Tanskanen, Antti O.Danielsbacka, MirkkaHämäläinen, HansSolé Auró, Aïda2022-11-152022-11-152021Tanskanen AO, Danielsbacka M, Hämäläinen H, Solé-Auró A. Does transition to retirement promote grandchild care? Evidence from Europe. Front Psychol. 2021 Sep 20;12:738117. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.7381171664-1078http://hdl.handle.net/10230/54839Evolutionary theory posits that grandparents can increase their inclusive fitness by investing in their grandchildren. This study explored whether the transition to retirement affected the amount of grandchild care that European grandparents provided to their descendants. Data from five waves of the longitudinal Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe collected between 2004 and 2015 from 15 countries were used. We executed within-person (or fixed-effect) regression models, which considered individual variations and person-specific changes over time. It was detected that transition to retirement was associated with increased grandchild care among both grandmothers and grandfathers. However, the effect of retirement was stronger for grandfathers than for grandmothers. Moreover, transition to retirement was associated with increased grandchild care among both maternal and paternal grandparents, but there was no significant difference between lineages in the magnitude of the effect of transition to retirement on grandchild care. In public debate retirees are often considered a burden to society but the present study indicated that when grandparents retire, their investment in grandchildren increased. The findings are discussed with reference to key evolutionary theories that consider older adults' tendency to invest time and resources in their grandchildren.application/pdfeng© 2021 Tanskanen, Danielsbacka, Hämäläinen and Solé-Auró. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.738117ChildcareEuropeGrandparental investmentRetirementSHAREinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess