The folly of assumptions.

[hobbit709]

[malaise]

1. Love it

[HuckleB]

2. K&R!

[hunter]

3. How Grandmothers Gave Us Longer Lives

How Grandmothers Gave Us Longer Lives

BY REBECCA JACOBSON October 25, 2012

Humans may have developed our long life spans as a result of nature’s first babysitters: grandmothers. A new study published in the Proceedings of Royal Society B on Wednesday uses a mathematical model to determine how grandmothers can influence human longevity over the course of several generations, giving humans longer life spans than other primates.

This model revives a popular but often contested theory of human evolution known as the “grandmother hypothesis,” which was first proposed in 1998 by Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Utah and senior author of Wednesday’s study, and her colleague James O’Connell. The idea is that if grandmothers help feed and care for their grandchildren, mothers have more time and resources to devote to having another baby. And the more grandchildren she has, the greater chance grandma has of passing on the genes that allowed to her to live to such an old age, Hawkes said. This would also help explain why humans live long past their fertile years, something that is unique compared to other primates.

--more--

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/how-grandmothers-gave-us-longer-lives

In human societies cultural "wisdom" is as important as genes. In my community it's most often the grandmas making sure children go to school, and the grandmas among the teaching and administrative staff who keep the schools running smoothly.

Fundamentalist misogynistic societies, both religious and ideological, try to break this essential aspect of human nature.

[Igel]

4. I don't get your last line.

My mother was neither fundamentalist nor misogynistic.

However, part of her view was that she had her life. She didn't want her mother or MIL interfering, except as she saw fit; she knew better. She also had little insight into how to raise her grandkids. They weren't her concerns. She was adamantly a working woman and fiercely independent of her child-rearing duties. I'd say that this is just anecdotal, but the generation after hers has the hard data for this. Less time with kids, greater rates of intergenerational cultural change. They often wanted to be change agents.

That's more true of developed societies with strong feminist movements than retrograde, conservative societies. In my experience, grandmothers only make sure children go to school these days when the mothers aren't focused on such things--they're young and want to live life without the baggage of their prior actions, or are stuck trying to make ends meet and still have some sort of life. To be sure, I know a lot of grandmothers who take an active role in their grandkids' lives whose daughters are also highly involved in their children's lives, but most of those would be classed as "fundamentalist" and "misogynistic"--the grandmothers didn't have jobs because they were part of the "women should stay at home" set. There aren't always friendly relations between the mothers and grandmothers, either.

Cultural "wisdom" is frequently frowned upon it if doesn't match current wisdom. If you're 20 and want to emulate the wisdom of your grandparents, that hardly makes you a progressive. Most of the time the young consider their grandparents old-fashioned and that they need to get with the times.

[hunter]

5. In my family the women tend to be the progressive religious radicals and heretics

My last immigrant ancestor was a mail order bride to Salt Lake City. She was escaping troubles in Europe. But she didn't much like sharing a husband so she found herself a monogamous man, established a homestead, and raised cattle; very Wild West. By all accounts she was in charge of her life, land, and business.

At the dawn of the twentieth century my great grandmas were all fierce independent women of the Western U.S.A.. Three lived long enough for me to know them as a child. As a city kid, what impressed me most about my great grandmas was that they'd kill birds or small mammals, cut them up, and serve them for dinner. We only did that with fish.

My mom's parents were pacifists, her dad a conscientious objector in World War II. My mom's parents both worked in the shipyards as welders building and repairing ships for the Merchant Marines. My grandma continued working when the war ended, which was unusual.

As a kid, my siblings and I didn't have much to rebel against. My parents are artists who have always had many diverse friends. They met working in Hollywood. Their home has always been open to anyone; a safe place for an entire spectrum of people, black, white, LGBT... My parents were artists-with-day jobs as we were growing up so we were largely feral and looking out for one another between the time school was out and our parents got home from work. We did okay. My mom has never had any trouble talking about sex, birth control, drugs, alcohol, etc., so there were no surprises when we reached adolescence, no accidental pregnancies, nothing like that.

In high school and into my early twenties it often seemed it was the kids with strict patriarchal upbringings and powerless moms who self-destructed.

Throughout my family women are a force of nature, seizing power at fifteen or so and not relinquishing it until their dying breath ninety years or so later.

When I was a kid I was always really nervous around horses. Horses knew it and amused themselves misbehaving in my presence. They still do. Most of the young women in my family love horses, a few have rooms full of trophies and ribbons celebrating their skills with horses. It always fills me with wonder to see a little kid bossing around a huge horse, and it's usually the girls.

I think that's the kind of power that terrifies patriarchal fundamentalist societies.