits, and plans will need to change. Still, having some sense of what you want makes it easier to decide what to make room for next.

There is still a life of your own to discover

I don’t think we ever finish working out how to live well through changing circumstances. Our relationships evolve, our capacity changes and new possibilities appear.

The four ingredients help me keep that conversation open. If you’d like to explore these questions yourself, my free A Guide to Thriving in Your Retirement Years offers practical ideas and reflection prompts to help you begin.

For now, perhaps imagine that quiet morning with your cup of tea. The people you love still matter. So do the interests, relationships and possibilities you would like to give more attention to.

When you put the cup down, what would you like to do with the day?

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In my family, my older sister was always “the responsible one.” Then she moved abroad, and the job automatically passed to me (she’ll deny she ever had it. Sorry, if you’re reading this.)

Same family, same birth order, a different responsible one.

So I went looking for research on the role itself. The best place to start was a 2023 review that pulled together 95 studies on children who take care of their families. It asks the question I’d been circling: why do some of these kids struggle while others grow stronger?

What does being “the responsible one” actually look like?

Psychologists have a clunky name for it: parentification. It means a child ends up doing jobs that usually belong to an adult. The review splits it two ways. There’s the practical kind, like cooking, cleaning or getting younger siblings out the door. And there’s the emotional kind: keeping the peace, listening to a parent’s worries, being the one everyone leans on.

The care can go to different people, too. Some children look after a parent, some look after their brothers and sisters, and plenty do both.

A lot has been written about oldest children who grow up as a second parent. I wanted something more useful to a parent reading this today: when does the role do damage, and when does it build something?

Does carrying the family hurt a child?

Sometimes, yes. Across the studies that looked at it, taking on this role went with more anxiety and low mood (most of those studies measured the two together) and with more distress. The link was clearest for the emotional kind: the child who manages everyone’s feelings. These are links, though, not proof that the role itself caused the problems.

That part didn’t surprise me much. The interview studies in the review add a sadder detail: some girls who grew up this way avoided close relationships later and found it hard to accept support from others. Most of the people in these studies were girls and women, so we know less about how boys fare.

I asked Dr. Sanam Hafeez, a New York City neuropsychologist and founder of Comprehend the Mind, how this shows up in the adults she sees. She described them as “like little warriors who tried to please everyone, say the right thing and keep the peace, often at the cost of neglecting their own needs.” Many grow into strong people, she said. But when their own mental health suffers, “they might find it hard to express the need for assistance or see themselves as being weak for having a problem.”

Learning to let others help takes time. “They might need to start small, like letting a family member set the table when they are too tired,” she said. “Baby steps are needed to overcome the superhero type of mindset.”

So why do some kids come out stronger?

Here’s the part I didn’t expect. Only a handful of studies looked at good outcomes at all. Self-esteem came up in five, confidence in one’s own abilities in three, and many found nothing either way. But when a direction did show up, it leaned positive.

One finding held steady. In the studies that measured it, children who saw some benefit in their role had fewer depressive symptoms.

The interview studies fill in the rest. Kids who grew close to the siblings they looked after picked up empathy and social skills along the way. The authors sum up what decided which way a child went in one line:

“Perception, Acknowledgement, Initial Competencies, and Supports Make the Difference between Floundering, Resilience, and Thriving.” (Dariotis and colleagues, 2023)

In plainer words: whether the job felt fair, whether anyone thanked the child for it, what the child could already handle, how they got on with their parents, and whether there was help from outside the family.

If not birth order, what hands a child this job?

When the review lists what pushes children into the role, it names circumstances: a parent who is ill, a parent lost through death, divorce or prison, a family that migrated, money trouble. Birth order isn’t on the list. The review didn’t test it either, so I won’t claim it plays no part.

It does fit what I found last time. In a study of 20,186 people in the US, Britain and Germany, birth order made no difference to the big personality traits. The one exception was a small dip in how bright later-born people rated themselves.

And it fits my family. My sister didn’t pass me the role because I was born second. Life moved her to another country, and the job was still there.

