Generations

Being human means enjoying the ongoing love of our mothers and grandmothers, in the form of "advice" and general worry.

I've talked to a number of mothers of grown children, and they all say the same thing: you never stop being a mom. You never stop worrying about your kids.

My own mother certainly feels free to contribute her opinion about what I should be doing, as well as what I might like to do, and what I should not do. Example: Me: I've been thinking I'd like to have a bed and breakfast. Mom: No you wouldn't! Thanks mom. I guess that concludes that conversation! I didn't appreciate this as a teenager, but in the intervening 15 years or so, I learned not to bother taking offense; it's just the way she is. As the years wore on, I didn't really understand her intrusiveness. But then she didn't really understand me either. So we were even. And a growing confidence in my own abilities came to displace defensiveness in reaction to her pronouncements.

Now, as I look at my own little baby, and feel the enormity of a mother's love, I can even begin to understand what would compel a person to contribute her own passionate but highly subjective advice to her otherwise perfectly competent grown daughter. There is nothing more important than this person I have given birth to. And look, they're an extension of me! The stage is set for years of delightful worrying and prodding and nagging--all those things that make having a mother so memorable.

And of course, the stage is now set for years of grandmothering. My mother's advice to me on raising my son is predictably just like her.When he cries with teething pain, I should give him whiskey! When he's fussy at the breakfast place, I should feed him a homefried potato!

Jameson Irish Whiskey
Originally uploaded by rjt208

My mother isn't even particularly serious about these things: she's just feeling a certain joyful subversive desire to shake up my careful parenting plans. In my world, a five-month-old baby does not need to be eating off his mama's plate. Which is exactly why my own mother wants to shake things up.

When you stop poking fun and look at is seriously, this inimitable mothering--and grandmothering--style, is a kind of transmission of wisdom. I may roll my eyes at my mother's advice, but I do in fact come from a long line of women who have put whiskey on their babies' gums and fed them whatever they were interested in eating. Generations of grandmothers have weighed in on how to hold a baby and how to feed a baby; they have spoken up and given their opinion on how to dig the roots, how to harvest the fruits, how to tan the skins, how to preserve the food for the winter. Evolutionary biologists call this the Grandmother Effect. Without these fearless old women, human societies would not endure. It is because of the wisdom of the elders--old women in particular, actually--that human lifespan extends so long beyond our most fertile years. We need the old ladies to stick around and tell us how they did it in their time

The reason that my mother, and the generations of grandmothers the world has seen, do what they do is simple: love. They love their children intensely. They delight in their grandchildren with a profound passion. Now I feel what a mother would do for her child, and I witness the joy of the grandmother.

To Hold A Grandchild
Originally uploaded by Églantine

This ongoing devotion is a very human endeavor, when you compare us to other mammalian groups. As a child, I knew dozens, maybe hundreds of mothers, whose devotion faded very quickly. I grew up on a sheep farm, a small back-to-the-land fantasy turned all too muddy and real. We had from fifty to one hundred ewes who every year gave birth to baby lambs.

Like the ewes, of what we do is instinctive, beyond conscious control. The milk lets down. The mother wakes half a minute before they happen. Her voice soothes him. Her hand comforts him back to sleep. Like a mother sheep nuzzling her lamb's tail, I like to pat my son's bottom as he feeds. Baby lambs and baby humans are linked to their mothers with bonds far more ancient than they are different. We give birth and nourish our little ones in remarkably similar ways.

Which is why what happens next is interesting. The baby sheep gradually drifts away from its mother's side and, it would seem, out of her heart. Aside from a similarity in their overall dispositions--a calm mother has calm offspring; a flighty mother raises flighty progeny--there is no social link between a ewe and her grown progeny. In general, sheep don't maintain bonds. They don't have friends, they don't seem to associate preferentially with certain individuals, and they certainly don't continue to take a familial interest after babies are weaned.

Curiosity
Originally uploaded by Robby Garbett

Although every sheep has a grandmother, just as we do, there are no Grandma sheep. There is no older ewe instructing, challenging, worrying over, and cherishing her daughter and her daughter's babies. The ongoing devotion that mothers and grandmothers feel is what binds us into families and cultures. To ever stop fretting, to ever stop "being a mom," would mean losing that precious heart that remembers--and the precious heritage of our humanity.


Do you see the Grandmother Effect in your own life? What gems of advice--helpful or nutty--have you received?