We enter grandmotherhood as Clark Kent and emerge as Superman.

Earlier blog posts have revealed that grandmothering floods us with emotional empathy for our grandchild and fortifies our minds against the ravages of time. 

Now get ready for our third neural superpower. A landmark study in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology two years ago discovered this:

Grandmothers’ brains TRANSFORM to make more oxytocin receptors than non-grandmothers’ brains do, amping up our response to oxytocin, the “love hormone.”

This remarkable change, the researchers wrote, is evidence that grandmothers become “physiologically adapted to their caregiving role.”

We might associate oxytocin just with childbirth and lactation. Though essential to both, oxytocin is also essential to human attachment. Our bodies produce oxytocin when we fall in love.

And for our grandchildren, we fall hard.

The Love Hormone

Have you ever glimpsed your reflection in the mirror as you hold your grandchild and say, “See the baby?” What you’ll see, if you can take your eyes off the baby, is a grandmother high on oxytocin, hopelessly in love.

Though it may be unseemly to admit, I’ve been so punch-drunk with grandmother love that I’ve caught myself stroking my significant other’s face just as I do my grandbaby’s and gazing into my grandtoddler’s eyes just as I do my significant other’s. Only when I reached the stubble on Eric’s face did I snap out of the grandmotherly caresses. And only when my grandtoddler leaned in and observed, “Your eyes are brown . . . and green . . . and gold . . . ,” did I realize I was staring at him so besottedly that he was staring back, noticing those tiny flecks.

Love is love, but we know we’ve got to reign ourselves in. How do we channel the overflow? We inflict it on others.

• Witness the crazed joy on our faces when you ask us about our grandchildren. Or don’t, and we’ll launch into our monologue anyway.
• Endure the unfurling-to-the-floor of our accordion wallet inserts, or more likely, the infinite cell phone scroll of our grandchildren’s photos.
• Hear the shameless and “embellished” bragging we’d never do about our mere children. (My granddaughter was born toilet trained!)

Meanwhile this euphoric love, which in a romantic relationship fades after enough morning breath and dirty socks, remains at a fever pitch with our grandchild. We’re eventually put off by our partner’s halitosis and hosiery, but our grandchild’s foul diapers, streaming nose, and blood-curdling screams?

Eternally enchanting!

Customized for Caring

How does our brain make more oxytocin receptors? By flipping our oxytocin receptor gene to ON.

We all know that our genes are fixed at conception. We all learned that giraffes didn’t get long necks because individual giraffes, stretching their necks for high leaves, somehow passed their lengthened necks on to their offspring. But what we might not know, because the science of epigenetics didn’t develop in its modern form until the 1990s, is that though our genes themselves can’t change, our environment can change how, or even whether, those genes get expressed. 

Our environment can affect the way our body reads our DNA code, directing it to turn a particular gene on or off. One primary way genes are turned off is through a chemical process called DNA methylation.

Grandmothers have lower oxytocin receptor gene methylation than non-grandmothers do. That means our oxytocin-receptor gene stays ON, producing more oxytocin receptors.

What in our environment keeps the switch on?

Grandmothering itself.

If we enter grandmotherhood as Clark Kent and emerge as Superman, engagement with our grandchild is the telephone booth.

The Telephone Booth and the Feel-Good Loop

All evidence points to epigenetics as the reason grandmothers have more oxytocin receptors than non-grandmothers do. The oxytocin study found that the more positive the grandmother’s reported feelings toward her grandchild, the higher her engagement with them. And the higher her engagement, the lower her oxytocin receptor gene methylation that would have switched the gene off.

This is where we joyfully bolt from our telephone booth to a perpetual ride on a feel-good loop.

The data suggests that this is how it turns:

• Loving interaction with our grandchild intensifies our bond.
• Our intensified bond reduces oxytocin receptor gene methylation, triggering the gene to make more oxytocin receptors.
• Having more oxytocin receptors sensitizes us to the effects of oxytocin, further intensifying our bond.
• Our further intensified bond motivates more loving interactions with our grandchild.
• Repeat

We’re rewarded for feeling rewarded in a system designed to keep the rewards coming.

The loop is “feel-good” because all that oxytocin-fueled bonding heightens our happiness.

It’s the ride of our lives.

An Oxytocin-Fueled Bonus: Longevity

As oxytocin supercharges grandmothers with love, it also combats aging.

A grandmother’s bond with her grandchild brings all the known physical and emotional benefits that any close relationship does. But because this bond is oxytocin rich, it brings even more benefits. Oxytocin has been shown to reduce inflammation, suppress tumor growth, decrease cancer risk, and protect brain and nerve cells. 

Researchers Alexander J. Horn and C. Sue Carter write of oxytocin:

“[T] he greatest tools we have towards fulfilling the evolved limit of human survivorship may not be found in drugs or surgery, but rather in the natural “medicines” associated with the evolved human instinct to love and care for one another.”

Feel the Chemistry

The breadth and depth of grandmothers’ scientifically proven neural superpowers would be mind-boggling if we didn’t have such superheroic minds. 

Grandmothering exquisitely transfigures us.

From the emotional fusion of our empathy to the youthfulness of our brains to our bounty of oxytocin receptors bringing us epigenetically enhanced sensitivity to oxytocin, we’re multiply wired to adore our grandchildren and boost their survival. Along the way, this boosts our own survival, as well as our truest happiness. For what could be mightier, as Horn and Carter say, than our human instinct to care for one another?

Grandmother love, sourced from deep within our minds, boldly abides in our hearts.