Mirkka Danielsbacka
Biographic Data
| ID | 631117 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mirkka Danielsbacka |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mirkka |
| FAMILY NAME | Danielsbacka |
| SIGNATURE | DANIELSBACKA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Turku |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8547-9502 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 87 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Grandparental Support Varies Asymmetrically According to Family Socioeconomic Status, Parental Gender, and Lineage
Several studies have shown that (i) grandparental support varies according to gender and lineage, and (ii) differences in family relationships tend to exist between lower and higher socioeconomic status (SES). However, there is a lack of studies examining whether grandparents provide more support to grandchildren from lower- or higher-SES families in contemporary affluent societies, and whether this differs between maternal and paternal grandmoth…
Widowhood and grandchild care: A longitudinal study of European grandmothers and grandfathers
The death of a spouse is a major life event, commonly experienced in later adulthood. While existing research suggests that widowhood may reduce the provision of grandchild care, most studies have relied on cross-sectional comparisons between widowed and non-widowed individuals. In this study, we use longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE; n = 27,467) to examine how changes in partnership status are as…
Altruism among siblings vs. friends in a contemporary affluent population
Inclusive fitness theory predicts that altruistic behavior is more common among kin than non-kin. Using population-based data from younger and middle-aged Finns ( n = 1254), the present study investigated childcare help, financial support, and practical help received from full siblings and friends. The results showed that childcare help was substantially more likely to be received from siblings than from friends (45.5% vs. 36.7%). Moreover, finan…
Providing Help in Europe: Are In-Household Care and Outside-Household Support Associated With Grandparental Child care
Grandparental child care is a vital form of social support that can enhance family well-being. Prior studies have found that older adults who provide support to one individual are more likely to offer help to others within their families and social networks. However, little research has examined whether helping others is associated with grandparental child care. Using data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe, covering 27 cou…
Both Partnership History and Current Relationship Quality are Associated With Life Satisfaction in Old Age
Romantic relationships significantly impact physical and mental wellbeing. While both partnership history and current relationship quality influence wellbeing in later life, they are seldom investigated together. This study examines the long-term effects of partnership history on wellbeing, exploring whether current relationship quality can mitigate the impact of past experiences. Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Eu…
Adult Children's Timing of Entry into Parenthood: Parental Investment, Education, and Gender
Highly educated individuals have their first child at later ages compared to less-educated individuals, and parental investment is associated with the childbearing of adult children. However, no studies have explored the association between maternal and paternal investment and the timing of parenthood for adult daughters and sons, and whether this association varies by education level. Based on the parenthood penalty and life-history theory, it i…
Social media contact with family members and happiness in younger and older adults
Prior literature suggests that social media may increase older adults' well-being because they use social media to communicate with close social ties, such as family members. Despite this potential being recognized and associations between social media and well-being being established among older adults, the role of social media contact (SMC), particularly with family members, as a source of well-being has been little explored. In this study, we …
Is Transition to Retirement Associated With Volunteering? Longitudinal Evidence from Europe
Studies have shown that retired older adults are more likely to volunteer than their working counterparts. However, whether the transition to retirement is associated with increased volunteering frequency and whether this varies according to material and time resources of participants is unclear. We used four waves of data from the longitudinal Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, collected between 2011–2018 across 19 countries ( n …
Prosocial activity in later life: Are informal help and care associated with volunteering and charity
Older adults' engagement in various prosocial activities is a salient question in present-day societies that aim to promote active ageing. However, there are only a few studies focusing on associations between several types of prosocial activities, and they have rarely considered help to relatives and friends separately. Moreover, there is lack of studies considering informal monetary help and charity donations when analysing multiple prosocial a…
Formal long-term care, individualisation and filial responsibility: A multi-level analysis of 21 European countries
Purpose Due to the rapid ageing of the continent's population, a significant surge in long-term care expenses for the elderly is expected across Europe in the coming years. Could a potential solution to this challenge involve the increased informal care provided by adult children? In this context, we examined a general view or moral duty of European citizens regarding whether adult children should assume responsibility for providing long-term car…
Maternal psychiatric and somatic illness, and the risk of unintentional injuries in children: Variation by type of maternal illness, type of injury and child age
