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I thought I’d be Grandpa, or maybe a close derivative like Gampa or even Papa, but it turns out I’m Baba. It wasn’t her first word. That honor goes to a particularly lovable Labrador Retriever, but I’m thrilled and grateful to be on the short list, not much below Momma and Dada.
I had predicted this happy future for myself decades ago, and had planned for it. Soon after she was born I took the final steps to make it come true. I juggled my schedule at the office so that I would be free, if called upon, to spend every Thursday and Friday with her. Momma and Dada of course had to do their part to make this possible, and they did. They moved from Massachusetts to Michigan, and bought a home not too far from where Momma had grown up. It was an extraordinary effort on their part, but as you’ll see, not entirely unexpected.
Momma and Dada met at MIT, and my beautiful granddaughter is therefore deeply interested in technology and the science that underlies it. Her current favorite phrase is, “howz it work?” Her favorite pastime is to build forts, sandcastles, and sundry other structures, and then smash them. We explore gravity and other physics facts on park swings, slides, and monkey bars. I marvel with her, and at her, and my life comes into balance. Grandma (Bagdi) has the same privileges on two other days of the week, and gets the same results.
The reason I knew she would make us happy—and I knew it with great certainty—is that I’m an evolutionary anthropologist. I’m also a pediatrician, but that came much later. I went to medical school at the age of 39, after completing a series of research fellowships at the University of Michigan. It wasn’t an easy transition, and I almost quit several times in the first year, but I persevered, and I’m glad I did.
I’m also glad to have been an anthropologist before heading off to medical school, because it gave me a broad understanding of human evolution. I wish I could wave a wand and give every doctor this perspective, but that’s a discussion for another time.
In 1983, just after we were married, Bagdi and I started a research project in Micronesia. She had just received a Ph.D., and mine was in the works. I was interested in child care and she in political systems. We spent our most productive time on a coral atoll called Ifaluk. It’s tiny, and only about five feet above sea level at its highest point, which makes typhoons an ever-present concern. About 450 people lived there at the time, along with nearly as many dogs, pigs, and chickens. Men fished, women cultivated taro, and children played. There are more primitive places on earth, but few are more isolated.
A saying on Ifaluk is, “the child is king,” and it truly is an idyllic place to grow up—except for the flies and mosquitos. Parents are loving and devoted, and they have help—a lot of it. Ifaluk is one of a dwindling number of so-called “kinship societies,” and all of our ancestors once lived in them. In other words, once upon a time, no child grew up in isolation, there were no overwhelmed single parents, and there were no daily commutes to distant jobs where children were not welcome. Parents were nearby, often within sight, and so were grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, and other relatives, and all of them had the time and will to help.
Ifaluk is a snapshot of how children were raised over the long run of our evolution, and although our genus is flexible (flexibility perhaps is our most quintessential trait), we are not infinitely so. There are harder ways and easier ways, worse outcomes and better outcomes.
My scholarly work in anthropology centered on showing the importance of kinship networks for reproductive success and had implications for both life history theory and demographic transitions. Along the way, I argued that growing up surrounded by caring relatives makes children happy and secure. It’s something they’ve evolved to count on. However, there is another angle to this story, and another lesson to be learned. One that until recently I’ve neglected. It is that helping children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews, and even more distant relatives (which ultimately includes every child) is a path to happiness for the helpers too.
Our distant ancestors were apes with maximum potential lifespans on the order of 50 years, which is similar to chimpanzees living under optimal conditions. We, in contrast, can live far longer because our vital organs have been tweaked by natural selection to function adequately for several additional decades. This could have happened for only one reason: ancestral adult hominins living on the cusp of old age must have become increasingly reproductively viable. Nonetheless, since few of us alive today who are older than 50 are actively making more babies, especially those of us who are postmenopausal, it is likely that our ancestors weren’t either. Rather, it seems that our ancestors extended their reproductive viability mostly by becoming increasingly effective helpers. Helping, thus, is what we have been designed to do, and for most of us beyond a certain age it is our raison d’etre.
Evolution is well known for connecting design and action with an emotional reward that serves as an incentive. So, here’s a parting metaphor: The nature of water is to flow downhill, to seek low spots. Only then is it content. My advice is to be like water.
