The Anthro of Everyday Life is Now Migrating to my new blog Our Babies, Ourselves.
Hang on and you will be automatically redirected......
Saturday, December 15, 2012
On to New Blog
The Anthro of Everyday Life is Now Migrating to my new blog Our Babies, Ourselves.
Hang on and you will be automatically redirected......
Friday, August 24, 2012
Father's Day
We have a long history in this culture of blaming mothers for children with problems.
Is your child autistic? Ah, mother did not create a healthy atmosphere of attachment.
Is your child schizophrenic? Ah, mother was abusive or emotionally cold.
Is your child overactive and aggressive? Ah, mother was too permissive.
Does your child have a chromosomal anomaly? Ah, mother was foolish enough to have a baby when she was way too old.
Such finger pointing is why the recent discovery that older fathers are more at risk of having a child with autism, schizophrenia and other mental and physical disorders is so interesting (and in an odd way for women, satisfying).
The research overturns every assumption about risks of conception by older parents because it shows that the chromosomes in sperm, rather than eggs, are more likely to experience mutations. It turns out that the eggs women produce have constant, and rather low, rate of mutation at any age while the rate of such mutations increases steadily with age for men and their sperm.
It's a kind of genetic change that most people don't think about. Older fathers don't exhibit any of the conditions such as autism, nor do their ancestors, but their sperm mutate and pass along those mutations at conception. Most of these mutations are harmless, but many affects brain function.
The old adage than men can reproduce successfully at any age is simply wrong. As is the adage that women are nuts to make babies past the age of 30.
This information also touches broader cultural images, such as the old geezer with the young woman looking as if he owned the keys to the reproductive kingdom. Be careful out there ladies.
Is your child autistic? Ah, mother did not create a healthy atmosphere of attachment.
Is your child schizophrenic? Ah, mother was abusive or emotionally cold.
Is your child overactive and aggressive? Ah, mother was too permissive.
Does your child have a chromosomal anomaly? Ah, mother was foolish enough to have a baby when she was way too old.
Such finger pointing is why the recent discovery that older fathers are more at risk of having a child with autism, schizophrenia and other mental and physical disorders is so interesting (and in an odd way for women, satisfying).
The research overturns every assumption about risks of conception by older parents because it shows that the chromosomes in sperm, rather than eggs, are more likely to experience mutations. It turns out that the eggs women produce have constant, and rather low, rate of mutation at any age while the rate of such mutations increases steadily with age for men and their sperm.
It's a kind of genetic change that most people don't think about. Older fathers don't exhibit any of the conditions such as autism, nor do their ancestors, but their sperm mutate and pass along those mutations at conception. Most of these mutations are harmless, but many affects brain function.
The old adage than men can reproduce successfully at any age is simply wrong. As is the adage that women are nuts to make babies past the age of 30.
This information also touches broader cultural images, such as the old geezer with the young woman looking as if he owned the keys to the reproductive kingdom. Be careful out there ladies.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Grandmothers Do What They Have to Do
The Anthropology of Everyday Life has been on extended vacation doing who knows what....
But we are back, rocketed into posting by a compelling story in The New York Times today about grandmothers in Swaziland who grow high class weed and sell it to South African dealers to take care of their orphaned grandchildren.
Swaziland suffers from a high rate of death from HIV infection which has left a generation of children who have to take care of themselves, or turn to their grandmothers for help.
The grandmother in the story is now caring for 11 grandchildren left by the deaths of three daughters from AIDS.
And she does so by walking for hours into the forest and clearing a patch of land, sowing marijuana seeds and tending the crop, hoping the cops won't bust her.
The behavior of Swaziland grandma dudes is expedient but also make evolutionary sense. Anthropologist Kristin Hawkes of the University of Utah has developed the "Grandmother Hypothesis" based on the behavior of Hadza hunter and gatherers in Kenya.
Post-menopausal Hadza women gather for their grandchildren and Hawkes has proposed that these contributions increase the likelihood that the children will survive and pass on genes. That hypothesis is supposed to explain the evolution of menopause, and it makes sense. All over the globe grandmothers pitch in when mothers and children need help, while grandfathers are less likely to do so.
In any case, we of the culture with the popular show "Weeds" on TV have no right to judge those hard working women in Swaziland, do we?
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