BACKGROUND: Maternal mental illness appears to increase the risk of unintentional childhood injuries, which are a common cause of morbidity and mortality in early childhood. However, little is known about the variations in this association by type of injury and child's age, and studies on the effects of maternal somatic illness on children's injury risk are scarce. METHODS: We used Finnish total population register data from 2000 to 2017 to link …
Partnership Histories Shape the Grandparenting Happiness Bonus
Evolutionary theory predicts that returns on investments in family relations will vary by sex and life stage and that there can be a trade-off between mating and (grand)parenting. Family sociology has shown that whereas couple relations are central to happiness in older age, the effects of grandparenting are more mixed and context dependent. Here, we merge these two perspectives and study how partnership histories over the life course relate to h…
The role of mating effort and co-residence history in step-grandparental investment
The prevalence of divorce in both parental and grandparental generations has led to a rise in the number of children who now have families that include both biological and step-grandparents. Despite the thorough examination of biological grandparents’ contributions in the recent literature, there remains a scarcity of studies focusing on the investment of step-grandparents. Using population-based data from a sample of 2494 parents in Germany, we …
Do Working and Parenting Trajectories Influence Retirement Timing? Evidence From Spain, Using a Sequence Analysis Approach and Focusing on Women
This paper investigates the association between accumulated experiences in the working and parenting spheres and retirement timing among Spanish women, utilizing data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The study examines whether labor market attachment or cumulative disadvantage characterizes women’s retirement and how these factors relate with the number of children. Firstly, multichannel sequence analysis and cl…
Who are ‘Multi-Helpers’? Profile of Older Adults Engaging in Multiple Help-Giving Activities
This study considers older adults providing multiple types of support toward different parties in both public and private domains, referred to as ‘multi-helpers’. Although individuals involved in multiple help-giving activities can be important actors at individual, community, and societal levels, few studies have evaluated their characteristics. Using population-based data for older Finns ( n = 2,174) we explored the profiles of multi-helpers fo…
Step-Gap in Upward Support: The Role of Biological Relatedness and Childhood Co-residence Duration
The findings showed that stepparents are in a more disadvantaged position than the biological parents regarding receiving support from their adult children. In the context of a high old-age dependency ratio, it is important to recognize that stepparents may not have the opportunity to receive adequate support from their families as compared to individuals with biological children
Parental Investment by Birth Fathers and Stepfathers: Roles of Mating Effort and Childhood Co-residence Duration
This study investigates the determinants of paternal investment by birth fathers and stepfathers. Inclusive fitness theory predicts higher parental investment in birth children than stepchildren, and this has consistently been found in previous studies. Here we investigate whether paternal investment varies with childhood co-residence duration and differs between stepfathers and divorced birth fathers by comparing the investment of (1) stepfather…
Predictors of Social Media Use in Two Family Generations
Older adults have recently begun to adopt social media in increasing numbers. Even so, little is known about the factors influencing older adults' social media adoption. Here, we identify factors that predict the use of social media among older adults (aged 68-73) and compare them to those of their adult children (aged 19-56) using population-based data from Finland. As predictors for social media use, we utilized demographic factors as well as c…
Digital and traditional communication with kin: Displacement or reinforcement
A salient question in the digital era is whether new forms of digital communication (e.g. instant messages, video calls, e-mails) have displaced or reinforced more traditional forms of communication (e.g. meeting face-to-face, contact by phone, sending letters/postcards). These opposing hypotheses, i.e. digital communication as a reinforcer versus a displacer, have attracted abundant attention among scholars; however, studies have scarcely explor…
Kin detection cues and sibling relationship quality in adulthood: The role of childhood co-residence duration and maternal perinatal association
Cues facilitating kin detection among children have been suggested to have a profound impact on adult sibling relationships. Using a large and population-based data of younger and middle-aged Finns, we test how childhood co-residence duration and maternal perinatal association (MPA) correlate with contact frequency, emotional closeness and provision of help between adult siblings. Employing sibling fixed-effect regression models we show that dura…
Grandmaternal investment and early childhood injury: The role of X-chromosomal relatedness
Evolutionary theory posits that grandmothers can increase their inclusive fitness by investing time and resources in their grandchildren. According on the X-linked grandmother hypothesis, the asymmetric inheritance of X-chromosomes should be responsible for the biased effect of the investment by maternal and paternal grandmothers towards granddaughters and grandsons. The British Millennium Cohort Study ( n =4445 children) was used to investigate …
Does Parental Investment Shape Adult Children’s Fertility Intentions? Findings From a German Family Panel
Parents can play an important role in the childbearing plans of adult children. However, studies testing whether changes in parental investment are associated with subsequent changes in fertility intentions over time are lacking. We investigated whether parental investment, measured as contact frequency, emotional closeness, financial support, and childcare, is associated with adult children's intentions to have a first and a second, or subsequen…
