Grandma Matriarch

002-Grandma Matriarch
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

I have long been interested in why the matriarch is such a poorly observed yet strong feature of Western society. Imagine living in a village several centuries ago with only a limited contact with anyone from outside the immediate environs of the village - where a trip to a market or fair in a town some five miles away might only happen once a year.

If were male and a farmer, a lot of your work would be outside, physical and requiring a fair amount of problem solving as things broke, the weather affected the crops in different ways and animals did what animals do. The further you work from the farm, the more you would have to rely on the tools you took with you and being creative with what was to hand if a new situation occurred.

If you were female and lived on a farm then the working environment would be smaller and consequently more predictable, and you would be surrounded more by finished products such as clothes, furniture, pots and pans, knives etc. Help in terms of people and products would be closer on average than for the equivalent male, the value of social manipulation would be much greater because you would be living in an environment where you would have a greater chance to practice it.

Of course, this is a great simplification, there were many males like shoemakers and blacksmiths who worked much closer to home, but whenever did the exception mean much to social commentary anywhere when creating traditions and the model of the ideal? Even today, boys are brought up to travel far on the bicycles, climb trees and play with toys, like Lego, where you can build something of value and then the next day take it apart to create something new to meet today's needs. And girls? How many still play with variations of dolls, where you are given a set of clothes and you spend your time dressing and undressing using the same set of clothes and very little new, where the real learning comes in trying to control one's friends.

Ania's sister is now a grandmother, and she has gone from being a social rebel to a control freak, unable to trust anyone with anything she values, unable to be effective in the position of the family's matriarch. This is not uncommon, but it is very destructive in a society where you can live at a distance. It is also very lonely being in control, being able to make all the important decisions sometimes is not enough when the action takes place far from you. Ultimately, though, no one really likes a control freak, the controlled people either stay near and remain frustrated or move out of the area of control. In the end, if no one can trust you not to control them, they are not really going to like you.

Here is a normal situation where Ania attempts to take one of her sister's grandchildren out on a treat; it is punctuated by repeated calls. You would hardly believe that Ania is a doctor of language, and for the past quarter century has been teaching and been responsible for late teens studying Polish at the university where she works.