Baljit Kaur Gill

Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hongkong

Title: Exploring the relationship between grandparenting styles and grandparents’ quality of life and its association with depression

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Biography

Dr. Baljit Kaur Gill, is an associate professor at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University. She have over 13 years of higher education teaching and research experience. Her research interest includes Gerontology and Gerontechnology, Simulation and Technology Based Education, Nurse Competence and Education, Long-term Care, Race and Ethnicity, Transcultural Care, Bioethics. At present, Dr. Kaur is keen in exploring how intergenerational relationships enhance satisfaction of aging and promotes aging satisfaction. She is also interested on how incorporation of technology enhances psychological and physical health of older adults. Dr. Gill have a rich cultural experience in different countries, she is very passion on developing care of different race and ethnicity and with her expertise in gerontology, she hopes to enrich ethno-geriatrics care as well. She is also an active simulationalist and nurse education, focusing on using different technology to enhance teaching and learning and development of competence.

Abstract

Introduction

Grandparenting means those grandparents involve a dyadic relationship with one or multiple grandchildren (Arber & Timonen, 2012). However, those experiences of caring grandchildren led to the influence on grandparents’ psychological health, like depression, stress level and also their quality of life (Yalcin et al., 2018). At present, most of the literatures examines, the relationship of the sociodemographic factors and culture influences on grandparenting and how it affects the quality of life and depressive symptoms of grandparents. There is no study done that evaluates on how different grandparenting styles impacts the quality of life and association with depressive symptoms.

Aim

This study aim to explore the relationship between grandparenting styles and grandparents’ quality of life and its association with depression.

Method

A cross-sectional study was carried out. Two hundred grandparents (n=200) completed a set of self-administrated questionnaires. Demographic data was collected and the participants were asked to determine their grandparenting styles according to the Neugarten and Weinstein (1964) grandparenting styles. Participants’ quality of life was assessed using WHO Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) and depressive symptoms assessed using The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D).

Results

Parent surrogate grandparent style was the most common (n = 97, 48.5%), wisdom and formal are the least (n = 40, 20%). 25.5% (n = 51) and 6% (n = 12) of respondents are using fun-seeking and distant figure grandparenting style respectively. Distant figure style has the highest level of depressive symptoms and respondents, and vice versa in fun-seeking style. Fun-seeker grandparenting style experience the most fruitful quality of life and distant figure style has the poorest quality of life.