What does this mean at home?

I’m not a family therapist, so I’ll stick to what the studies point to. Children did better when the job felt fair, when someone thanked them for it, when they got on well with their parents and when there was help from outside. Being able to talk about their worries protected them too. I’ve seen something similar in my own research with adolescents in Georgia whose parents work abroad: support from their parents seemed to act as a buffer.

So if you have a child who quietly takes care of everyone, it might be worth noticing it out loud. Saying thank you. Checking the load is shared. And asking how they’re doing, not only how everyone else is.

Where that leaves my sister and me

In my last piece on Ideapod, I said you become who you are through something far more specific than your place in line. This research gives that something a bit more shape: the jobs life hands you at home, and how much support you have while you do them.

In my family, being the responsible one never came down to who was born first. It came down to who was still at home when the job needed doing.

This article explains research and isn’t a substitute for advice from a doctor or therapist. If a child seems weighed down by responsibilities at home, a family doctor or counsellor is a good place to start.

The post The child who quietly takes care of everyone at home can end up anxious or unusually resilient, and a review of 95 studies found that support helped decide which way it went appeared first on The Artful Parent.

In 2018 a team at the University of Toledo tested something most parents suspect and few of us act on: that a toddler with fewer toys in front of them plays better with each one. The study, by Carly Dauch, Michelle Imwalle, Brooke Ocasio and Alexia E. Metz, was published in Infant Behavior and Development, and the full text is free to read. It is short. I read it twice.

What the researchers measured

The setup was simple. Thirty-six healthy toddlers aged 18 to 30 months each came to a plain, almost empty room with a small table, a chair and a shelf. A researcher sat in the room but never started any play, joining in only if the child came to them. A parent could come in if the child got upset. Each child visited twice within two weeks. One time the room held four toys. The other time it held 16. Which came first was decided at random, every session was filmed from several angles, and the first 15 minutes of play were scored later.

With 16 toys, the children darted. Pick up, put down, pick up the next one. Roughly 20 separate bouts of play in those 15 minutes, each lasting 56 seconds on average. With four toys, they settled. About 10 bouts, each lasting 117 seconds on average, more than twice as long. They also found more to do with each toy. Eleven different ways of playing with a toy on average, against seven when the room was crowded. Drumming on it, dumping it out, pretending with it, fitting things into it.

What makes this worth taking seriously is the design. The same 36 children did both sessions, so each child was compared with themselves rather than with a different group of kids who might simply have been calmer. The researchers found no measurable effect of which session came first, and the effect held across the whole age range.

Here is why I think it matters more than the numbers alone suggest. Of the 31 parents who could put a number on how many toys they had at home, the average was 87. The smallest collection was 10. The largest was 300. Five other parents just answered “a lot.” If four toys beat 16 by this much, nobody has measured what 87 does to a two year old on a wet afternoon. The authors are honest that the gap between their quiet room and a real living room could cut either way: a home full of familiar toys might be less distracting than a room of new ones, or far more.

I will own up to a bias. My daughter is 15 months old, three months younger than the youngest child in this study, so I cannot claim she proves anything. But I have watched her on a floor covered in toys, flitting from one to the next without finishing with any of them, and I have watched her on a different afternoon with a single thing in her hands, turning it over and over for what felt like a very long time. One child on one floor is an anecdote. It was enough to send me looking for the study.

What toy quality adds

For an outside view I emailed Jeffrey Trawick-Smith, Professor Emeritus at the Center for Early Childhood Education at Eastern Connecticut State University. He led the TIMPANI toy study, which watched how three and four year olds played with toys in preschool classrooms. That is an older age in a different setting, and his study never tested how many toys were out. What it did was watch, over weeks, which toys children kept coming back to.

In his reply he said that for some toys, though not all, play faded over time. “Some toys, however, inspired high quality play over an extended period, suggesting that some toys have holding power. These tended to be simpler, nonrealistic materials that could be used in many different ways.” His examples were building toys such as Magna-Tiles and plain hardwood blocks. This was his first and strongest piece of advice for parents: pay attention to the quality of toys and which ones spark your child’s interest, not just how many are provided.

