Helping to raise your grandchildren? It's good for your brain.

Millions of grandparents are helping to raise their grandchildren in America − and researchers found it's helping their brains.

Caregiving for grandchildren can help to slow cognitive decline in older adults, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Lead researcher Flavia Chereches, from the Netherlands, and her colleagues looked at U.K. data from nearly 3,000 grandparents. They found that seniors who provided child care for their grandchildren − including watching them overnight, caring for sick grandkids, playing with them, helping with homework, making meals and driving them to school and extracurriculars − scored higher on memory and verbal fluency tests than those who were not caregivers. Grandmother caregivers saw less cognitive decline during the six-year study than senior women who didn't care for grandchildren.

"What stood out most to us was that being a caregiving grandparent seemed to matter more for cognitive functioning than how often grandparents provided care or what exactly they did with their grandchildren," Chereches said in a recent news release about the study.

It makes sense, said Dale Atkins, a psychologist and author of the children's book "The Turquoise Butterfly," which tells the story of a grandmother and her granddaughter. Grandparenting keeps older adults socially engaged, allows them to use executive functioning and problem-solving skills and provides opportunities for creativity and storytelling.

"You're getting into the head of this little person and trying to see the world through their eyes. Well, perspective-taking is a really important cognitive skill," Atkins said. "These are things that a lot of people, as they get older, don't necessarily do."

Grandchildren can help with older Americans' mental health, too. University of Michigan’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation found in a 2024 poll that seniors with at least one grandchild were less likely to feel isolated than those without grandchildren.

Spending time with a grandchild, or even mentoring a child in the community, "really addresses loneliness because you feel you still have a purpose," Atkins said.

Grandparents need to want to help out

Still, grandparenting doesn't come without its challenges.

"There's this narrative that being a grandparent is the best thing ever," said DeeDee Moore, founder of the grandparenting advice forum More Than Grand. When that expectation doesn't live up to the daily reality of grandparenting, "it can be really hard as a grandparent to not feel like something's wrong."

Some grandparents are overly involved in their grandkids' lives, leading to boundary issues with the children's parents and nudging into "helicopter grandparenting" territory. Others might feel taken advantage of as a free child care option. "It can cause some rifts," Atkins said, especially if the grandparents are not physically up to the challenge of child care but feel they have to help.

Child care costs have grown to unmanageable amounts for many families. A recent study from LendingTree, an online lending platform, found that families need to bring in just over $400,000 annually in order to comfortably afford child care for two children. To cope, millions of parents have turned to their retired parents.

Nationally, about one-third of grandparents living with their grandchildren are responsible for their care, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The University of Michigan study found about half of the nearly 3,500 grandparents surveyed care for their grandkids at least once every few months, and 1 in 5 respondents care for their grandchildren at least once a week. Less than 10% said they provide daily or near-daily child care. Other estimates are much higher, with The Harris Poll finding through a 2023 survey that 42% of working parents rely on grandmothers for child care.

"A lot of them feel taken advantage of," Moore said, adding that one of the top search terms that brings people to her platform is "grandparent babysitting burnout."

"It's hard for grandparents to say no," she said.

Chereches noted this caveat in her research: "Providing care voluntarily, within a supportive family environment, may have different effects for grandparents than caregiving in a more stressful environment where they feel unsupported or feel that the caregiving is not voluntary or a burden."

It's important for families to talk about these boundaries, and expectations when it comes to grandparenting, Moore said.

"Too many families do not have those conversations," she said. "It's important for parents to come to the conversation wanting to understand the grandparents' viewpoint, also, instead of just laying down rules and expecting them to be followed."

Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

Reach Madeline at [email protected] and @maddiemitch_ on X.