Miriam Weinstein, author

If It Weren’t For Grandmothers, We Might Still Be Apes.

Silly old songs

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  There is a certain category of song that somehow slipped my mind all the time that I was a parent, but has bubbled up through my grandmother brain. These are tunes that I learned as a child. At the time, they were laughably out-of-date. Now they are quaint. We are probably talking 1920s and ‘30s. They send the kids into peals of laughter every time.
One of the best is Go On Home; Your Mother’s Calling:

Go on home; your mother’s calling
Your father got stuck in the garbage can.
Go on home; your mother’s calling
They’ve come to collect your old man.

A second verse involves the dad getting stuck in the wash machine (they can’t get the laundry out clean.)
This song invites — no, demands — that everyone add their own ridiculous verse. I notice that my additions involve rhyming, as well as some relation between the place where the father gets stuck and what happens afterwards. For the smaller kids, just thinking up any new verse is giggles enough.
Oddly, this song has become a favorite part of the good night routine. You would think that the kids would want the reassurance of a soft lullaby, with protestations of love, or at least the quiet tone that helps you drift off to sleep. But maybe the funny bone must be tickled one last time before it, too, can settle in to rest.

Is Grandma’s like Las Vegas?

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What does it mean that you can buy a t-shirt, a onesie, a tote bag, a bib; even a house decal that announces, “What happens at Grandma’s stays at Grandma’s?”

OK; beyond the fact that we can now take a phrase and print it on pretty much anything that can hold still. (It will therefore not be stamped on an actual baby’s bottom.)

Call it bonding, call it a little harmless passive aggression toward the new ogres, the parents — the attitude is something like, I have put in my time as a disciplinarian, and now, dammit, grandmas just want to have fuu’uuu’un!

Obviously, this approach does not work with toddlers, who cannot be trusted to keep a secret. It’s most appealing for the primary school set, who can appreciate the thrill of a rule broken, and who are not yet involved with prohibitions concerning things like porn or drugs. The unauthorized dessert, the late bedtime, the movie with the wrong rating: what, after all, is the harm?

This end run around the parents may also be related to the fact that we, the disciplinarians of yore, are likely at a time in our lives when options are more likely to be closing down than opening up. So kicking up our heels can feel great. Our grandkids become our partners in family-friendly vice. Just a little bit like Vegas, baby.

The grandmother hypothesis? The numbers add up

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The argument that post-menopausal women help to produce more offspring has been around for long time. But a study of 18th and 19th century Finnish and Canadian farm families (stable populations with excellent record-keeping) puts numbers behind this aren’t we helpful idea.

Women whose mothers were alive began having children 2.4 years earlier than women whose mothers had died. (Was this because their mothers were nagging them about getting married? The records don’t say.)

Both men and women who had a post-reproductive mother living with them, produced more children and experienced fewer childhood mortalities. Interestingly, this difference in childhood mortality connected to Grandma’s presence only kicks in after the age of two, which implies that, for the first two years, a child is the responsibility of its mother.

It also helps more if Grandma is relatively young. “Grandchild survival to adulthood is enhanced by 12% when grandmothers are under 60 at their birth, but by only 3% when grandmothers are over this age.”

http://www.huli.group.shef.ac.uk/mirkka-personal.html

Grown-up Grandkids: the Secret Sauce

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In case you thought that grandparenting was about posing for photos with adorable toddlers, that is just the beginning. The really good news is that, if you live long enough, and stay reasonably close, those young charmers can grow up to be an actual help to you, and vice versa.

A new study from Boston College shows that having a close relationship with our adult grandkids can have a measurable effect — “fewer symptoms of depression for both generations,” according to Assistant Professor of Sociology Sara Moorman.

The grandparents who benefit most are those who are able to both give and receive help. The grandparents who fared worst only received help. That might be because they were in the worst shape, but we all know people who are ailing or are down and out, but are still able to give — advice, companionship; maybe just act as a touchstone for values or ideals (What would Grandma say?)

For the young adults, the rewards can be considerable — love, advice, a sense of continuity; a confirmation of their place in the world.

And let’s not forget, on both sides, fun and adventure. Each generation gets a guided tour to an exotic world.

The Buttoned-Up Lip

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It starts as advice to the mother-of-the-groom: wear beige and keep your mouth shut.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if you have a tendency to spew unsolicited opinions and pronouncements, and if beige is your color. Lesson one: this is not your wedding.
It continues as a grandmotherly truth universally acknowledged: Do not give guidance of any kind. Butt out. Say nothing. Hold your tongue. Lesson two: this is not your baby; not your family.
But could anything so uni-dimensional tell the whole story?
Let’s assume that, after all these years, you have some modicum of self knowledge, an ability to read a situation, modulate your behavior. You might just notice that, although this is not your nuclear family, it is your extended family. And the poor beleaguered new parents (and hopefully they become somewhat less-beleagured as time goes on) are wolfing down mommy blogs, parenting books, and parenting get-togethers both in person and online. They are looking for advice. They are aching to commiserate. They are hungry for ideas, inspiration….on subjects which you know only too well.
If you are a controlling person who does not get along with your children, go back to the part of this column that talks about wearing beige and saying nothing. Stop there. But if you have some distance, if you have some control of your actions, remember that you have the perspective and the memory that is not available to parents who are in the thick of it.
Luckily you are available to them. But only in limited doses. Just because you can open your mouth does not mean that you should not shut it as well.