Meeting online and family-related outcomes: Evidence from three German cohorts
In recent years, the Internet has become an increasingly important venue for meeting partners. While meeting online may have a range of effects on family-related outcomes, studies on the link between meeting online and family-related outcomes are scarce. Using eight follow-up waves of the German Family Panel (Pairfam), with observations from 8177 persons from three birth cohorts between 2009 and 2016, this study investigates whether meeting onlin…
Kin Recognition
The Indian Gift and Village Servants
Grandparental childcare, health and well-being in Europe: A within-individual investigation of longitudinal data
Grandparental Effects on Fertility Vary by Lineage in the United Kingdom
Impact of Genetic Relatedness and Emotional Closeness on Intergenerational Relations
Both emotional closeness and genetic relatedness are known to influence helping behavior between family generations, yet few studies have explored them together. The authors investigated the associations between (a) parenthood and perceived emotional closeness toward own parents and parents-in-law and (b) emotional closeness and receiving child care from grandparents across and within lineage lines. The data include information on the 8 dyads of …
Digital and traditional communication with kin: Displacement or reinforcement
A salient question in the digital era is whether new forms of digital communication (e.g. instant messages, video calls, e-mails) have displaced or reinforced more traditional forms of communication (e.g. meeting face-to-face, contact by phone, sending letters/postcards). These opposing hypotheses, i.e. digital communication as a reinforcer versus a displacer, have attracted abundant attention among scholars; however, studies have scarcely explor…
Marital disruption and intergenerational relations among older Finns
In this paper, we investigate whether the investments of divorced, re-married or widowed grandparents differ from those of never-divorced grandparents and whether the effect of marital status is different between grandfathers and grandmothers. Grandparental investment is measured by childcare, contact frequencies, practical help and the financial support grandparents give to their offspring. The investigation is based on the Generational Transmis…
Diluted Competition? Conflicts between Full- and Half-Siblings in Two Adult Generations
Sibling relations are typically close but ambivalent, including both altruism and competition. Full siblings are often assumed to exhibit more altruism and less competition than half-siblings. However, previous empirical findings indicate that this assumption may not hold for sibling conflicts in contemporary humans. We study self-reported occurrence of sibling conflicts among adults in two generations with nationally representative data from the…
Parenthood status and relationship quality between siblings
Previous studies have shown that a third generation in a family may influence relationships between adult children and their parents. However, there is a lack of studies investigating whether being a parent is associated with relationship quality between adult siblings. Using the Generational Transmissions in Finland survey (n = 1530 younger and middle-aged adults), we investigate whether parenthood status is associated with sibling relationship …
Contact frequencies with nieces and nephews in Finland: Evidence for the preferential investment in more certain kin theory
Based on maternity certainty and paternity uncertainty, one can predict that individuals will channel investment in their kin according to more genetically certain investment options. According to the preferential investment in more certain kin theory, if aunts and uncles have the option to invest in either their sisters' or their brothers' children they would prefer to invest in their sisters' children. However, this question has not been previo…
Step-Gap in Upward Support: The Role of Biological Relatedness and Childhood Co-residence Duration
The findings showed that stepparents are in a more disadvantaged position than the biological parents regarding receiving support from their adult children. In the context of a high old-age dependency ratio, it is important to recognize that stepparents may not have the opportunity to receive adequate support from their families as compared to individuals with biological children
Does Parental Investment Shape Adult Children’s Fertility Intentions? Findings From a German Family Panel
Parents can play an important role in the childbearing plans of adult children. However, studies testing whether changes in parental investment are associated with subsequent changes in fertility intentions over time are lacking. We investigated whether parental investment, measured as contact frequency, emotional closeness, financial support, and childcare, is associated with adult children's intentions to have a first and a second, or subsequen…
Integration involves a trade-off between fertility and status for World War II evacuees
Understanding how refugees integrate into host societies has broad implications for researchers interested in intergroup conflict and for governments concerned with promoting social cohesion. Using detailed records tracking the movements and life histories of Finnish evacuees during World War II, we find that evacuees who intermarry are more likely to be educated, work in professional occupations, marry someone higher in social status and remain …
Association Between Grandparental Co-Residence and Early Childhood Injury in the UK
Do Working and Parenting Trajectories Influence Retirement Timing? Evidence From Spain, Using a Sequence Analysis Approach and Focusing on Women
This paper investigates the association between accumulated experiences in the working and parenting spheres and retirement timing among Spanish women, utilizing data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The study examines whether labor market attachment or cumulative disadvantage characterizes women’s retirement and how these factors relate with the number of children. Firstly, multichannel sequence analysis and cl…
