Is it really that common to be a grandparent in your late 40s?

I mean if they think nans at 40 have Botox pout… but then are being accused of being the very nan:..

Older parents are always ready to shit on younger parents let face it. I waited till I owned a house, till I traveled the world… cool some parents will be travelling the world in their 40’s while their now adult children do what ever way with their lives.

Id rather be 50 with grand kids than 50
with a toddler or teen.

I am turning 50 and don’t know anyone my age who is grandparent. A couple of people have small kids but most have teens so we all fall somewhere in the middle. Of course a lot of my peers don’t have kids at all. My MIL was a grandparent at my age but I don’t feel I am possibly old enough to be a grandparent since in my head I am only 30

Honestly yes, I'd assume a mid forties+ looking woman with a toddler was grandma.
Quite a few of my school peers started having their kids in the late teens immediately after school, one was pregnant before we finished. If their parents had them in the early to mid 20's quite a few of them would have been grandparents in their early to mid 40's.

I know women are having successful pregnancies later in life now, especially if cost of living etc is pushing back the age they start trying for a baby, but i still think on average a mid to late 40's woman with a toddler is more likely to be grandma than mum. I'd never ask or call her grandma etc though.

I work in a shop, and if I’m not sure I’ll usually just say “your grown up” when speaking to young dc. I’d say you’re an age where it’s 50/50 though, and probably demographic dependent (where I grew up you’d be more likely to be mum, where I live now it would skew towards grandma). I’m younger than you though and have adult children!
(Edited for typo).

Some of the attitudes of the older mum camp on here are not nice. Defensive maybe... haha.

The pp who said grans in their 40s with their botox pout etc. Talk about stereotyping.

My family (parents, me, dh and children old enough) are all degree educated with well paid jobs and nice houses. Some posters on here make it sound if anyone reproduce under the age of 30 they must be living on the Shamless set and queueing for their job seekers allowance.

Being mistaken for the grandma of their children must be pissing them off and it shows.

Yes, I think this is the core of it.

I don’t know anyone who had a baby at the age you did OP, my lot were all in our late twenties and early thirties.

I do have one friend who had her first aged 23 and she became a grandmother aged 49.

personally no!
my parents became grandparents at 43/45 however they were young parents! My in-laws are the same age as my grandparents.

I became a grandparent at 44. So people assumed I was her mother!

@Scrubberdubber I personally don't care all that much when women decide to have children, I understand that there all all kind of factors that can affect when people become mothers. However, I agree that there is an air of smugness on this thread from older mothers, but it really is unfounded. Many women that have children later in life will struggle to conceive and run the risk of complications. If their children follow their path and have children in their 40's, there's a chance they won't even get to be grandparents. Plus, I can't begin to fathom how knackered they are. It's really not all it's cracked up to be, don't let them bother you.

My mother was 47 when I had my first child.

@FKAT Large student loans and the COL will probably keep pushing parental ages up, I imagine. Even middle-aged DH and I had to pay off loans but it’s worse now

Plus I don’t think that the average 24 year old graduate would be earning enough for a mortgage nowadays as prices are so high (unless their parents gave them a huge deposit).

I'm a 50 year old with a 3 year old child. I've been doing my family tree and nobody in our family had kids much before 40. Makes it very easy to get back a couple of centuries.

As such, I've always expected grannies to be like the traditional children's book illustration, grey bun and glasses perched in the end of the nose sort of thing. When I see someone in a mini skirt with a botox pout being described as Nan it never adds up to me. I guess it's just your own background that influences these things.

I think that overall there will be more 47 year old grans to toddlers than 47 year old mums to toddlers.
Simply because it only requires a woman to get pregnant at around 22 and her child also have a child at around 22. Nothing that exceptional!

I don’t particularly think 47 is young to be a grandparent? My parents were grandparents at 46 (my parents, husband and myself all university educated professionally qualified people for the statisticians out there 🙄
My mum and dad have played an active part in my DCs lives. It’s not uncommon in my circles / community whereas I only personally know of 1 person who has had a child over 40.
Neither is right or wrong and as for assumptions - Id never make them as it’s none of my business and I’m sure most people would feel the same.

I was 46. Keep in mind children are different. One of mine married at 18 and had 2 children by the time he was 21. He is now a 45 year old grandfather. My other son did get did not get married until he was 37. He has a two year old and will have another child in August at 41.

There's a world of difference between 'early parenthood' and having children in your 20s.

It is a very recent phenomenon for professional people to wait until their late 30s/40s before starting a family. Professional, educated people would be usually having children in their 20s as a matter of course until this century.

As a statistician you presumably know there is a difference between a single 16 year old having a baby and a 24 year old with a mortgage, income and husband?

At 47 I had a daughter of 23 and one of 7. Three close friends had their last baby at 44. I also have friends who were grandmothers by late 40s

@asrl78
Are you an only child? Children born to older mothers 40+ years ago were usually regarded as a surprise as women didn't routinely wait to have children. My point this it's not as common place as the middle class MN pps like to think, maybe in their circles but mostly it's not commonplace.

Sorry but smug older mothers on this site always take delight in bringing up statistics to try and insist all young mums are uneducated and "deprived" (they especially love that word). Not to mention that one thread where they delighted in pulling out their precious statistics to try and say older mums are just better parents then young mums.
Can you imagine the uproar if someone started waffling about statistics in relation to African Americans and crime?

No wouldn't do that? Then stop doing it about young mums

I made my poor mum a grandma at 39! We actually had the opposite problem, until ds was about 5 people always assumed I was the older sister and nanna was his mum.

That’s you. But look at the stats; something I do professionally. It is well-documented that there’s a correlation between socioeconomic status, education level, and early parenthood. There’s a load of government data and studies showing that people from poorer backgrounds and with lower levels of education are statistically more likely to have children at a younger age.

There will always be exceptions.

I became a grandmother at 47.My DS2 was a grandfather at 42, and my sister was 39 when her first grandchild was born.
Depends on the age you became a parent.

@SouthernFashionista what sounds grim? Being a grandparent?

My youngest is 3 and I'm 38, my dh is 46 though and he doesnt look old enough to be a grandparent so I wouldn't necessarily think you were. My mum was a nan at 49 but she had me aged 20. I was born in the late 80s though and that wasn't particularly unusual then.

@Umbrella15 Surely finances do prevent many people from having children in their 20’s though? DH and I met in our 20’s but really couldn’t provide a home for children until we were in our 30’s.

You obviously were able to, but I think that most people can’t, even 20 years ago it was hard (I’m 50), it’s far worse with today’s rents/house prices.