Sucking eggs

In two recent learning situations, my multigenerational classmates and I were asked to summarise something complex “in terms your grandmother would understand”.

How is it that we used to say "don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs" (because older women were wise and skilled) and now we’re using ‘grandmother’ as shorthand for someone who needs things explained in a simple, non-technical way?

This language sits all too comfortably with an outmoded yet pervasive ‘grandmother’ iconography 👵 and is underpinned by a pair of misplaced assumptions: that grandmothers are old and that older women are slow and out of touch with the world.

That’s problematic enough, but another implication here was that everyone present was young enough to have a living grandmother. This surely challenges the rhetoric around lifelong learning and multiple careers in an extended working lifetime.

Ironically, in each case I was myself a grandmother actively learning new things at an advanced level.

I can’t say that these comments made me feel that I didn’t belong in those learning environments. But they did make me acutely and unnecessarily conscious of my age.

I’m also sure that those making the remarks didn’t really mean what their words implied.

However …

This kind of lazy shorthand informs and reinforces perceptions of what a grandmother or older woman should be like, with potentially negative impacts.

If you are immersed in age-related (or other) assumptions, you can end up embodying the stereotype (read Becca Levy’s 2009 article, or listen to Claude Steele on Adam Grant’s WorkLife podcast, 24 Jan 2023).

By way of illustration, on another course attended mainly by older learners, a tutor advised us to get a younger person to help us set up a related app. Many of the women laughed in complicity with the assumption that embracing new technology was beyond them, even though we were all having that conversation on an online learning platform.

Women of my generation have spent decades steeped in the societal cues we grew up with around what we were and weren't capable of doing.

Now we’re getting messaging about ‘old age’ layered on top of that, and specifically female old age.

There may be a recent media trend towards confounding the granny stereotype, offering ‘outrageous rebel’ as an alternative to ‘old fool’. But that’s not tackling the stereotype itself, or its impacts, or embracing the vast middle ground of ‘regular competent person’.

Since turning 60, I have undertaken professional training in a new area and set out on a new career, building on extensive prior experience and learning. So I can, metaphorically, suck eggs and also learn new and complex stuff. Imagine that!

There has been plenty of noise recently about how the economy needs older workers to remain in or return to the workplace. Well, maybe stop (inadvertently) sending half of us the message that we’re past it.

Photo: My paternal grandmother on top of things in the 1960s.