Grandparents may worsen some moms' baby blues
However, for mothers who live with their romantic partners but are not married, having one or more grandparents in the house is linked to lower rates of depression, according to researchers from Duke University.
The findings varied by race, with Latina single mothers faring especially poorly in multi-generational households.
Latina single moms were six times more likely to experience depression if they lived in multi-generational households in their child's first year of life than if they did not, researchers said.
For instance, married couples commonly expect to maintain a separate household. Cohabiting couples don't always face the same expectations, as other researchers have noted.
"There's a strong expectation that married couples will be economically self-sufficient," Piontak said.
"Those are strong cultural values. So there could be a stronger sense of failure among married couples if they have to live with their parents," she said.
Piontak cautioned that the researchers can't say for certain what causal relationship is at play. Living with grandparents may worsen depression for single and married mothers. Or, depressed single and married moms may be less likely to move out from a multi-generational household.
The study, which drew upon a nationally representative sample of nearly 3,000 married, single and cohabiting mothers, is unusual in its focus on multi-generational families, researchers said.
While single mothers have captured a great deal of scholarly and popular attention, three-generation households remain little-examined, they said.
Yet such households are quite common. Some 7.8 million children, or 11 per cent of all US children, live in multi-generational households, researchers said.