Study Links Time With Grandchildren to Pride, Love and Healthier Aging

The emotional finding comes from a May 2026 study by psychology researchers at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Flavia Chereches, a PhD student at the university who co-wrote the study, said grandparents "reported higher feelings of pride and higher feelings of love" when they spent time with their grandchildren. "I think this really speaks [to] the value of this contact for grandparents, and I think for the younger generation, [it] speaks to how important it is also for us to have contact with our grandparents," she said. "It seems to bring emotional benefits for them."

Researchers at Harvard University who study the sources of long, healthy lives count maintaining positive relationships, sometimes called social fitness, as a contributing factor in physical well-being and longevity. According to CNBC, making an effort to stay in touch with grandparents may help them age well, and adults who build cross-generational ties may also improve the odds that their own children and grandchildren will want a relationship with them later.

Several studies associate supplementary caregiving, meaning additional support in raising grandchildren alongside their parents, with positive health outcomes including a lower risk of dementia, greater mobility and a lower risk of mortality. Being the sole primary caregiver for grandchildren, by contrast, is associated with negative effects on grandparents' health, including a higher risk of mortality. Other research Chereches co-published this year found that supplementary caregiving grandparents have higher levels of verbal fluency and episodic memory than grandparents not involved in raising their grandchildren, and that caregiving grandmothers experience slower cognitive decline than non-caregiving grandmothers.

"We know in general that the ingredients of healthy aging are being physically active, being engaged cognitively and then also having a good social network and having social participation," Chereches said. "Caregiving kind of affords for all these opportunities."

CNBC profiled Natalie Groeger, 100, who moved into her assisted living facility 13 years ago, in her 80s. "I came here as a child," she jokes. Groeger, described as mentally sharp and quick-witted, keeps daily habits often linked to longevity, including a positive outlook and the brain health-boosting antioxidants in her morning blueberries. Her family, she says, is her greatest pride and joy: a late husband, two children, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. She treasures a picture of her eldest great-grandson at his junior prom and dotes on her 11-year-old great-grandson, who frequently visits The Bristal at Englewood in Englewood, New Jersey.

Lenny Bergman, 93, and Hilda Bergman, 88, credit their happiness at least partly to regular contact with their seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. When those grandchildren were adolescents attending summer camp, Lenny Bergman wrote them letters daily and called each weekend to help them be less homesick, he said. Their activities together since then have ranged from cross-state travel to a family game night after Hilda Bergman gave a granddaughter a Mahjong set. "If I don't hear from somebody for a week, I call, or my wife calls," Lenny Bergman said. "Every single one of them, we love very much."

Caregiving and regular contact are not the same thing, but Chereches said both fit into a broader pattern. "As we grow older, we have multiple options of keeping ourselves active," she said, "and grandparenting can be one way."