On the question of numbers, he was careful to say his own study never measured it. “I do think the numbers of toys can make a difference, although we did not study this directly. One theory I have is that for very young children, still developing a working memory, too many toys may result in cognitive overload.” That is his theory, not a finding. With so many choices, he suggested, a child may not even notice a toy they would have loved, because it is sitting among so many others.

Then he described something I suspect every parent will recognize. In the classrooms his team studied, when a toy that drew good play was put away for a time and then brought back, children treated it as though it were brand new. He watched children excitedly show friends a “new toy” that had been in the room only a week or so earlier.

Trying fewer toys at home

The Toledo authors land in the same place. When there is an abundance of toys, they write, “small collections can be rotated into play while the majority is stored away”. Neither source tested a particular routine, so treat what follows as an experiment you run on your own child rather than a formula.

1. Put a small selection out and store the rest where your child cannot see them, if you have the space. The study used four toys. I would start somewhere near that and adjust.
2. Watch what happens over a few play sessions. Which toys does your child return to, and which get a glance and nothing more? That is the question Trawick-Smith would have you ask.
3. Swap something out when interest fades. There is no need to interrupt play that is still going well.
4. Bring stored toys back after a while. Trawick-Smith’s observation suggests they may get a second life, and it costs nothing to find out.
5. Expect the simple, open ended things to be the ones with staying power. Blocks, cups, boxes, anything that can be ten different things.

Where the findings stop

The study has limits and the authors say so. It was two small rooms, a university playroom and a spare bedroom in a volunteer’s house, not a home full of familiar things. The toys were new to the children, and new toys invite switching all on their own, which is awkward when switching is what you are measuring. Each child saw different toys in the two sessions, so the researchers could not fully separate the number of toys from the appeal of the particular toys that happened to be out. Each child did one session per condition, so nobody knows what happens on day 30 of a rotation. Twenty-seven of the 36 children were girls, and the families were mostly white and middle class. And bout length varied enormously, so a handful of very long bouts pull that 117 second average up.

What survives all of that is still useful, and the honest reading is modest: fewer toys out, in that room, on that day, meant longer and richer play with each one.

What I take from it as a parent is simpler still. The toys my daughter needs are almost certainly already in the house. My guess is that the thing standing between her and a long, absorbed stretch of play is not a missing toy. It is the other 80. So I am going to put fewer out and watch which ones she returns to. If she is still absorbed in something, it stays.

Trawick-Smith put the balance this way: “Numbers of toys matter, but so do the types of toys that inspire play, and the novelty of toys that have not been available for awhile.”

The post At the University of Toledo, 36 toddlers each played individually with 4 toys in one session and 16 in another, and with 4 toys their play bouts lasted about twice as long, 117 seconds versus 56. appeared first on The Artful Parent.

If you grew up in the 1970s, some version of that afternoon probably happened to you dozens of times. At the time it didn’t feel like anything. It was just how a Saturday went.

The problems nobody solved for you

What stands out about those years isn’t really the freedom itself. It’s what came with it: a steady supply of small problems that were entirely yours to deal with.

There was the argument about whether the ball was in or out, with no referee to call it. There was the friend who got upset and went home, and you had to work out whether you’d done something wrong. You got lost, or locked out, or stuck in a tree a bit higher than you’d planned. In most of these situations, the only adult you could have asked was a long walk away, and asking would have meant admitting what you’d been doing.

So you figured it out, or you didn’t and lived with the result. Either way, you got a little practice at running your own small corner of the world.

What researchers have found about stepping back

Today it’s normal for a parent to be within earshot, ready to settle a fight or fix the toy before frustration sets in. That comes from a good place. But a growing body of research suggests that how much adults step in shapes the skills kids end up with.

