Perspective: the baby of multi-generational upbringing writes about the grandmother hypothesis
I have thought it to be an interesting feature of mine, that I was raised in a home where all the generations were represented by a family member; nearly even all the decades. Starting with my Papa Bill who was born in 1929, where the generation-range ends with my sister, who is a year my senior and was born in 1990. Between them, there is my Granny Grace, born two days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, my mom- who was was born in 1958 and contracted polio airborne in a children’s contagion ward after being treated for active tuberculosis at a military hospital. My dad was born in 1967 as the baby of his adoptive family and also his genetic family (as he’d later find out via a random Facebook message from my Bonus Grandma Dotty) and my oldest sister was born in 1980. She essentially raised my older sister and me which is why I am so damn weird (80s pop culture)(and no she is not my dad’s genetic daughter). I give you some Silent Generation, a strong as nails Boomer, some GenXers, and a couple of Millennials under the roof of a manufactured home for my entire childhood. Montessori who? We didn’t learn that concept from a textbook, it just happened. Now I’ll tell you right here, right now as I’d tell my Papa and my Granny,
“With all due respect, Papa, it’s time for the Silent Generation to sit down and shut up.”
It came from none other than Eric Weinstein last night in a Clubhouse Podcast Premiere for Beyond with Nicole Behnam and Danielle Robay. Of course, this was just one of many incredible points mentioned during the podcast, but it was a topic that I’ve been ruminating in now for my whole life.So I will pose the point in the form of a question: Why are our elected public officials so fucking old? Mitch McConnell’s face is literally melting off and on a more serious note, he deserves to live out his last days with his family as opposed to stressing out about trying to hold the line for his constituents (which are his special interest groups and not the people of Kentucky especially but not even the American people). Mitch, buddy, what are you doing? Go the fuck home and sit the hell down. Let some GenXers get on the coin-operated horse you keep throwing tokens in and make it fucking electric. I think that is a sufficient amount of swear words to keep your attention. Thanks, Trump. (Are we doing that with Trump like we did “Thanks, Obama?” Is that a thing? Oof, I am probably a right-winger now… or at least right-wing adjacent. Fuck.)
A quarter of the senate is older than 69 (cleverly chosen age to keep your filthy attention), with that year of birth being within or after 1950. Twenty years later is when Joe Biden got into office, at a normal middle-age of 50ish. Now, for someone to stay in office so long they must be doing the Lord’s work. Right…Biden has had nothing to say since 1973, so why do we still look to him for active leadership? Same for Nancy and Mitch: we know they are inept when it comes to all these new tools we have, yet we still ask them what we should do with our Monopoly money. Well there is actually a good reason why we consult the wise elders of our tribes but we also have to take it with a grain of salt and apply it to a completely different world than the one they want so badly to hold on to. Before we get into The Grandmother Hypothesis, I’d like to leave some of my own commentary in regards to the Clubhouse conversation for entertainment value.
Boomers left little to the millennials in terms of a career track but I will tell you one thing we millennials have a lot of is debt. Now, as someone who is naively unattached to money, I hand over my rations to the student loan providers for my Associate’s in General Studies from an accredited online university. Give me a fucking break, it was 2009 and online classes were a joke. I learned more from traveling through Turkey with a cohort of my classmates from the American School of Kuwait than I ever learned from writing a post on a bleak message board accompanied by my two required comments on two other peoples’ posts.
Yet here I sit, forking over $200 per month on an income-based repayment plan for which I am nearing the point of making too much money with my annual pay raise of 2%, at which point those payments will go up to keep me just under paying off my debts completely until I’m middle-aged with no hope left for my future and no energy to protest about it. They don’t even offer Freedom Dues for my indentured servitude so what’s the point in rushing my payoff? That’s where most people my age are at. I had a 30-year old ask me if it was too late to go back for an undergraduate degree yesterday, proving all we have on our mind is time and the lack of it in such a fast-paced environment.
