If you are a faithful reader of the New York Times , you know about the “grandmother hypothesis.”
“When a young woman is burdened with a suckling infant and cannot fend for her family ,” a New York Times reporter in 1997 noted about the Hadza people of north Tanzania, “she turns for support, not to her mate, but to a senior female relative — her mother, an aunt, an elder cousin. It is Grandma, or Grandma-proxy, who keeps the woman's other children in baobab and berries, Grandma who keeps them alive.”
This asset, grandma, was unique to humans, some apes, and some whales. And it was incredibly important. Anthropologist Kristen Hawkes argued, in the New York Times's words, that “prehistoric women very likely often survived past menopause, and that they were instrumental to the survival of their families. ... Only with the ascent of the grandmother, she says, were human ancestors freed to exploit new habitats, to go where no other hominid or primate had gone before, and to become the species we know so well.”
“Evolution’s Secret Weapon: Grandma” was the 2007 New York Times headline . “Today many women feel marginalized once they reach menopause. But research suggests that far from being a burden to societies, grandmothers have played an important role in the evolution of human longevity.”
A 2011 article mentioned the grandmother hypothesis, as did two articles in 2012, a 2017 story , a 2019 piece celebrating menopause, and an interview earlier this year mentioned it.
The grandmother hypothesis, in short, is widely known and widely, though not universally, accepted as an evolutionary explanation for why human women live so far beyond the end of their fertility.
Yet somehow, when vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) acknowledged the grandmother hypothesis, this earned him scorn.
A Chicago radio station tried to turn it into a scandal that Vance once agreed “with a podcast host who says having grandmothers help raise children is ‘the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.’” The post got reposted 10,000 times. Feminist celebrities and Democratic lawmakers piled on .
Of course, the podcast host’s wording was way off-base (“the whole purpose”), but that wasn’t Vance’s wording. Vance was agreeing with two things: (1) women serve a great societal role after menopause, and (2) parents benefit greatly when they get help raising children from their own parents.
Either claim is objectionable only to a certain mindset. “Think Twice, Grandma, Before You Become the Nanny” was the headline at Bloomberg News. “The biggest losses from taking care of grandchildren are what economists call opportunity, or indirect, costs,” the liberal economist Teresa Ghilarducci wrote.
Our media class considers it a crime when children are asked to look after their younger siblings — “Eldest Daughter Syndrome!”
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“ Boundaries ” and “autonomy” have become sacred and inviolable. Helping someone has been redubbed “care work,” and it’s now akin to slavery.
In a world that rejects family obligations, it's not surprising that some folks are offended by the idea of grandma having societal value.
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