GRANDMOTHER HYPOTHESIS

Natural selection isn't a fairytale

I see a wolf in bed wearing a cap edged with white lace. What big ears you have! I see an apple pie, fresh out of the oven, the dough has risen too much in places, golden in colour, the raisins soaked in rum. Or donuts with raisins and candied peel on a plate, warming on the stove, covered with a tea-towel. Don’t look, it’s a surprise! I see the lovely, wrinkled hands of my grandmother looking in her purse for a coin. Or the same hands that knit a sweater with an intricate pattern, crocheting a pan holder or by embroidering a beautiful painting as if by magic. With unbelievable precision and patience.

Grandma is never too tired to play shop, cards, or a game of marbles. My grandmother, the mother of my mother, is a real grandmother!

In evolutionary science value is also assigned to a grandma. (Biologically, women have pretty much had it after their 45th year. Let me qualify that a bit: to get pregnant after your 45th birthday, carry the baby for nine months and then to look after the child for a further 15 years is, I would suggest, an inhuman-task and the survival chances for the child are not good, especially as the probability that the mother will survive is considerably less.

For women above a certain age it's more worthwhile to invest in the grandchildren than in oneself.)

Research has shown that children who grow up in the presence of the mother’s mother have a better chance of survival. In our society that’s no longer very relevant because almost every baby survives, even without the presence of their mothers,so to speak (eg incubators). Historically, however, it is a fact: in the 19th century, for example, many more babies died than now - except when they grew up in the presence of mothers and mothers of mothers.

Quite recently, research done in Africa, I believe in Ghana, showed that the grandmother hypothesis still appears to be applicable: child mortality reduces when the mother of the mother helps with the care..

If the father’s mother helps then the hypothesis doesn’t work and this can be explained by natural selection: the mother of the mother can be sure that her own genes are being passed on to the offspring.

The mother of the father has to wait and see, she is never sure that the grandchildren will actually have her son’s genes!