Grandparenting, intergenerational coparenting, and mental health of vulnerable children in Chinese families: risks, resilience, and clinical implications.

In China, grandparents serve as primary or co-caregivers for millions of children, particularly those separated from rural-to-urban migrant parents. This short communication synthesizes evidence on how grandparenting quality and intergenerational coparenting dynamics shape the mental health outcomes of vulnerable Chinese children, including those in left-behind, three-generation urban, and dual-income family configurations. We distinguish throughout between children whose parents have both migrated (leaving grandparents as sole custodial caregivers) and children who remain in triadic parent-grandparent-child systems, whether through partial parental migration or co-resident urban caregiving arrangements, as these configurations carry differing implications for grandparenting quality and coparenting dynamics. Evidence from cross-sectional surveys, meta-analytic studies, and dyadic interdependence models indicates that positive grandparenting predicts fewer child behavioral difficulties and greater prosocial competence, whereas coparenting conflict, low coparenting relationship quality, and caregiver depressive symptoms constitute compounding risk pathways. Grandparental warmth, harmonious coparenting, and family resilience are identified as protective mechanisms within a family systems framework. Clinical and nursing implications are discussed, with focus on intergenerational interventions that simultaneously engage grandparents and parents. The present paper argues that mental health professionals and nursing practitioners working with Chinese children should adopt a multigenerational assessment lens, given that standard clinical protocols focused on the parent-child dyad may systematically underestimate intergenerational risk and resilience processes. Culturally adapted, evidence-based coparenting programs represent a priority area for intervention development in Chinese psychiatric and nursing contexts.