Enlisting Grandmothers To End Female Genital Mutilation

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There’s a Senegalese proverb: “The grandmother’s heart is the school where one prepares for life.”

But what if westernization has made that heart less available to young people, especially girls?

The standard practice for health and development workers looking to change unproductive traditional behaviors, like female genital mutilation, teenage pregnancy, and forced marriage, is to focus on the younger generation, which distances them from their tribal culture.

But in Senegal, The Grandmother Project has taken the opposite tack. It might seem counter-intuitive to enlist village grandmothers, the people responsible for FMB/C (female genital mutilation and cutting) but this approach has been very successful in a series of programs.

They begin by helping all members of the community to talk together about what has gone right, and then to decide what practices they want to end. When grandmothers understand the long term effects of some traditional practices, it is they who become the agents of real change. They use their storytelling, dancing, and singing to teach their lessons and reclaim their legacy — strong, nurturing communities.

One local teacher put it this way: “Culture for a people is like water for a plant.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EufwaX39d_M

Breaking News in the Style Section — Grandmothers as Flower Girls

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Who knew that the concept even existed, let alone was a recognized style trend. But that uber-arbiter of approachable hip, the New York Times Style Section, has alerted us to the possibility of grannies walking down the aisle as bridesmaids or even flower girls.

And these are not the “young old” either. The sensibly-shod but formally-dressed women profiled in the Times range in age from their 70s to their mid 90s. And we thought that flower girls were supposed to be about fecundity!

You never know what a toddler will decide to do on that long walk under the eyes of strangers. But Grandma? She sort of defines known quantity.

As you might guess, the grandmothers chosen for this spotlight moment are women who have remained close to their granddaughters-the-brides. Other requirements? Flexibility in relationships and role shifts, as well as an ability to actually make it down the aisle.

Clearly, these women have produced granddaughters who think for themselves. As one of the brides who tapped her grandmother to be a bridesmaid said, “Who would be better than Nana to stand by my side, to protect me as she has dutifully done my whole life?”

http://www.nytimes.com/video/fashion/100000002874114/grandmas-a-bridesmaid.html?playlistId=1194811622182

 

Grandmother or President?

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Thanks, Hilary, for putting a human face on such a common quandary. We may not all be presidential material — for some of us it might only be a question of becoming senator or CEO, or maybe just picking up an Oscar for lifetime achievement. But which of us doesn’t identify with Hilary’s predicament?

Just when the stars might align to give her a shot at the White House — and we’re talking the big desk, not the namby pamby family quarters — her only child goes ahead and…well, goes ahead with her own timeline, her own life.

It is easy for Bill to say that he only wants to live to be a grandfather; he already has had his turn as leader of the free world. For Hilary, as for so many women, that career trajectory may have been delayed by Mommy-tracking, or the long slow rise of confidence- or skill-building. Which of us doesn’t have her own version of the health care disaster? Or hasn’t spent some piece of her best years wondering: hair band or no? Being Secretary of State was ok, but darn it, we still have plans!

But the if-ness and the when-ness of our grandmotherhood is totally beyond our control. It’s the Zen lesson of the universe.

That said, we can’t help but wonder: if all works according to plan, will Hilary find room in the Oval Office for a porta-crib?

No Grandmother Stories, Please.

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I call it The Big Disconnect. The prestigious “Lives” essay spot in the back of the New York Times Magazine not long ago included in its writers’ guidelines this helpful hint: “No grandmother stories, please.” Which would lead you to think that, because so many people considered their grandmothers such a big influence, the world was already inundated with grandmother tales.

I am still looking. I do hear the stories, lots of them, from my cohort — the new grandparents, the seasoned ones, the breathlessly waiting and hoping. And we know how much this little affair can mean over time. If we are lucky, our kids had significant relationships with their own grandparents, or we did with ours, long gone.

So where do we see this reflected around us? I count just one website devoted to grandparents, and a few gushy blogs. Even the denture commercials show us “glam” old folks mostly gardening and going out to dinner. Or, if we are very fortunate, taking in the moon from the deck of a cruise ship.

But our hearts tell a different story. We lucky ones know that the grandparent-child bond can be bone deep, and forever long .

Why do we see so little of it?

Just asking. If you have any thoughts on this, do send them my way.

This Just In…..(although eons in the making)

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It’s called The Grandmother Hypothesis, and it was first posited more than half a century ago. The idea is that we post-menopausal dames might have played a really crucial role in the development of the species. Long ago, when our ancestors were tending their fires and sweeping out their caves, proto-human survival was very touch and go.

Who better to help the little ones than their dear doting grandmothers? We who were no longer burdened by pregnancy and nursing could keep those toddlers from wandering away from camp, or falling into the fire. We could gather more nuts and berries, and make sure the small cave kids ate their fill.

This allowed more of us to survive, and more portions of our brains to develop. Also, this model of having several small children and at least a couple of caretakers promoted a model of “shared intentionality.” Anthropologists argue that this has helped humans to work together to achieve common goals.

More recent research on hunter-gatherer tribes has found that “modern” grandmas still play the same role — hunting tubers and feeding them to the young.

Go grannies! We knew it all along.