Why there are grandmothers

Grandmothers are an evolutionary puzzle. After all, if life is maximally designed to reproduce itself, then why would grandmothers, the poster child for barrenness and post-procreativity, be allowed to exist? In such a scenario, all they would seem to do is gobble up valuable space and resources that the vigorous, vibrant, growing folks desperately need, making it harder on everyone. Having grandmothers hang around after their productive years would appear inefficient at best, wasteful and destructive at worst.

our newest grandson

But here we are, a society of children, mothers and grandmothers (and fathers and grandfathers, of course, but no one seems to question their legitimacy and usefulness!) and most everyone seems to be thriving.

In the mid-1950's, GC Williams wrote an article that argued that grandmothers are in fact an adaptive evolutionary selection. Women cease their reproductive years and still stick around so that they might both better assure the health and survival of their existing offspring as well as be freed up to assist in the health and survival of their offspring's offspring. After all, someone needs to pick the beans, wash the clothes and stir the soup while another one nurses the babies, instructs the little ones and somehow manages the rare moment to grab a nap and take care of herself!

I was thinking about all this as Avram and I were rummaging through a closet looking for the baby tub, the bouncy chair, the infant seat et al, readying them to be used by our newest grandson. Grandparents, and in many special ways, grandmothers, provide invaluable services and resources. We are the redundant hands, eyes, voices, laps that are there to protect, wipe tears, encourage, laugh, read, tell stories, anticipate needs. We are repositories of extra space, extra food (cookies, fruits and family recipes seem to be our specialty), and extra time. We know the heritage (aka, the guild of old wives') solutions to a cough, a burn, a nightmare. And even if we can't fix them, we know that we can survive them.

We serve to ease the demanding parenting task our children now face as well as widen the circle of safety and love for our grandchildren. We provide a softer version of authority, of "grown-up", with deeper wisdom culled from the passing years and an ability for indulgence that full-time parents cannot muster, or afford.

And what do we get out of all this? We get to see the vast sweep and cycles of time. We remember back to the childhood of our children (which seems but an enchanted doorway away, if we could only find it), are grateful for what our own parents endured with us, and imagine years in the future of each tiny newborn. We see ourselves standing in the midst of time, gazing into both the past and the future, as if poised between mirrors which endlessly, infinitely reflect back on themselves. We see ourselves no longer in the middle of life's drama, as we did when we were young(er), but as part of this long miraculous arc of creation. It is grand, and humbling, and the very source of awe.

It is now that we can be the most selfless at the same time as being the most wise. Why would nature want to throw us away?

Beyond fossil fuels

Joseph Romm writes compellingly about our need to move off of fossil fuels - including saying no to fracking. It is not as hard as it sounds and if we don't, our children will look back in 30 years at a degraded world that we created in their presence, with tainted water, insecure food sources, sky-high energy prices and they will wonder why we didn't do something about it when we could. The sad part is that this is neither new nor news, yet it still needs to be treated as if it is, until we really do it.

See what Joe says:


"If you liked the Oscar-nominated fracking exposé “Gasland” by Josh Fox, you’ll love the sequel Gasland, Part II, which is being broadcast on HBO Monday night.
I think it’s a better movie, more entertaining and even more compelling in making a case that we are headed on a bridge to nowhere — a metaphorical gangplank — with our hydraulic fracturing feeding frenzy.
Future generations living in a climate-ruined world will be stunned that we drilled hundreds of thousands of fracking and reinjection wells:

• Even though we knew that fossil fuels destroy the climate and accelerate drought and water shortages;
• Even though we knew that leaks of heat-trapping methane from fracking may well be vitiating much of the climate benefits of replacing coal with gas; and

Even though each fracked well consumes staggering amounts of water, much of which is rendered permanently unfit for human use and reinjected into the ground where it can taint even more ground water in the coming decades."

And more.

The good news is that a whole new world of renewables for vibrant economies, livable communities and higher quality of life is within reach. Now. 

Support these initiatives. Reduce your consumption. Build the future.