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It CAN be Done
Suzette Haden Elgin
Original art by Suzette Haden Elgin
Suzette's recent venture in writing for and about grandmothers. She explains her reasons below: (1) I'm worried about the possible disappearance of grandmothering skills. We live in a society where many people have little or no contact with their own grandmothers or anyone else's; the role models that used to let grandmothering be learned by example, over time, are all too often just not available today. There's no evidence that any culture can stay healthy and whole without grandmothers and their skills. (2) I'm distressed by the widespread image of aging women as whiny unattractive nuisances -- an image that causes so many women to be horrified when they learn that they're going to be grandmothers, and that leads so many women to waste their resources trying to look twenty-five their whole lives long. (3) For the first time in our history, greatgrandmothers are not at all rare. I'm concerned about our failure to consider their role and their needs; and I'm concerned about what it means for grandmothers not to be the senior woman in the family any more. (4) It doesn't seem to me that other "grandparenting" media are giving time and space and energy to these problems. It doesn't seem to me that "grandparenting" media adequately convey the fact that grandmothering (and greatgrandmothering) differ from grandfathering in many important ways. My hope is that Grandmother World can take useful steps toward solving these four problems; that's the plan. Your input -- comments, criticisms, suggestions, thoughts -- will always be welcome here. Finally, I want to let you know that when I use the word "grandmother" I'm
not referring only to a woman who has grandchildren. Society as a whole needs to be grandmothered; many people
whose biological or legal grandmothers aren't available to them need grandmothering. I also use "grandmother"
to refer to honorary grandmothers -- women who don't have grandchildren in the traditional sense, but who are willing
to turn their hand to grandmothering all the same; and women who, although they do have grandchildren, are willing
to "adopt" another one or more. Suzette Haden Elgin's Page Grandmother World Website |
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