Props to Ah-Ma

In a recent study referenced in Newsweek, Leslie Knapp and Molly Fox, a couple of biological anthropologists at the University of Cambridge assessed the impact of grandmothers on the survival of their grandchildren, with some analysis of the different results between the paternal and maternal grandmothers.

"The most striking effect was of the paternal grandmother," says Fox. In six of the seven societies, having a paternal grandmother nearby improved the survival of granddaughters (50 percent X-relatedness) by up to 4.5-fold, but for some unknown reason decreased the survival of grandsons (zero percent) by 8 to 29 percent.

That would be my mom, who is "ah-ma" (Taiwanese for "grandma"), but "grandma" to Daniel and Sophia as "ah-ma" too closely resembles the word for "mom" in Korean. Ah, the curse of those "half-breed" families!

In any case, I'm happy to say that I see at least the positive effects of this phenomena. My mother and father watch Daniel and Sophia two afternoons a week while Sarah teaches piano, and during that time she fattens them up with lots of food, does a reading with our son, allows them to watch some PBS Kids or other educational video and gives them a bath before bringing them back to our house. Both Sarah and I are quite grateful of the love that my parents give to our kids, and it's a nice stabilizing influence. It's like "supplemental parental love".

What I don't quite observe is the gender specific findings of Knapp and Fox. My mother's affections and nurturing seem to be pretty evenly divided between Daniel and Sophia. My father, as well as my father-in-law, are far more smitten by Sophia, but my hypothesis are that the grandfather effect generally pales in comparison to the grandmother effect, as my father and father-in-law are happy to hug and toss Sophia, but otherwise aren't really keen on doing any real work to care of the kids. Heck, I've already established that my role as grandfather will be to sit on my recliner and tell my grandkids about what's going on in the game that I'm watching during the commercials - but they'd better not interrupt grandpa during the game. But going back to grandmothers...

Knapp argues that the phenomena exists because by doing a little math: "maternal grandmothers are related to granddaughters and grandsons equally, for an "X-relatedness" of 25 percent. But paternal grandmothers are twice as close to granddaughters (50 percent) and not at all to grandsons (zero percent)." The basic gist being that you'll nurture based on common composition of genetic material.

Well, I'd better not tell my mom that she has little in common (genetically) with Daniel. At least this makes sense when my mom tells me that "Daniel has a horrible temper, just like your "lao-bei" (father)." To which I'll respond half-jokingly in the future, "Yes mother, and Sophia's loquacious, charming and manipulative, just like you."