First time granny age rising?

[Justkeepingplatesspinning]

The thread about what we perceive as elderly got me thinking. I wouldn't have described my gran as elderly, whereas my mother definitely was when she became a granny.
I worked out that my granny was 48 when I was born. My mother was 65 when she became a granny, so almost 20 years older than her mother had been.
To my horror, I then realised that I'm now older by some way than my granny was when I was born.
Is there a big difference in how old your mother and granny were when they became grandparents? If you're a grandparent, were you older or younger than your mother was?

Yes. My gran was 48 when I was born, my mum was 52 when DD was born.

I think the social effects of older parents have been hugely ignored and the full impact will only really be picked up on in around 20 years.

I think it’s changed society far more than working mums etc

Well, my grandma was apparently 40/41 when my mum was born (1940s) so she would have been in her 60s when my uncle had his children in the 1960s, he was quite a bit older than my mum. My mum would have been 60 when my nephew was born so similar to her mum, maybe slightly younger as I'm not sure exactly how old my cousins are. They're about 20 years older than me.

I was a bit taken aback when a friend of ours who is 60 turned out to be great-grandad to the child he was with…
My grandmother died in her 70s before I was born, she had my mum in her 40s. Mum was nearly 30 when she had me and I had first child at nearly 32 so she was a granny at 61. I’m not expecting to be a grandparent until early 60s as my children will go to uni then probably establish careers before thinking about starting a family. There’s often a pretty strong family/class/expectations influence on when you have a first child. There was a photo recently in the news of a family with six generations of women alive where they had each had a baby at 16-17, so baby, mum 17, granny 34, great granny 53, great great granny 70, great great great granny late 80s.
Swings and roundabouts - I missed out on knowing my grandparents as both my parents were very late in life babies and none of the grandparents lived into very old age (lost my last grandparent at 7 years old) but I benefitted from older, financially and career stable parents.

It's quite variable in my female line. I think it wasn't all that uncommon for Victorian era people to marry a bit later as a form of birth control.

My great grandmother didn't marry and have her first child until she was nearly 40, so she must have been mid-60s when she became a grandmother.
My grandmother became a grandmother at 52.
I was late having kids so DM became a grandmother at about 63.
Thanks to my teenage DS making poor life choices (about lots of things, not just condoms) he was a dad at 17 when I was 54.

I will be 90 if my son has a baby at the age I had him

🤞I will be alive well to enjoy that

It's interesting the variation if I had my first child at the age my mother had me she'd be a 80 year old grandparent and if my first child has a child at the same age I had them I'll be 32.

My mother became a grandparent at 56 I think fifties is average

My mum was 52 when she became a granny and my own gran was a similar age but both had their first child around 27/28 which in the 50s and 70s was considered older. In fact my mum was quite indignant to discover her maternity notes had her marked as a ‘geriatric’ first time mum!
I’m almost 50 and no signs of grandchildren from any of ours who range from almost 30 to 18.

Very few teenage pregnancies these days, driving up the age of first time mums, and the ripple effect is later grandparent hood.

Not true in my case because my mum's mum was about 36 when she had her and mum was 27 when she had me, so granny would have been 63. I was 30 when I had my first child and am unlikely to be a granny before 60 either.

Some families have children much earlier. I have a good friend who is a Mormon, she was married straight after Uni at the age of 21 and is now 46 and has several grandchildren.

I was 48 when my grandbaby was born a few days off my 49th. Everyone I know was a lot younger than me when their first grandbairn came.

My Nan would’ve been 54 when she became a grandmother.

I made my mum a Nan at 48.

I became a Nan at 43.

My Gran was mid 50's when I was born.
My mum became a Grandma at 59.

I do often ponder how the stretching out of families probably isn't a good thing. We have a tiny family which doesn't help. We're whittling down to almost nothing in ours.

My granny was a gran at 38/39,my mother at 57. No sign of any babies in the next generation (yet).

My DGM was 55 when I was born and my DM was 61 when I had my first child - both very involved grandparents! I would expect to be late 60s or 70s before any DGC appear but they are both young at the moment so who knows. DD has always stated very firmly that she will never have a baby.

I think there is a correlation

Even saying old has become taboo though. We now have to say 'older', which meant middle aged when I was growing up.

Yes.

My DB had his first child at the same age that our DF had his last one. DF was considered an 'older father' by my younger siblings, but that age is totally normal now.
The downside is that by the time a grandchild was born to them, my parents could not babysit because of age-related health issues.

There was a thread in style & beauty recently started by a 50-year old grandmother and people there were telling her she wasn't a grandmother at 50, that was for someone in her 80s, when she literally was a grandmother because she had grandchildren.

My nan was in her late 60s when I was born.

My mum was 42 when I had my daughter.

If DD has a child at the same age I was, I'll be a DGM at 38.

Now I look back, one of my grannies was only 53 when I was born but looked like an old woman. My other granny was 60, so an older granny.

My mum had me fairly late for the 1960s, at 30. But I had my son young, so my mum was a youngish granny (not too young though, because she wasn't a young mum).

My son was even older, having his DC in his mid 30s, so I was older as a granny than my mum was, although nowhere near 60.

I have a friend that delayed having her family until she was 40, and her son has done the same thing. Meaning she was almost 80 before becoming a granny. Nowhere near the same amount of energy and won't be around for much of the child's life. Whereas my mum wasn't much older than my friend when she became a granny.

I think the optimum age for having a baby is 25 with a similar age dad. Optimum fertility for both. Granny age of about 50, so around for a good 20-30 years of the grandchild's life and lively enough to be an active granny when they're young.

I agree, @AliBaliBee1234 I know plenty of people around 65 and older, who definitely aren't elderly (think that description is very subjective!) because of their lifestyle, some work still, the way they dress etc. I think my mother was old before her time!

From my experience of my own granny, and observing an in-law who was in her early 40s when she became a granny, I think chasing around after a toddler definitely keeps you young.

Early 50s, @CloudBuster66 and I think it's definitely down to how people behave and live their lives as to whether they fit the stereotypical view of 'elderly'. It's all subjective!

I think some of the replies show how much things have changed in a generation and a bit.
It's not too long ago that an expected path for girls was school, job, marriage and family. I think if you had been to grammar school before the comprehensive system came in, you were encouraged to stay at school, go to uni etc more than if you hadn't passed your 11+.
The range of ages of people having children at is fascinating. Things have definitely shifted as expectations of women have changed. Maybe your socioeconomic 'class' does have some influence here. If you don't have family who went onto higher education, do you even consider it as an option? Who we have as role models is really influential!

This is what really makes me think of my mother as being elderly. She was too stiff with arthritis to be able to sit in the floor and interact with the baby on their playmat etc. She struggled to walk very far and couldn't push the pram. That sort of thing. I think she had given up all hope of having grandchildren (she was the last of her circle from work and social life to become one) and her health had very much aged her.