Grandparents' social capital hypothesis: Relationships with grandparents and young adults' trust through kinship support

• Published date: 01 July 2024
• Author: Jialing Ma
• Date: 01 July 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12996

RESEARCH

Grandparents’social capital hypothesis: Relationships

with grandparents and young adults’trust through

kinship support

Jialing Ma

1,2

1

School of Psychology, University of

Aberdeen, United Kingdom

2

Department of Psychology, Education

University of Hong Kong, China

Correspondence Jialing Ma, School of

Psychology, University of Aberdeen,

Aberdeen, AB24 3FX, United Kingdom.

Email: jiakana4502784@gmail.com

Funding information

Research Postgraduate Student Fund from the

Graduate School of the Education University

of Hong Kong

Abstract

Objective: The current research investigated how relation-

ships with grandparents were associated with young

adults’trust levels.

Background: To complement the grandmother hypothesis

that explains the adaptiveness of human longevity from

the perspective of instrumental contributions, a “grandpar-

ents’social capital hypothesis”was proposed, indicating

that grandparents benefit social capital construction for

their grandchildren, the effect of which could be symbolic

for young adults. Older adults, who tend to have high

levels of trust and the connections within extended family,

could have positive impacts on young adults’trust.

Method: Using convenience sampling, we surveyed

314 Chinese young adults on quality and quantity of their

interactions with grandparents, kinship support, and their

generalized trust and particularized trust toward relatives

through trust games. Path analysis was used to analyze

the data.

Results: Quality of the relationship with grandparents,

rather than quantity of contact with them, was related to

young adults’higher levels of particularized and general-

ized trust. Kinship support mediated the associations

between high-quality relationships with grandparents and

Author note The study was partially based on the author’s thesis for her MPhil degree, obtained from the Education University of Hong

Kong.The work was supported by a grant for research postgraduate students from the Graduate School of the Education University of

Hong Kong.I express sincere thanks to my MPhil supervisor Dr. Tianyuan Li (School of Humanities and Social Science, The Chinese

University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen) for her supervision work during her study. I also appreciate my PhD supervisor Professor Louise

Phillips (School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen) and three anonymous reviewers for providing valuable suggestions to revise the

manuscript.

Received: 1 November 2022 Revised: 4 August 2023 Accepted: 4 November 2023

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12996

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2024 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.

1646 Family Relations. 2024;73:1646–1663.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare

young adults’particularized trust, as well as generalized

trust.

Conclusion: Grandparents could play a symbolic role in

social capital accumulation for young adults through the

mediation effect of kinship support.

Implications: These findings provide new evidence

supporting older adults’constructive role in human socie-

ties and shed light on possible strategies to cultivate social

capital in the communities.

KEYWORDS

adult grandchild, extended family, grandparenting, symbolic

interactionism

The adaptiveness of human longevity has mixed explanations. A prevailing explanation is the

grandmother hypothesis (Hawkes, 2004), which suggests that the adaptiveness of pos-

treproductive longevity (i.e., grandparenthood) provides essential childcare that benefits the

reproductive success of their children and the survival of their grandchildren. Healthy grandpar-

ents can provide instrumental help to younger generations; however, several key questions

remain. Could other relatives also provide instrumental help to young children? It is noteworthy

that young children’s elder siblings and their parents’younger siblings were essential caregivers

in preindustrialized societies (Cicirelli, 1994; Whiteman et al., 2011). Furthermore, is the grand-

mother hypothesis still appliable after grandparents grow older and are no longer providing

support, or are even relying on their offspring’s support? Indeed, kin competition for local

resources (Platt & Bever, 2009) is not uncommon in hunting-gathering societies. During chal-

lenging times, kin competition or cooperation is a vital issue for the survival of a kin group. It

is especially true taking a third generation into consideration (Strassmann & Garrard, 2011),

due to the enlarged kin group size and its members are not as close as that in a nuclear family.

The prosperity of human societies relies not only on physical resources but also on social

capital such as social norms, obligations and expectations, and information transmission that

supports a cooperative social structure (Coleman, 1988; Hill et al., 2011). Compared to other

age groups, older adults are more altruistic for public good (Sparrow et al., 2021), making them

particularly suitable for the role of social capital maintenance. For example, when conflicts

arise among kin, older adults who do not have their own dependent children and have more

knowledge about social norms should be regarded as an impartial authority to moderate among

the kin members for common good.

For this work, I assumed that the long postreproductive lifespan is not merely for instru-

mental contributions but is particularly advantageous for intergenerational transmission and

maintenance of social capital to increase the local carrying capability and sustainable develop-

ment for a kin group. Hence, to complement the grandmother hypothesis (Hawkes, 2004), a

“grandparents’social capital hypothesis”was proposed in which grandparents provide benefi-

cial social capital construction for their grandchildren. This work demonstrates the grandpar-

ents’social capital hypothesis with theoretical evidence and empirical data and discusses its

implications.

TRUST: THE FUNDAMENTAL SOCIAL CAPITAL

Social capital is relations embodied within a group (Coleman, 1988) which facilitate reciprocity,

trust, and cooperation that makes people in the group act together for common good

INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND TRUST 1647