One long-running study followed 422 children from age 2 to age 10. Researchers watched how parents played with their toddlers, noting those who constantly directed things, telling the child what to play with, how to play with it and how to clean up. They found that this kind of overcontrolling parenting at age 2 was linked to weaker emotional and behavioral control at age 5. By age 10, those kids reported more emotional and school problems, and their teachers rated their social skills lower.

Nicole Perry, who led the study at the University of Minnesota, explained that children who learned to calm themselves down in stressful moments had an easier time with the growing demands of school. That skill doesn’t come from being told what to do. It comes from getting a bit upset and finding your own way back.

Free time does a different job

A separate study from the University of Colorado Boulder looked at how 6- and 7-year-olds spent their time outside school. The researchers split activities into structured ones, like lessons, practices and homework, and less structured ones, like free play, outings and reading.

The more time kids spent in less structured activities, the better they did at “self-directed” executive function, which is the ability to set a goal and work out how to reach it without being told. Kids who spent more time in structured activities did worse on the same measure.

The researchers were careful to point out that their results show a link, not proof that one causes the other. Still, it fits with what many people remember about long, empty afternoons. When nobody hands you a plan, you have to make one.

It wasn’t all golden

It’s worth being honest about the other side. Plenty of ’70s kids came home with stitches, or worse, and some kids who were “free” really were just unsupervised in homes where nobody was paying attention. The freedom also didn’t vanish overnight. It faded gradually through the ’80s and ’90s, so many people born later had a decent share of it too.

The research above doesn’t say kids should be left to fend for themselves. The overcontrol study focused on toddlers being directed through every step of play, not on parents who keep a sensible eye out. What seems to matter is whether kids get regular chances to hit a small problem and handle it before someone else does.

Giving today’s kids a bit of that back

Most families can’t, and shouldn’t, recreate 1977. But you can leave more of the small problems where they land. When siblings argue over a game, you can wait a few minutes before stepping in and see whether they sort it out. When a toy breaks or a craft goes wrong, you can ask “what do you think you could try?” before reaching for it yourself.

Unscheduled time helps too. An afternoon with nothing planned, some cardboard, and a bit of boredom gives kids room to set their own goals. It can feel unproductive to a parent, but that’s the point.

You’ll probably notice that it’s harder on you than on them. Watching a child struggle with something you could fix in ten seconds takes real restraint. The 1970s parents mostly didn’t have to practice that, because they simply weren’t there to see it.

The post Kids who grew up in the 1970s, sent out the door after breakfast with no phone, no schedule and no adult watching, weren’t neglected — they were the last generation to learn how to fix their own problems before anyone noticed they had one appeared first on The Artful Parent.

If that sounds familiar, you’ve probably also been told, at some point, that you should really get rid of it all.

Why the early years go missing

Most parents describe the same odd thing about the toddler and preschool years. The days dragged, and yet looking back, the whole stretch feels short and strangely hard to recall. Whole seasons seem to have vanished.

There’s a decent explanation for that. The psychology writer Claudia Hammond points out that we judge how long a stretch of time lasted partly by how many new memories we made during it. Weeks full of routine leave very little behind, so they shrink in hindsight. A vacation works the other way, which is why a week away can feel like a month once you’re home.

Life with small kids is about as routine as it gets: the same bath, the same books and the same arguments about shoes, every single day. Add years of broken sleep and it’s not surprising that your memory kept so little of it.

What a drawing actually does

A box of kids’ art cuts across all of that, because each piece belongs to a particular day. Pick up the macaroni necklace and you might suddenly remember that it came home the week preschool started, or that you wore it to the grocery store because they asked you to.

Those memories were there the whole time. You just didn’t have a way back to them until you had the object in your hand.

The research on why letting go is so hard

A few years ago, marketing researchers from Penn State, Ohio State and the University of Texas set out to understand why people struggle to part with sentimental things they never use. Ohio State co-author Rebecca Reczek summed up what they found: people are reluctant to give up the memories tied to an object, and with them a bit of their own identity.

They tested this during an end-of-semester donation drive at Penn State. Some dorms got signs asking students to collect unwanted items and donate them. Others got signs suggesting they take a photo of the sentimental stuff first. The photo group ended up donating 35 percent more.

