Mumma, what is nature?” asked my then-three-year-old daughter.
“Hmm. If it’s made by humans, then it’s not nature,” I replied.
She thought for a minute… “Am I nature?”
“Well, you’ve got me there, little one.”
My daughter’s obsession with nature – plants and animals, mostly, but also rocks and even planetary processes – has only grown. Now aged five, she recently asked me how, given the intense heat of planetary formation, Earth got its oceans – a question that I sincerely doubt crossed my own mind until I was a teenager at least. Her curiosity astounds me and while it is, of course, sparked by my own passion for Earth science (as well as her father’s love for animals and gardening), much of it comes from her grandparents.
Her curiosity astounds me
As powerfully argued by Anjana Khatwa (p. 16), grandparents, and particularly grandmothers, together with other women ‘of a certain age’ are hugely influential in the lives of children. These women, suggests Anjana, are the influencers we should target to shine a light on the joys and opportunities offered by geoscience for the next generation.
Like many parents, my partner and I rely heavily on our own parents for childcare and my daughter is remarkably lucky to have all her grandparents present, living nearby and deeply invested in helping to raise her. While none of my daughter’s grandparents had the chance to attend university, it is her grandmothers who arguably had the least opportunities to pursue their own interests in life. As noted by Anjana, such women were often encouraged into roles seen as ‘appropriate for their gender’, despite a lack of strong appeal, or sacrificed career opportunities to raise their own families. Now, with greater free time afforded by retirement, my daughter’s smart, passionate grandmothers revel in days spent enriching the lives of the little ones, collecting shells and fossils at the beach, spotting flora and fauna on countryside walks and nurturing them in our gardens, as well as visiting museums.
My daughter’s delightful toddler days have faded too rapidly (together with my favourite mispronunciation of hers, “Mumma, did you know the dinosaurs were wiped out by an ass-destroyed?”) and she is now moving to a stage in life where friends and teachers have increasingly more influence on her than grandparents do. It is heartening, therefore, to see the launch of a brilliant new campaign by the Society – This is Geoscience (p. 6) – that seeks to influence and inspire the next generation of geoscientists. I’m excited to watch her grasp of natural science and the joy it offers blossom, no matter what path she may eventually choose to follow.
DR AMY WHITCHURCH
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
