Grandma’s Love Recipe

You must have guessed it already. But now a study conirms the conventional assumption that grandmas are more emotionally connected to their grandkids than to their own sons and daughter.

Rachana Ramesh

You may call them ajji, dadi or ammamma. Whatever nouns grandmothers choose to be addressed with, kids do it with an extra dose of love. A grandmother is the greatest treasure in a family’s lineage. Filled with countless stories, long-held traditions, and cherished life lessons, the female elderly figure holds a special place in a child’s heart.

On the other hand, they say that grandchildren are life’s greatest joy and now the first study of its kind that examined grandmother’s brain function has suggested grannies may be more emotionally connected to their grandkids than to their own sons and daughters. “She cooks for me or buys food. She listens to my boy problems and sometimes gives me money secretly. She also covers for me from my mother when I get home late,” says Ananya about why she loves her grandmother.

“My grandmother moved in with us just so she could see me and my brother growing up”, says Aditi. “It was like she was trying to revive her memories of what she did for her kids with us. She made us the same snacks she made for my mom. She is from Maharashtra and considering that I have not been to Maharashtra, it gave me an insight into how my mom grew up”, she added.

To better understand the biological underpinnings of this connection, Prof James Rilling, an anthropologist has used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan grandmothers’ brains as they look at photos of their biological grandchild, the child’s parents, and images of an unrelated child and adult.

What the results have shown is an activation in the areas of the brain associated with emotional empathy when the grandmothers look at pictures of their grandchildren. This suggests that grandmothers are geared toward feeling what their grandchildren are feeling when they interact with them. If their grandchild is smiling, they’re feeling the child’s joy. And if their grandchild is crying, they’re feeling the child’s pain and distress.

On the other extreme, when the grandmothers looked at images of their adult child, slightly different brain areas tended to be activated— those associated with cognitive empathy. This may point that they were trying to cognitively understand their adult child, rather than experiencing a more direct emotional connection. “Emotional empathy is when you’re able to feel what someone else is feeling, but cognitive empathy is when you understand at a cognitive level what someone else is feeling and why,” says Rilling. “When she lived with us, she did not like my parent’s parenting style. It’s probably because things are a lot different today but she enjoyed getting to see me and my brother,” says Aditi.

This study can possibly help explain the experience of many grown-up childrenwhen their parents seem more excited to see their grandchildren than them. Young children have evolved traits that not only have the ability to manipulate the maternal brain but the grand-maternal brain too. An adult child does not possess the same cute factor, so they often don’t receive the same emotional response. “She liked my small brother more, because he’s small, still in the 9th grade,” Aditi shares. Ananya feels she’s the most liked among her and her siblings, for she doesn’t break things around the house.

Ever wondered why you see so many lovely old ladies around? Women do outlive men but why? Research suggests — and it’s so believable — that grannies hang around to see their grandchildren glow and grow. This is called the “grandmother hypothesis”. Recent evidence has also suggested that a child’s wellbeing and educational performance is also boosted by the presence of engaged grandparents.

The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, supports the idea that there might exist a global caregiving system in the brain that is activated in mothers, fathers, and grandmothers. Rilling now hopes to study grandfathers and other childcare providers to see how they compare.