So for a lot of people, having some other record of the memory was enough to make the object easier to give up. The researchers were also clear that it has limits. Reczek said it might not work for things with a lot of sentimental value, and her example was a wedding dress. For many parents, a first self-portrait sits in that same category.

Why the box is worth getting out with your kids

There’s another reason to hang on to some of it, and it has more to do with your child than with you. Developmental psychologists have spent decades studying how parents talk with young kids about things that already happened. They call the richest version of this “elaborative reminiscing,” which means going back over a shared moment in detail, asking open questions and talking about how everyone felt.

Psychologists Karen Salmon and Elaine Reese reviewed this research and found that kids whose parents reminisce this way tend to have stronger memory skills. They also found benefits for language and emotional development. In one study, children of mothers who were taught the technique recalled more, and more accurately, than children whose mothers weren’t.

Open questions seem to matter most. Researchers found these predicted how much children could remember about events a year or more later. An old drawing makes those questions easy. “Do you remember making this? Why is the dog purple?” is all it takes to start.

A middle ground for the closet

None of this means you need to keep everything. Taking photos of the big, awkward pieces works well, especially the cardboard sculptures that are slowly falling apart anyway. A single photo album per child takes up almost no room.

For the things you do keep, a box per child per school year is a common rule that stops the collection from spreading through the house. Write the date and your child’s age on whatever you hold on to. A drawing labeled “age 4, the day Grandma visited” will mean far more in twenty years than an unlabeled one.

About that pile in the closet

Keeping some of it isn’t a character flaw, and you don’t owe anyone an apology for the box. Those years were busy enough that your memory let most of them slip, and the drawings are one of the few reliable ways back.

If you want to cut it down, go ahead, but do it slowly and keep the pieces that bring a specific day back. The lion with the missing mane can probably stay.

The post The parent who keeps every crayon drawing, every macaroni necklace and every lopsided clay pot isn’t hoarding clutter — those boxes are the only proof that the blur of those years really happened appeared first on The Artful Parent.

You remember something one of them said and smile. You are also pleased  there is nobody asking you for anything.

That combination can be surprisingly difficult to admit. We talk quite freely about the joy of grandchildren. Saying we would sometimes like an afternoon to ourselves can feel more awkward, especially when our adult children are busy and we know how much our help means to them.

Retirement adds another layer. We finally have more say over our time, but we may also be wondering where we belong now that work has finished. Grandparenting can bring affection and a welcome sense of being useful. It can also become the first commitment around which everything else is arranged.

How do we make room for this wonderful part of life while continuing to have a life of our own?

The joy is real, and so is the tiredness

A report from the Australian Institute of Family Studies, based on a 2021 survey, captures this mixture of feelings. Among respondents providing grandchild care, 97% said they enjoyed it, while nearly half found it tiring. The survey was not nationally representative and most respondents were grandmothers, but their responses give us a useful glimpse into everyday experience.

One grandmother, aged 74, put it this way:

“Although tiring, caring for our grandchildren is the most joyful and meaningful activity we have, the time we didn’t have as parents, we now have to care for and enjoy our grandchildren. We are also aware this is a window of opportunity of about five years in each child’s lives before they branch out into the wider world.”

Grandmother, aged 74

I find that a lovely observation. There can be something precious about having time with a child when the pressures of earning a living and raising our own family have reduced. We can spend time over a picture book or just sit and play with the children.

Her reference to five years is her own view of that early window, rather than a finding about how long grandparent relationships remain important. But I recognise the feeling behind it. These years will go quickly, and we want to enjoy them.

Wanting to make the most of that time can sit alongside needing rest. Both deserve a place in the conversation.

Having a choice changes how we experience caring

Psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci developed self-determination theory, a framework for understanding motivation and wellbeing. Their work identifies three psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness and competence. In everyday language, these involve feeling that our actions are willingly chosen, that we belong and matter to others, and that we are capable.

