Scientists explain why grandmothers love grandchildren more than their children
Miscellaneous / / November 19, 2021
It's all about emotional empathy.
Scientists at Emory University, led by Professor James Rilling, have confirmed that grandmothers can be more emotionally connected with their grandchildren than with their sons and daughters. This is stated in the studySupplementary material from "The neural correlates of grandmaternal caregiving"published by The Royal Society Publishing.
The study involved 50 grandmothers who had at least one grandchild or granddaughter between the ages of 3 and 12. All women were shown photographs of their grandchildren and children, and brain function was assessed using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Analysis of MRI data showedthat viewing images of grandchildren activated areas associated with emotional empathy, while photos of children activated an area of the brain responsible for cognitive empathy.
What really catches your eye is the activation of areas of the brain associated with emotional empathy. This suggests that grandmothers tend to feel what their grandchildren feel when they interact with them. If their grandson smiles, they feel the joy of a child. And if a grandson cries, they feel his pain and suffering.
Study lead author James Rilling
In contrast, when grandmothers looked at images of their adult children, other areas of the brain associated with cognitive perception tended to be activated. This may indicate that they were trying to understand their adult child rather than experiencing this more direct emotional connection.
Emotional empathy is when you can feel what someone else is feeling. Cognitive empathy is when you simply understand and realize how someone else is feeling and why.
James Rilling
This may partly explain the experience many adult children have when their parents often seem more anxious to meet their grandchildren than they do to themselves.
According to Rilling, these results support the theory that there may be a global nursing system in the brain that is activated in mothers, fathers and grandmothers. The study's author now hopes to explore how this works with grandfathers and other parenting people.