A grandmother’s brain is designed to look after her grandchildren. This is what is shown for the first time by an American scientific study carried out on 50 grandmothers.
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We call it “cake grannies”, caring, cuddly, attentive grandmothers, with unfailing patience. They have this special bond with their grandchildren. Well ! this connection has a neurological origin. Grandmothers’ brains are designed to attach themselves to and protect small children. A team of American researchers from Emory University in Georgia demonstrated this by scanning MRI scans of their skulls as they looked at images of their small children aged 3 to 12. But also images of children they did not know, of one of their children who had become an adult and of an unknown adult.
Grandmothers’ brains don’t react the same way when they see their grandchildren. In fact, the activated zones are not the same. When grandmothers see their grandchildren, they activate the areas of movement and emotional empathy: if the child is happy in the image, they feel joy, if he is sad they feel sadness. On the other hand, when grandmothers look at images of their child as an adult, other areas of the brain are activated: those of cognitive empathy. Rather, they seek to understand what this adult child thinks or feels and why, but it is no longer a question of emotional empathy.
One of these American researchers thinks that it is the appearance of small children, the adorable and vulnerable infant side, that triggers these reactions in grandmothers. A reaction of protection vis-à-vis toddlers found in many animal species.
These grannies explained that they benefited more from their grandchildren because they had more time and less financial constraints than when they were mothers. Many preferred the role of grandmother to that of mother and there is also a pretty basic reason: it is not a full time job. After a while they can return their grandchildren to the parents. So cakes grannies, yes, but only part-time.