The Last Word On Nothing

It’s been over half century since researchers dreamt up the idea that grandmothers exist chiefly to enable their children to have their own children, thereby increasing the genetic fitness of the family lineage.  In the 1980s, Kristen Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Utah, bolstered this so-called “grandmother hypothesis” with her studies of the Hadza tribe of Tanzania, hunter gatherers who rely heavily on the foraging of fruit, nuts and tubers.  Hawks found that the thriving of a first-born Hadza child correlated with the extent of its mother’s foraging efforts. But a second born child’s health—and that of its siblings–seemed to depend more on the foraging efforts of its grandmother.  The more grandmothers stepped in to feed and care for the family, scientists postulated, the better able were mothers to birth more children at shorter intervals.  So it seemed woman survived beyond their fertile years in order to maximize the fecundity of their daughters and daughters-in-law and therefore their line’s evolutionary fitness. (Curiously, further research suggested that the grandfather’s contributions to the children’s well-being did not contribute to said fitness.) 

Not surprisingly, not everyone bought this theory.  In fact, some scientists considered it just another Just-So Story built on post-hoc assumptions that, while compelling, lacked sufficient supporting evidence. 

So, why do grandmothers exist?   Today, the debate rages on, and I for one have my own, theory: that grand-parenthood is bestowed to reward parents for the many long years they’ve spent navigating the often rocky and sometimes perilous road of child raising.

Like all good spinners of Just-So-Stories I have the “evidence” to back this up in the form of a personal anecdote.  Dolly, my maternal grandmother, flourished into her nineties while doing very little to support my mother in her endless maternal obligations. Born into a wealthy family in Alsace Lorraine, Dolly was instructed in tennis, needle point, ball room dancing and several languages by private tutors and live-in governesses.  Metaphorically speaking, she did not learn to forage.  And yet despite this drawback, she was the perfect grandmother, the font of some of my fondest memories, and the wind beneath whatever wings I’ve managed to sprout.

Unlike my parents, whose interests were inevitably vested in my achievements, Dolly’s love was unconditional.   She never directed and rarely judged (unless she caught me doing something she considered truly distasteful, like grabbing a fish fork with which to spear salad at her dinner table.)  To cite but one of endless examples, when I was fired by my piano teacher for declining to practice, my deeply disappointed parents warned of future failures to come. Dolly chuckled conspiratorially and bought me a harmonica.  

My grandmother saw her role as not to groom me for future success, but to revel in my childish mis-adventures—to take delight in me being me.  And that was enough to launch me toward a bumpy but mostly happy  adulthood.

Half a century later, I, too am a grandparent.   And though I have—metaphorically—learned to forage, I have no intention of trying to bolster either of my daughters’ reproductive status through my labor.  On the contrary, it’s their turn to fret and plan, their turn to be in charge, and my turn to laugh and revel in my grandchildren’s antics.  I believe that’s just what Grandmother Nature had in mind all along.