Autonomy can include freely choosing to devote a great deal of time to family. It concerns whether what we do feels consistent with our values and wishes.

Applied to grandparenting, this helps explain why similar arrangements might feel very different to different people. One grandparent may happily organise the week around two days of childcare. Another may find those same two days difficult to manage alongside other commitments.

In the Australian survey, 28% of respondents providing care agreed that they felt unable to say no when asked. Loving the children and finding a request difficult to decline can coexist.

Ryan and Deci’s theory offers a way to think about this, rather than a prescription for how much childcare anyone should provide. The useful question is whether an arrangement leaves room for both closeness and an honest say in how we spend our time.

Retirement can make being needed especially appealing

When I retired, I discovered that having plans did not automatically give me a settled sense of who I was. Work had provided structure, responsibility and a familiar way of explaining myself. Adjusting to life without that took time and a lot of emotion.

That experience has made me more aware of how appealing it can be to have a clear role again when you are asked what you do.

Being needed by family can feel reassuring. There is somewhere to be, something worthwhile to do and someone delighted to see us. For some people, grandparenting becomes the most satisfying part of retirement.

Still, I think it is worth occasionally asking ourselves what else we would like to make room for. Is there a friend we miss? Something we hoped to learn when we finally have more time? Have we stopped making other plans because we assume we might be needed?

Family may remain our greatest priority, while other parts of our life also need attention.

Four ingredients can help us see the whole picture

Over time, I have come to think about a fulfilling retirement through four ingredients: energy, connection, purpose and vision. They are a framework I use for reflection, rather than a scientific formula.

Grandparenting can contribute to all four. It can also draw heavily on some of them.

Energy includes noticing what we can comfortably manage. A day with small children might be delightful and physically demanding. Allowing time afterwards for rest, a walk or our usual activities can make the arrangement easier to sustain.

Connection includes the grandchildren and the wider family, alongside friends and other people who matter to us. Keeping a regular lunch with a friend can be part of caring for our own wellbeing, even when our calendar looks more flexible than it once did.

Purpose can come from helping our grandchildren grow and importantly giving their parents support. It may also come from other activities and contributing to something we care about.

Vision brings us back to what we hope the coming years will hold. Perhaps we want more family time. Perhaps there is a trip, a course or a different way of living we would like to explore. Naming those hopes helps us include them when family arrangements are discussed.

There will be times when one ingredient receives more attention than another. The point is to notice whether something important has gradually disappeared from view.

Clear communucation can make arrangements easier

Sometimes a family settles into an arrangement simply because nobody has discussed it properly. An occasional favour becomes a regular day, then an extra afternoon. Everyone gets used to it.

Talking about what is manageable can give everyone something clearer to work with. That might mean agreeing on regular days, discussing how extra requests will be handled, or checking in when the children start school or a grandparent’s circumstances change.

A sentence such as “I love our Wednesdays together, and I would like to keep Friday for my own plans” gives an adult child useful information.

Of course, choices can be limited. Some grandparents are raising grandchildren or supporting a family through difficult circumstances. Their situation may call for practical and necessary support.

Hopwever, where there is room to negotiate, I suspect it helps to speak before tiredness turns into frustration. A commitment that feels manageable is easier for everyone to plan around.

As they grow, we can keep growing too

I keep returning to the grandmother’s awareness that these early years are precious. There is real tenderness in wanting to be present while a child still asks you to sit on the floor beside them.

As children grow, the relationship can take a different shape. There may be fewer afternoons of hands-on care and more conversations over lunch, shared interests or messages about something they thought we would enjoy.

Our retirement can change alongside them. We can cherish the years of being closely involved while continuing to nurture interests and relationships that belong to us.

Perhaps that is something useful for grandchildren to see: an older person who loves them, enjoys their company and still has things they are curious about.

And when the house becomes quiet again, we might sit down with that cup of tea, remember the day with affection and look forward to something of our own tomorrow.

The post You can love being a grandparent and still want a retirement of your own, even if that feels surprisingly difficult to say appeared first on The Artful Parent.