'When you have children.....' Why do the older generations say this to the younger one?

[mids2019]

Grandparents are getting on (mid 70s) and we have two young daughters. Grandad in a benign way keeps saying to our children 'When you have kids you'll understand ' or like phrases. Am I being unreasonable thinking this starts a mindset of young women/girls making it a life ambition to just have children? My parents, bless them, don't say things like 'When you get to become a doctor, lawyer, politician.....' whiplash I wonder object to but simply raise the long term prospect of great grand children?

Sorry for the garbled last sentence......The thing that annoys me is that my partner and I'd parents were given the same treatment about having children when we married.

They don’t just say it to girls though?🤷‍♀️ I say it to my teen ds all the time! Things like “this is my job as a parent, I’m just parenting you. When you are a parent yourself you will get it”.

People say it to boys, too.

It’s true, there are some things that people won’t experience or understand unless they have kids.

You're thinking too deeply about a throw away comment.

I say it to my DS sometimes. It's not aimed at girls IME and depends on the context.

@MissyB1

I get that and as I say there is nothing malign in these throw away phrases but doesn't it assume the children will want to/ be able to become parents. Maybe I'm overturning it but it seems to set an expectation that a girl's (or boy's) primary role is to have children. This may be wonderful if it happens but If love the older generation townspeople in a few comments about career aspiration.

Depends on the context.
When I was a teen and wanted to stay out all night or some such stupid shit and my mum said hell no, I'd accuse her of not loving me 🙄 if you loved me you'd let me! You don't want me to have friends/have fun/ be happy. God I'm cringing. Teens can be such twats!
She'd say it's because I love you that I'm saying no. When you have children, you'll understand.

I think that's fair enough tbh.

If OTOH it's a conversation about not liking bananas and they reply when you have kids you'll understand then you should probably back out of the room quietly.

I disagree. They say it to boys too and they’re trying to say “when you have children you will understand my perspective / we will have a shared experience even if I’m no longer here” so “when you’re a politician / doctor” makes no sense unless the grandparent themselves is also a politician / doctor.

because most people do go on to have kids

Oh don’t be so ridiculous. Stop finding things to be offended about.

X post. So it's just that you'd prefer them to say if rather than when?

I don’t think the kids look at it like that! You are overthinking this.

Yabu. It gets said to boys and girls and the truth is that a large proportion of them will go on to have children. You're making something out of nothing.

I think just a change to ‘if you ever have children’ would suffice. To both sexes. It shouldn’t be a life ambition or expectation to have children.

Thanks. Maybe it is overthinking. A common banal phrase.It seems.a.lot of journalism have a problem with it.

I get you - my boyfriend does it to his teenagers (both girls). It makes me cringe as I wasn’t able to have children and it feels almost subliminal. He really wants to be a grandparent and it feels like he’s setting his “expectations stall” out early.
My late mum was the opposite - she told me there would never be any pressure from her or my dad to have kids and there wasn’t. I did actually want them but life didn’t turn out like that. Even though she died a long time ago I’m glad there was no parental pressure otherwise I’d have felt that I’d been a massive disappointment.

Sorry - I mistyped clumsily - of course having children being a life ambition is fine!

Most children will grow up to be adults who will become parents themselves. It is their ‘primary role’ from an evolutionary perspective. They’re not saying they MUST become parents. I honestly could not get offended about this.

But a human being's primary purpose is to have DC's. We exist to continue the species. In our families we have a purpose to continue our names, traditions, culture, genes, shared history.

The vast majority have DCs. Even of those who don't most want to.

I'd be really disappointed if any of mine chose not to have DC's. One of the reasons I had more than an average number of DC's was to ensure our line continued.

(I'm from a small and declining family so I maybe feel this more accutly than others)

Also yes not everyone will have children and whilst they shouldn’t make that assumption I suppose, the majority of people do so it’s not that crazy an assumption. “When you are a lawyer / doctor / prime minister” doesn’t make sense as the odds of your child having that specific job is low and I think as a child/ teen my reaction would just be “well I don’t want to be a lawyer so I don’t know what you’re on about, Grandad”.

I think the only time you could say “when you are …” that makes any kind of sense is if you have a grandparent who is say a doctor or retired doctor saying to their grandchild, who is also determined to be a doctor “when you’re a doctor you’ll do this too…!” etc. Otherwise why would someone who has no knowledge of that profession lecture a child on what life will be like when the child has that progression?!

Assuming that there are decent odds of a child becoming a parent is akin to saying something “when you have your own house you’ll also get upset when people mess it up” or “when you’re paying the electricity bills you also won’t want someone to turn every single light on in your house”. Yes the person may never run their own home or they might be rich enough to have a live in housekeeper or not worry about electric bills but it’s not an unlikely or offensive assumption.

When my SIL had her daughter, she said something along the lines of “at least now I’ll get to have grandchildren” like there’s an expectation on her daughter that there isn’t on her son. I always thought it a very strange thing to say when she had a newborn.

I remember it being said to me in a couple of situations when I was growing up and then after having my children I literally had a lightbulb moment and fully understood what my parents meant.
The phrase never made me feel like I was expected to have children, I didn’t even want to have children until I met my DH.
I really do think you are overthinking it.

Your posts are quite confusing op.