A Grandparent's Positive Influence

Frances Yang, a Taiwanese-American graduate student on our project, says that her 97-year-old grandfather's presence has been a vital part of her life. They talk, play table tennis, and stage archery competitions, as he tells stories of his high school teaching career and the family's past.
     The emotional closeness they have with each other may be reflected in the way she feels about herself, what we define as self-esteem.
     In research on data that came from our 1991 and 1997 surveys, Yang and Dr. Merril Silverstein found that grandchildren who receive more affection from their grandparents have higher self-esteem levels than those who experience little or no affections from their grandparents.
     They measured how the levels of self-esteem among grandchildren changed with grandparents' level of affections.
     The average of age of grandchildren was 20 years old; grandparents, on average, were 64 years old.
     They were interested in seeing if there was link between the ways grandchildren reported their own self-esteem scores and their emotional relationship with each of their grandparents in the survey. Based upon the responses in 1991, they were able to predict the link between self-esteem and grandparental affection in 1997.
     Gender of the grandparent made no difference in grandchildren's self-esteem levels. It seems that an experience of emotional closeness with either grandfathers or grandmothers is important in the psychological well-being of grandchildren.
     Because divorce has occurred in so many families, they explore differences between grandchildren who came from homes with divorced parents and non-divorced parents.
     When they looked at the effect of divorce upon grandchildren's self-esteem levels by itself, they found that divorce had a way of lowering the self-esteem scores of the grandchildren we were studying.
     However, adding back the effect of a close relationship with grandparents, the result showed that grandchildren who come from homes with divorced parents increase more in their self-esteem levels than their counterparts after they factored in the experience of a close and affectionate relationship with grandparents.
     Grandchildren who have affectionate relationship with grandparents actually have higher self-esteem levels than their counterparts. The emotional turmoil of divorce gives more opportunity for other people, such as grandparents, to fill grandchildren's lives with attention and affection.
     It seems then, that this affection and attention from a grandparent has more direct influence upon the well-being of grandchildren with divorced parents than those who do not.
     Her grandfather's legacy of teaching continues for Yang. "His words of encouragement have helped developed my self-confidence and intention to pursue an academic career in gerontology."