Recently, I brought my baby back to my mother's house, and in the morning, the weather was good, so my grandma took us to the neighborhood for a walk. The small square is full of aunts with children, a few casual conversations, almost all of them are the child's grandmother. People couldn't help but exclaim, "Mom gave birth, grandma brought them up, and grandma comes to visit regularly."
A grandma exclaimed, "The oldest is what I watched before, and now it's the second's turn. You don't think that if you take care of him every day, he'll be close to you, or close to other people's grandmothers in the future, the bloodline is right there! "
Her words were echoed by her "old sisters", and I glanced at my grandma, who was obviously feeling a bit sad, because she's the one who's been giving me a hand since the baby was born.
Why is it that the most important thing about parenting is that the grandmother is the one who does the most of the work? Today we're going to seriously gossip about this topic.
When I was a little boy, I was walking around the neighborhood, and I came across an angry grandma. She said to me, "She had just made a date with her oldest sister to go to the park in the morning, and her daughter left her little guy without even saying hello, causing her to have to walk him on such a beautiful morning."
Like her, grandmothers and grandfathers still want a life of their own, even though they love their children. When asked who should take care of the baby, the response was surprisingly consistent: "whoever gives birth to whoever takes care of it, of course it's the baby moms and dads."
But social anthropology research may surprise these elders who don't want to take care of their children: The purpose of grandma and grandpa is to take care of their children!
The extension of our life expectancy, of course, and living conditions and medical knowledge of the changes, but in the archaeological scholars also found a large number of post-menopausal still alive "old women", the law of nature is exceptionally cruel, post-menopausal women in the biological meaning of the meaning of the continued existence of this phenomenon attracted a lot of scientists' attention.
One of the more reliable claims is the "grandmother hypothesis" put forward by anthropologist Kirsten Hawkes, that is, because most of our human babies are more fragile, and need to have a long period of care, those who can live to take care of the and their own genetically identical grandchildren grandmothers and grandmothers whose genes are more likely to be transmitted.
That is to say, everyone is now the beneficiary of grandma and grandpa with children, and in fact, the human race is also in the "small family" society, with children to become a mom, or mom and dad alone. In the long past, we all brought up our children together.
Seeing this, maybe the grandmothers still think it's unfair that the percentage of grandmothers with children is much higher than grandmothers. Even most of the children's songs and rhymes are about grandmothers bringing up their children, such as "Grandma's Penghu Bay" and "Grandma's Bridge".
An American sociologist once did a questionnaire survey of 120 college students to examine the differences between the four grandparents' "investments" in themselves. The questionnaire investigated four aspects: intimacy, time, knowledge and resources. The results were similar to what we usually feel, and of the four, grandmother invested the most!
Why is this? The anthropologist's answer is both simple and profound, because biologically, only mothers and grandmothers are 100% certain that their children's genes belong to them.
As the highly favorable answer in the image above says: we all get our mitochondrial genes from our grandmothers. Add to that the fact that we're watching our 100% biological daughters die from childcare, and I'm sure grandmothers can't help but lend a helping hand. At the end of the day, it's not because grandmothers are more available or more physically active, but because they do naturally love their children more.
Of course, this is not to say that grandmothers don't love their children, but this love is more of a social thing, for example, in traditional culture, we still think of "children" as being on the in-laws' side of the family, which is why the grandmothers feel like they're "helping someone else look after their children".
One time, my girlfriend told me that since she returned to work after her maternity leave, her mother had to take care of her children every day. The result is to bring back to the grandmother's home to visit relatives. Grandma and grandpa because long time not see the child, what to give, spoiled no side. The family dinner before returning home, the mother-in-law asked the child: "You and grandmother close or grandma close." I didn't expect the child to say: "Grandma pro." 闺蜜当时就气不打一来，替自己妈妈不值。
I told her not to take it too seriously, that the child's words were just a slip of the tongue, and that in fact, the child's relationship with her mother is not as close to blood as people think, and that the child's relationship with her mother is not as close to blood as people think it should be. Instead, the child's emotional proximity to his or her mother is actually more related to the following two things.
The first point is the amount of time you spend with your child
That's easy to understand, whoever you spend time with is close to you. I've been living with my grandmother since I was a kid, and when I had a nightmare in elementary school, I wanted to go to my grandmother the first time, so I'm naturally closer to her in my feelings. But in high school, I left my grandma to prepare for the college entrance exam at my grandma's house. My grandma is very old, but she still takes care of my life, wakes up early in the morning to cook for me, and even supervises my study, gives me pocket money, and buys clothes for me to wear. So for me, I am full of gratitude to both my grandma and grandma.
The second point: the parents' words and behavior and modeling
In addition to paying for the time of the accompaniment, in fact, a long time and the children live in the mother and father's words and behavior, the impact on them is also very big. For example, I have a colleague who has some conflicts with her mother-in-law, so she often says some prejudiced words in front of her children, so in the long run, I believe her children will also hold prejudice against their grandmother. Therefore, in order for babies to have the same close relationship with their grandparents, moms and dads need to pay attention to their own words and actions, and treat all four elderly people the same.
Cici has something to say:
And finally, I'd like to share, "Who's closer to grandma and grandpa?" Or "Who is closer to mom and grandma?" It is best not to ask your child such obvious questions with "pitfalls". Because in the end there are only two results, one is the child perfunctorily tell you the same pro, and the other is the child learned that can to "love" blackmail elders , to get what they want.