Who are ‘Multi-Helpers’? Profile of Older Adults Engaging in Multiple Help-Giving Activities
This study considers older adults providing multiple types of support toward different parties in both public and private domains, referred to as ‘multi-helpers’. Although individuals involved in multiple help-giving activities can be important actors at individual, community, and societal levels, few studies have evaluated their characteristics. Using population-based data for older Finns ( n = 2,174) we explored the profiles of multi-helpers fo…
Parental Investment by Birth Fathers and Stepfathers: Roles of Mating Effort and Childhood Co-residence Duration
This study investigates the determinants of paternal investment by birth fathers and stepfathers. Inclusive fitness theory predicts higher parental investment in birth children than stepchildren, and this has consistently been found in previous studies. Here we investigate whether paternal investment varies with childhood co-residence duration and differs between stepfathers and divorced birth fathers by comparing the investment of (1) stepfather…
Meeting online and family-related outcomes: Evidence from three German cohorts
In recent years, the Internet has become an increasingly important venue for meeting partners. While meeting online may have a range of effects on family-related outcomes, studies on the link between meeting online and family-related outcomes are scarce. Using eight follow-up waves of the German Family Panel (Pairfam), with observations from 8177 persons from three birth cohorts between 2009 and 2016, this study investigates whether meeting onlin…
Do grandparents favor granddaughters? Biased grandparental investment in UK
Grandparental Effects on Fertility Vary by Lineage in the United Kingdom
Impact of Genetic Relatedness and Emotional Closeness on Intergenerational Relations
Both emotional closeness and genetic relatedness are known to influence helping behavior between family generations, yet few studies have explored them together. The authors investigated the associations between (a) parenthood and perceived emotional closeness toward own parents and parents-in-law and (b) emotional closeness and receiving child care from grandparents across and within lineage lines. The data include information on the 8 dyads of …
Grandmother Hypothesis of Menopause
Importance of Grandparental Investment
Grandparents and Grandchildren
Grandparental Investment and Genetic Relatedness
The association between grandparental investment and grandparents' happiness in Finland
There is a lack of studies analyzing the association between grandparental investment and grandparents' happiness. Using nationally representative data from the Generational Transmissions in Finland project (sample n = 2,152 older adults), this study explores (a) whether grandparenthood is associated with self‐evaluated happiness, (b) whether there is an association between grandparental investment (measured by contact frequencies with grandchild…
Diluted Competition? Conflicts between Full- and Half-Siblings in Two Adult Generations
Sibling relations are typically close but ambivalent, including both altruism and competition. Full siblings are often assumed to exhibit more altruism and less competition than half-siblings. However, previous empirical findings indicate that this assumption may not hold for sibling conflicts in contemporary humans. We study self-reported occurrence of sibling conflicts among adults in two generations with nationally representative data from the…
Association Between Grandparental Co-Residence and Early Childhood Injury in the UK
Sibling Conflicts in Full- And Half-Sibling Households in the Uk
Sibling relations are by nature ambivalent with high levels of both altruistic helping and competition. Higher relatedness is often assumed to reduce the occurrence of conflicts between siblings, but evidence of this has been scarce and mixed. Siblings typically compete over resources and parental attention, and parental constellations vary with sibship types. Since full-siblings compete over the same two biological parents, while half-siblings h…
Full Siblings Versus Half Siblings
Helping More Likely with Close Kin than More Distant Kin
Increased Grandchild Survival
Children Have Greater Reproductive Value than Sibs
Children and Sibs Share Same Proportion of Genes
Hamilton’s Rule and Kin Investment
Maternal Grandmother Invests Most
Paternal Grandfather Invests Least
Father’s Father Versus Mother’s Mother
Parenthood status and relationship quality between siblings
Previous studies have shown that a third generation in a family may influence relationships between adult children and their parents. However, there is a lack of studies investigating whether being a parent is associated with relationship quality between adult siblings. Using the Generational Transmissions in Finland survey (n = 1530 younger and middle-aged adults), we investigate whether parenthood status is associated with sibling relationship …
Contact frequencies with nieces and nephews in Finland: Evidence for the preferential investment in more certain kin theory
Based on maternity certainty and paternity uncertainty, one can predict that individuals will channel investment in their kin according to more genetically certain investment options. According to the preferential investment in more certain kin theory, if aunts and uncles have the option to invest in either their sisters' or their brothers' children they would prefer to invest in their sisters' children. However, this question has not been previo…
Predictors of Grandparental Investment
Grandmother Hypothesis, The
Hamilton’s Rule
Psychology (38 works) · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving (32 works) · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences (31 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (26 works) · Developmental psychology (22 works) · Political science (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Demography (18 works) · Medicine (17 works) · Social Psychology (17 works)