I was raised by my grandmother with a brood of cousins and all her children lived under the same roof. I did not know that nuclear families were the norm and that not every family was as large as ours until I was well into my teens. I think that being raised the way I was had a very positive impact on me. It wasn’t just having so many adults around but also having cousins who were sibling like and of various ages as peers to learn from and also to teach... Plus there was the ‘grandmother effect’.

I had always considered myself as a rather staid somewhat conservative person with orthodox views of my own volition. Until I realized that ‘feminists’ considered my views as fringe. That’s the ‘grandmother effect’..a matriarchal upbringing is entirely different from a feminist upbringing. The former is about freedom/owning power and the latter is about competition/struggle(in my understanding)

Every family needs a support system. And every human person does NOT have to be a parent. Parenting is a big scary and A Very Important Job.

I am reminded of Robert Wright’s Moral Animal where he beckons altruism and the chapter on kinship. That’s the ‘grandmother effect’.

It’s a topic worthy of a proper thesis.