One unexpected topic seems to dominate Sharon MacKenzie’s conversations with her grandkids lately.
“They’re fascinated by my blood vessels in my legs,” said MacKenzie, who is executive director of the i2i Intergenerational Society, an organization that connects seniors with youth. “They’ll spend quite a bit of time just saying, ‘Will I have these when I get older?’”
MacKenzie loves taking care of her four grandchildren, who, like her, live in Revelstoke, B.C. She’ll help out after school or babysit on parents’ date nights.
The kids’ focus on her legs doesn’t bother her. MacKenzie wants her grandchildren to learn that there’s nothing to fear about getting older. She actually credits moments like these — talking about end-of-life and aging — with enhancing her sense of health and wellbeing.
“I think those kinds of things … motivate you to want to stay well, to stay healthy and to stay active … because you can tell that they enjoy having you around,” she said. “That connection really does make you feel important — having a purpose.”
Relationships between grandparents and grandchildren have been shown to positively affect seniors’ mental and physical health. A 2016 study examined data from a Berlin Aging Study that followed more than 500 seniors over 18 years. The data showed grandparents who helped provide some care to their grandchildren lived longer than grandparents who did not.
In the study, grandparents who helped provide care had a 37 per cent lower risk of death over almost two decades.
“We know in fact that actually having and maintaining meaningful social connections protects us from issues like social isolation and loneliness as we age, and actually can extend your life expectancy as well,” said Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing at the Toronto Metropolitan University.
As Canadian couples have fewer children than previous generations — or none at all — more seniors will not get to reap the health benefits of grandparent-grandchild relationships. But seniors can develop intergenerational relationships that have similar benefits, experts say.
“The benefits are huge, just so huge, between younger and older people and it does not matter one iota whether they’re grandkids and grandparents of each other,” said MacKenzie.
Depth of social connection
Two of the biggest challenges seniors face are social isolation — having little to no social contact — and loneliness, says Sinha, who is also director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai and University Health Network hospitals in Toronto and was previously an expert lead on Ontario’s Seniors Strategy.
A 2023 NIA Ageing in Canada Survey of Canadians 50 and over found 41 per cent are at risk of experiencing social isolation, and 57 per cent report experiencing some level of loneliness.
Many seniors outlive family members and friends in their same age bracket. Having connections with younger generations is crucial to maintaining a social circle over time and limiting isolation.
The depth of social connection also makes a difference. A grandparent-grandchild relationship can be extremely valuable because the senior can derive a sense of purpose from helping guide the family’s future, says Sinha.
“There’s more of a vested interest with family members rather than … their friends, in terms of thinking about the future generations, the future legacy.”
Researchers found about half of the seniors involved in the Berlin Aging Study who did not help family members died within five years of the first interview. In contrast, half the seniors who did help their children or grandchildren were still still alive ten years after the first interview. The researchers did not include grandparents who were primary or custodial caregivers in their analysis.
Younger generations can introduce new viewpoints and technologies to help seniors stay healthy and up-to-date, says Sinha. And seniors are able to share the wisdom of their own life experiences with younger generations, whether it’s by helping with homework or offering advice on a break-up.
“All these things together, collectively, can help support a longer lifespan and reduce the risks of things like mental health issues, like depression or anxiety, and even dementia as well,” said Sinha.
Grandparents who live close to their grandkids have an easier time accessing these health benefits, he said.
Some even opt to live together — or need to. Intergenerational households are becoming more common in Canada due to changing cultural norms and high costs of living, Canadian Affairs has previously reported.
But grandparents who live far away can still enjoy the health benefits of relationships with grandchildren, says Sinha.
“In my own family, my parents are very excited about that weekly Zoom call they have with their grandchildren,” he said. “They really appreciate that … they still have that opportunity to be connected, to be invested.”
Solo agers
Birth rates have declined in Canada and comparably sized Nordic countries since 2008, says Benoît Laplante, professor at the Centre Urbanisation Culture Société, a research institute in Quebec. He says the exact reasons behind this phenomenon remain unknown.
What is known is that as Canadians have fewer or no kids, Canada will see a rise in “solo agers” — people who grow old with no immediate family.
There are many opportunities for seniors without immediate families to create bonds within their own communities, says MacKenzie.
She has seen this happen many times. She knew a hockey coach in Kelowna, B.C., who would take his young team to a care home before practice to spend an hour with seniors. Over board games, players would share their hockey stories with seniors, who took an interest in the kids’ lives.
Within a few weeks, the seniors had called for a bus: they wanted to be at all the kids’ hockey games.
“That comes from a very simple gesture of making a connection, one hour, one day a week, in the winter, to play board games, that was all,” said MacKenzie.
The researchers behind the 2016 study on grandparent caregiving and mortality found the health benefits of caregiving were not limited to those who provided help within a family. Childless older adults who provided others with emotional support, for example, benefited. Half of these helpers lived for another seven years past the first interview, whereas non-helpers lived on average only another four years.
The organization MacKenzie runs, i2i Intergenerational Society, has helped connect seniors in long-term care homes with school children, organizes community events and help plan intergenerational group outings across Canada.
Many people believe it takes a lot of time for different generations to forge a meaningful connection, says MacKenzie. This is not correct, she says. But what is important is for seniors and younger generations to connect over activities they already do. For example, schools can set up a book club with seniors.
“If you’re a senior that has a gardening club, why not invite some of the kindergarten or preschool kids to come over and watch you and help you dig weeds or help you plant out bulbs or whatever it happens to be,” she said.
For MacKenzie, spending time with her grandchildren and talking through their concerns has been helpful to both her and her grandkids.
It’s nice to show them “they shouldn’t be afraid of getting older,” said MacKenzie. “There are challenges. But then as little kids, they have challenges too. And as a grandparent, you can help them through that.”
