Using fixed-effects models across five waves of China Family Panel Studies data, grandparenthood has sex-differentiated associations with well-being, with women showing short- to mid-term improvements in emotional well-being and men exhibiting sustained increases in evaluative well-being beginning at the birth of the first grandchild.
Key Findings
Results
Women show short- to mid-term improvements in emotional well-being (mental health) beginning in the birth year of the first grandchild.
Improvements in emotional well-being for women begin in the birth year of the first grandchild.
Estimates become less precise in later years, suggesting the emotional well-being benefits may not be sustained long-term.
Non-coresident women showed weaker improvements in emotional well-being compared to coresident women.
The study used fixed-effects models with discrete-time trends across five waves of data (2012-2022).
Results
Men exhibit sustained increases in evaluative well-being (life satisfaction) from the birth year of the first grandchild through six years afterward.
Men's improvements in life satisfaction begin at the birth year of the first grandchild and persist through six years afterward.
There was limited subgroup variation in men's evaluative well-being improvements, suggesting these gains are relatively consistent across demographic subgroups.
This pattern contrasts with women, who showed improvements in emotional rather than evaluative well-being.
Results
Anticipatory associations with well-being before the transition to grandparenthood are generally absent for both sexes.
Neither men nor women showed significant changes in well-being in the years prior to the birth of the first grandchild.
The absence of anticipatory effects helps rule out reverse causality as an explanation for the post-birth well-being changes.
This finding was consistent across both emotional and evaluative well-being dimensions.
Results
Unmarried women display larger well-being improvements than married women following the transition to grandparenthood.
Marital status was identified as a significant moderator of the grandparenthood-well-being association among women.
Other sociodemographic moderators showed minimal influence on the well-being trajectories.
This pattern suggests that grandparenthood may fulfill social roles or provide emotional resources that are particularly meaningful for unmarried women.
Results
Robustness checks indicate the longitudinal patterns are unlikely to be driven by attrition bias, reverse causality, spurious temporal correlations, or omitted variables.
Multiple robustness checks were conducted to test the validity of the findings.
The checks specifically addressed attrition bias, reverse causality, spurious temporal correlations, and omitted variable bias.
The study used fixed-effects models, which control for time-invariant individual characteristics.
Data came from five waves of the China Family Panel Studies spanning 2012 to 2022.
Methods
The study applied a life-course approach using five waves of China Family Panel Studies data to examine well-being trajectories around the transition to grandparenthood.
Data were drawn from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) across five waves from 2012 to 2022.
Fixed-effects models with discrete-time trends were used to capture well-being trajectories from pre-transition years through birth of the first grandchild and into early grandparenthood.
Both emotional well-being (mental health) and evaluative well-being (life satisfaction) were examined.
Heterogeneity across key sociodemographic subgroups was also investigated.
Chen J. (2026). Sex-specific trajectories of mental health and life satisfaction during the transition to grandparenthood in China.. Advances in life course research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2026.100726