Saddled with debt and a job at a cubicle in an office (if you’re lucky) making less than minimum wage with all the potential in the world to move up the corporate ladder, if you know the right people and are frankly an extrovert, we millennials smoke and drink ourselves into oblivion when 5 o’clock rolls around. We went to the mall for fun in our teenage years and now the only place we find solace is at a bar or the bottom of a solo cup surrounded by our friends committing debaucherous acts that we will have to apologize to them for the following day. We think everything is lame and inauthentic. We brought you the ‘hipster’.
The scoffing teenager that kept their headphones in at the dinner table. You just wouldn’t understand *cues Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day*. I mean… you guys gave us participation trophies so don’t be surprised that we millennials think our problems are of the greatest import. We have hardly any skilled workers, reality is not apparent and the exclusivity and mystique of university life is cracking because admissions is bullshit. We are choosing schools based on ‘prestige’ and proximity to bars as opposed to the actual research going on there and our interest in it. We do it all for the purpose of networking because what we learned is it’s all about who you know as opposed to what you can do.
On the flip side of that we are forcing our children in GenAlpha to grow up way too fast just like we did GenZ, and it’s breaking my fucking heart. Little girls are experimenting with permanent alterations of their bodies for having normal thoughts of wanting to ask the question “Why is that bug red?” instead of “What are Barbie and Ken doing today?” While we focus on their tiny figures we tell little boys they are perverts for doing just the same. Meanwhile, LITTLE BOYS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ATTRACTED TO LITTLE GIRLS. It’s how nature works. If you want to continue your genes into the future, you must reproduce your genes. So if you’re like, “Well I don’t really give a fuck about moving my genes into the future”- FINE. So be it. They stop with you, but don’t tell little boys they are acting out when you force them to sit in desks in classrooms under fluorescent lighting with all the desire in the world to just be accepted and frankly if they are bored well... Boys go through so much rejection and now we are pre-rejecting them. Good God Almighty that’s prejection. The generation below me is headed down a dangerous path and for some reason I feel like I have to carry the torch. As though my parents named me Sarah after the gal in all those historical texts, I will forgo my own chance at having children and a family to bring to you all the things your kids will have to face. Which brings me to the grandmother hypothesis.
The Grandmother Hypothesis TL;DR goes something like this: women hit menopause so grandma can raise the babies while mom goes out to forage. Now before we talk about traditional gender roles, as that is the obvious next step in this plot, let’s really think about the evolutionary model here. In a hunter-gatherer society, the men traditionally hunted. There were probably women that hunted, but for simplicity’s sake just humor me. That leaves women in charge of being primary care-givers to the children. It’s just how it works and since they make the milk it seems logical even before logic… imagine that.
However, if mama wants some berries and doesn’t want to take the risk of pulling junior or juniorette into the stroller she’d crafted from wood or the baby swaddling pouch/sling/scarf she made from… buffalo hide, she could just say “Hey Grandma, can you watch the little ones?” And since grandmas back then had no aquafit class, she was more than happy to observe the little ones that question everything. If they were lucky she may even answer for them, but mostly she would just sit and be the witness. Grandma would cook for the little ones and they would learn from her while helping. Also, I am sure if there were any surviving grandpas, they’d also take care of the youngins’. This is just a damn good explanation for the reason why a woman’s reproductive life ends way before her true lifespan. The thought I’ve extrapolated from this hypothesis is that our elderly members of society serve a purpose, it is just not an active role because well…look at them.
When I say, with all due respect, I mean it. Our elected officials did get there for a reason. They did likely change someone’s life. They have made someone cry tears of joy for something. They have loved. They have children. They have grandchildren. So in the same capacity they served in office, they can continue to guide our conversations. Mitch and Nancy are under the impression their life’s purpose is to continue doing what they’ve always done. “It’s always worked. It got me this far. I can make a difference at this level”, but as Eric says, it’s time to get off the ride and let someone else have a turn. Preferably someone younger, frankly. Be our elders that we come to in times of need. Be the ones with a beacon of light for us and stop trying to stifle ours to let yours keep burning.
