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

Agreed, to be fair he looked younger 🤣

As a lot of women in their late 40s are menopausal I think that makes people think grandmother.

Butlins used to have glamorous grandmother contests in the 60s, had to stop because many contestant were in their early 30s.

If you look at the data (like the ONS data, here), it's still much more common to have a baby in your early 20s than early 40s.

In 2022, which is the most recent dataset, about 10 times as many 23 year olds gave birth as 44 year olds did - 16,915 vs 1,653. I'm sure it varies a lot by region and social circle, so you can be in a bubble of older mums or younger mums, but statistically it's not unlikely that a 47 year old woman in charge of a toddler could be the toddler's grandmother.

Agree it's rude to assume thougn.

well a 24 year age gap will do that...

Agreed I'd assume mum then it's at least a compliment if you're wrong. I met a mother yesterday and I was convinced she was nan I hope I didn't look shocked when the child called her mum.

Being a grandmother in your late forties isn't shocking at all it just means two generations had their children in their twenties, I'm an actual young mum and if my child had a child the same age I had them I'd be in my early thirties.

Biologically it would be extremely hard for most women to fall pregnant at 44 without IVF. Even with IVF I believe the chances are slim so I would inwardly assume it was grandma

Where I live it would be more likely for a 47yo to be the gran that the mum of a 3yo, yes. I would assume gran, auntie, then mum.

I'd say overall, 47 is quite old to have a 3 year old (sorry) but probably younger than average to be a grandmother. So if you look 47 people might assume young grandmother rather than older mum.

People should always err on the side of caution when guessing though and say mum rather than nan out loud. Then if you get it wrong you flatter someone rather than offend them.

I was a grandparent at 40. I was sometimes mistaken for their mum. I am now 62 and was mistaken recently for my 22 year old gs's mum. Yet I look my age.

I guess its social perceptions. My own dm was often mistaken for my gm back in the early seventies as she was in her early fifties and I think people had their kids a little younger then.

Having a baby at 44 is very unusual, so of course it's more likely to be seen as grandma if you're almost 50 with a toddler.

I have a younger cousin who’s the exact same age as my DD. Her mum, my aunt, is the same age as as my mum. I could be my cousin’s sister. She could be my DD’s grandmother. Guess what we don’t do - argue about who had our girls at the best time.

There’s another thread at the moment about female singers and the clothes they wear. A poster wrote a comment along the lines of “Muslim women wear hijabs - patriarchy. Singers wear leotards - patriarchy. How many centimetres should a woman wear for the optimum?” and I feel the same way about women having children. Early 20s - too young. Terrible choice. Early 40s - too young. Terrible choice.

How about we all just mind our own business and let women have children when they choose to without judging them based on how you would feel with a child at that age. Honestly, it’s infuriating.

For me to be a grandmother at 47, my daughter would need to have a baby at the age of 23...which is how old I was when I had her. So it all depends on the age of the mother when she decides to have kids.

My friendship group is split. Probably half of us had kids in our 20s and now have teens, and half are just starting out. I know which side I prefer to be on, but would I want my daughter having a baby at 23? Perhaps not, but it'll be entirely up to her and her circumstances.

Well I'm 47 yo and have a 23yo dd, she turns 24yo in a few weeks. So could easily be a grandmother at our age.

I'd say having a baby at 44yo is more unusual than someone having a baby in their early 20s.

I’m not sure that’s generally the case though. In my experience it is the exact opposite. I know a lot of senior professionals who had their one and only child when they were 40+.

In my team at work the youngest person to have a child was 35 and the oldest 44. All bar one had just the one child. I know some froze their eggs.

I had my kids young , my mum was 40 and a grandmother, at 47 she had about 5 grandkids she also had her family young . These days people I was at school with have just started their families so I have adult children or teens and theirs are toddlers so I don't think it's very common these days .

It was also a common time to have kids in the previous generation.

I had mine at 30 after a 7 year relationship and my mum joked she had given up on grandchildren! She had me and my sibling at 25 and 27 which was very normal in her group.

I don't think its that outrageous. I'm not quite 40 and I have a fair number of Facebook schoolfriends who are celebrating 18th birthdays and grandchildren now.

50 is in the same ballpark as 47 and at 50, it's perfectly possible to assume someone had a baby at 25 and their kid had a baby around 20... which would give a 45-50y/o year old a 0-5 child.

Around here you would be more likely to be the grandmother. Those having babies in their 40s tend to be women with larger families.

She didn’t say it was the only time , she said optimum .

If ‘nature’ intended us to have pregnancies in our 20s, it would have made us have menopause in our 30s.

It's fairly common to be a grandmother or a mother of a young child in that age group, given that child-bearing age spans several decades.

When I was young, it wasn't unusual to have different generations of a family in school together.

I had my last at 39 and two of my friends became grandparents the same year. This was to their older step Kids tho. I was also older than two of my aunty’s were when they became Grandmas. So, yes it does happen!

I was defo old enough to be the mum of a number of women in the baby group I attended (in fact my favourite mum to chat to was 19!)

I wouldn't really think much of it but my eldest DC will be 24 when I'm 47 so I could well be a grandmother at that age.

Where I live it is not unusual for people to be having children from 20 into their 40s, seems a real mix so I would never presume anything.

@SardinesOnGingerbread I’ve learned that any age anyone has a child ever is 100% WRONG.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Indeed! So far, I've learned that my 24 year old self was crazy to have a first baby (married, financially stable), that I probably wasn't cognitively developed enough, and that I'm probably poor and working class. 25 years on, and all the kiddos are doing well, two through university and third going through. No clear evidence of the trauma they doubtless faced. Laughing at some of the comments here.