Babysitting May Be Hazardous To Grandmother's Health




Home \| Elder Rights \| Health \| Pension Watch \| Rural Aging \| Armed Conflict \| Aging Watch at the UN

	SEARCH	SUBSCRIBE
			Mission \| Contact Us \| Internships \| Donate Now!

back

Babysitting May Be Hazardous To Grandmother's Health

By Laura Johannes, The Wall Street Journal
October 31, 2003

In a study that raises potentially troubling questions about the burden of child care on grandparents, Harvard University researchers found a 55% greater risk of heart disease among grandmothers who care for their grandchildren.

Although the study didn't pin down a reason, researchers believe it may be as simple as the added wear and tear that child care puts on an elderly body. The study found heightened risks from as little as nine hours each week spent looking after a child.

"We hypothesize that stress may be the main reason," says author Sunmin Lee, an instructor at Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston . "But we also think that grandmothers may have less time or opportunity to engage in their own self-care -- like regular checkups, preventative care, getting enough sleep or getting enough exercise."

Census data show more grandparents are living with their grandchildren, suggesting more babysitting duties for grandmothers. But there is little data available on just how much such care may be increasing. The Census shows that the number of children living with their grandparents increased 30% from 1990 to 2000, while the total number of children increased only 14.3%, according to the AARP, an advocacy group for senior citizens.

Earlier studies have shown a higher incidence of depression in grandparents caring for grandchildren, and also a tendency to rate their own health status lower. But this is the first time anyone has demonstrated a risk of heart disease, the most common cause of death among women.

"This is a dramatic and important finding," says scientist Meredith Minkler, of the University of California at Berkeley 's School of Public Health . "These grandparents might constitute a vulnerable group of hidden patients whose health-care needs to be attended to by physicians and policy makers alike."

The finding, published in this month's issue of the American Journal of Public Health, is based on data from the groundbreaking Nurses' Health Study, which began with some 120,000 women in 1976. The researchers studied a subset of 54,412 nurses or retired nurses, age 50 to 75. In the four-year study period, 1.1%, or 42, of the 3,808 women who spent nine hours or more caring for grandchildren developed heart disease. That compares with only seven-tenths of a percent for the grandmothers babysitting for one to nine hours a week and half a percent for grandmothers providing no care.

The population was all female, mostly white and generally middle to upper-middle class. In all likelihood, minority and lower-income populations would have shown even greater risk, had they been [granny] included in the study, Dr. Lee says, because those grandmothers generally have fewer opportunities to take a break.

Previous studies by other researchers have shown higher heart-disease risks in women who work outside the home and care for their own children at the same time. But the Harvard study didn't find greater risk of heart disease in older women who cared for their own children, whether or not the women worked. Dr. Lee surmised that is probably because the women in the study group were over 50 -- so their children were generally past the most stressful, time-consuming infant and toddler stages. While many of the grandmothers in the study were caring for young grandchildren, the research doesn't show whether the risk was higher for grandmothers of smaller children.

The authors say their findings suggest that grandmothers shouldn't let babysitting responsibilities interfere with getting regular checkups, exercising and eating right. The study, they say, also underscores the importance of improving child-care alternatives to busy working mothers.

According to a 2001 research study, 36.3% of U.S. grandparents provide "intermediate" or "extensive" care for their grandchildren. That is defined as more than 10 hours of babysitting a week, or more than seven overnight stays a year without the child's parent present, says Esme Fuller-Thomson, an associate professor at the University of Toronto .

The initial study population was culled to exclude, among other things, women who had pre-existing heart disease and women who didn't answer questions about their caregiving history. The remaining 54,412 women were followed for four years, from 1992 to 1996.

The risks were adjusted for the ages of the women, as well as for other heart-disease risk factors, such as smoking and lack of exercise. After adjusting the data for those risks, the grandmothers providing more than nine hours a week of care were 55% more likely to develop heart disease. While some of that group was providing as much as 73 hours of care a week, there weren't enough women in the heavy-duty category to determine if the risk increased as more time was spent with the children, Dr. Lee says.

Surprisingly, the scientists found the risks were just as great for grandmothers who found their late-life child-care responsibilities "rewarding" as for those who found them "stressful." Dr. Lee, however, believes that the grandmothers may be underestimating their level of stress, or denying it. She's beginning another study, which will measure the level of cortisol, a hormone produced during stress, in saliva of grandmothers who care for their children.

The level of cortisol "usually goes up 10 minutes after bad incidents of stress," says Dr. Lee. For most people, it soon returns to normal, but people with chronic stress may have consistent levels of cortisol all day, she says.

Many grandparents enjoy caring for their grandchildren, and they do it out of love, says Bert Hayslip, a professor of psychology at University of North Texas and author of two scholarly books on grandparent "parenting." But often, unfortunately, their help is needed because of something bad -- such as the divorce of the child's parents. Most grandparents, he adds, "acknowledge that if there was some other alternative that would keep the child safe, they would take it."