Are We Judging Grandma by Today’s Standards?

Sociologists have a name for something I’ve been noticing: individualism. I’m not a sociologist, but I can say this with confidence: we are becoming more individualistic.

Our parents and grandparents rarely saw themselves as lone individuals. They saw themselves as part of a family. It didn’t matter so much what role each person played or who sacrificed more. What mattered was that the family thrived.

Today the conversation has shifted. We talk loudly about patriarchy, misogyny, and personal fulfilment. We see ourselves first, and the family second. Maybe nothing is wrong with that. But it is a real change, and we should understand where it came from.

Our ancestors lived in large compounds. Few people left for another city, let alone another country. Generations lived under one roof: grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins. When a woman married in, she joined the whole family, not just one man, and everyone shared the responsibilities. Children were raised by many hands. Before formal schooling, uncles and aunts were the teachers, and the whole family worked the farm together.

Today we move to distant cities for jobs and opportunity. We live in small households, mostly monogamous. And for the first time, we have the time and space to think deeply about ourselves as individuals, our personal needs, and how to get more out of life for ourselves.

Technology has accelerated this. Our phones have become mirrors. In the past, only other people could tell us how we looked or how we were doing. Now we photograph ourselves, add filters, reshape our faces with AI, and compare our lives with strangers on the other side of the world. Our generation is hungry for validation, and modern technology makes it easy to chase.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped seeing ourselves as part of a big family, a community, a larger structure.

Let me be clear: I fully support women being treated with dignity and respect, and I do not endorse the oppression or marginalization of women in any form. My point is simpler. We cannot speak for Grandma.

She did not see herself the way a modern woman sees herself. Her survival, and her children’s survival, depended on the big family. She had no access to family planning, and she bore many children because not all of them would live to adulthood. In her world, the survival of the group came first, and the group rewarded her for her place in it.

So when people say our grandmothers were deeply subjugated, I think we are judging them through a modern lens. Before concluding that Grandma was unhappy, picture her world: her needs, her community, and what gave her life meaning and security.

And remember that every society is different. Scholars like Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí have argued that in pre-colonial Yoruba society, seniority mattered more than gender, and that many of today’s rigid gender ideas arrived with colonialism. Yoruba women were traders, title-holders, and pillars of their communities. I don’t believe most of them saw themselves as subjugated.Let’s stop importing other cultures’ problems and stories into our own history.