to feel a little cheesed and/or degraded when someone calls you a 'young mum'...'Oooo your a young mother arent you?' Grrrrr

[adamandbump]

Grrrrrr I'm 24 (soon to be 25) and been commented on 'being a young mum' gets to me....why are people quick to label me as a young mum just because other people, nowadays, are choosing to have children later on in life?

I mean, back in their 'olden days' they were getting married at 19/20 and having masses of children at 21 so why is it so special to comment on me being a young mum?

Do you hear them saying to others 'ooo your an old mum' or 'your a granny mum!' Errrr no! So why try and make me feel inferior and like a nothing by stating the obvious that 1. I am young 2. I am a mother and impending mother to my bump.

I have no idea why these comments affect me so deeply despite trying to work it out. All I know that if I comment on them like 'you look too old to be a mum' or 'crikey your an old mum' - I'd get the daggers!! (I have never said those things as its too disrespectful and I appreciate ppl have kids at diff times).

So spare a thought for us 'young mothers' when jumping to categorise and stereotype us or else you might just get several daggers! lol.

Rant officially over. (Phew!) X

mumbar it is actually quite nice to know that the same thing happens to others, that im not alone i guess...sorry if thats a bit selfish!

mmm you are a funny one arent you!

When DD was a baby, I was in Boots with her, and a couple of old cows women were in the queue behind me.
They ranted on to each other but obviously at me about teen mothers, quite pointedly.

I turned around to them, smiled sweetly and said, 'thank you, I'm 24', and walked out serenely.

why thank you skye

I am 26 (had first at 23) and I am seen as quite an old mum. here. I am one of the oldest mums at nursery. 25 is definitely not a young mum.

It would never occur to me to think that 24 was particularly young tbh. And isn't the only reason that around 35 is classed as older because statistics and risk factors go up etc?

Maybe you just look fantastically youthful which you'll be glad of one day!

Yeah I always joke I am an oap mum compared to all the other mums I know. Also my mum had me at 30 and stopped at 34 and always said she was very old to have children and told me to start younger. That is one of the reasons I started younger but I still dont think I started young enough compared to everyone else.

Tbh, I think that that this is just about being young with or without children. If you work in your early 20s you are often the young/inexperienced one at work and some older people do point it out while for others it is just not an issue worth talking about.

Also, age just seems to matter more to some people than to others - I have friends a year older who honestly seem to think that it confers a tremendous amount of extra knowledge and experience onto them and others who don't think it is relevant at all Not that each year of a person's life is irrelevant -life does teach you lots of thing with each year including not to care so much about comments that are at best unhelpful and at worst derogatory. Enjoy being young, enjoy your children and try not to take every comment made about your age to heart, believe me one of the benefits of getting older is learning to tune out the crap that other people say!

I needed this thread today...

24, TTC#1 and suddenly having second thoughts about it all.

So 24 is not young. Excellent.

It's just a change in culture, my mum was 28 when she had my elder sister as DC1, and she was referred to as a geriatric mother!
People will always comment in any given situation. I'm 29 and pregnant with DC1, but people assume I'm younger (lovely, lovely genes - thanks mum!).

I'm 24, was 23 when DS was born, but I look a lot younger, so when I was pregnant, people would look at me and roll their eyes (in fact one lady pointedly looked me up and down, tutted loudly, and went back to reading her copy of the Daily Fail) or bitch to their friends about teen mothers scrounging off the state.

It used to upset me, but TBH, I don't have the time or the energy to give a shit any more. I'd spend so long thinking, "how fucking dare they! I'm not a teen mother, and besides, I bet a lot of teen mothers aren't such judgemental aresholes. Narrow-minded bastards. Grrrrr."
It's tiring having that internal monologue running through your head five times a day, and I'm very lazy, so it was easier just to let it go.

If they want to think I'm a useless young mum, scrounging off the state, then they can think like that, makes no difference to me. I found that once I stopped caring, I stopped noticing. People may still look me up and down and judge me, but I just don't see it any more.

twopeople
I was same age as you with my first - also engaged, also planned, thankfully my GP said no such thing to me! I think the nurse asked 'was the baby planned' and we were very smiley and said yes. but I would expect a woman of any age would be asked that? don't they make a note of whether it was contraceptive failure etc?

I don't think 24 is 'young' per se, younger than average but not actually young IYSWIM.

there's just so many factors, your relationship, income, maturity... don't see why it matters. age is just a number to me - but then it should be, DH is 18 years older than me!

I had DD1 at 19, DD2 and 22 and DD3 at 24 - I got this every single time but I learnt by the time I was expecting DD3 not to let it bother me, instead I got huge satisfaction of telling people I already had 2 other children and watching them try and furiously back peddle and think of something positive to say

Twopeople - I had a similar reaction from the midwife when I was expecting a baby at 42 - she actually asked me 'do you want to keep it?'

Blimey - try being a new mum at 44. People think I'm DD's gran or something!

Twopeople and Maths Mad, I know I was young when I had my first, but I too had some choice comments from health professionals! When I called the doctors to get the results of my pregnancy test, the receptionist's exact words were "It's positive, I'm afraid". I mean, I wasn't exactly bowled over, but there really was no reason for the "I'm afraid"!

Family planning clinic, after ds born: "Do you live with your boyfriend?" erm, yes. "Is he the baby's father?" Erm, yes. (Oh I forget, silly me, I'm a 'young mum', I must have slept with countless men!) I really do wonder if these kinds of things are asked of an 'older' mother (whatever that is).

I do love being the token young mum amongst the school parents now I'm 30 though. They've all been great, I get the odd comment in a good humoured way, but really no one's batted an eyelid. As I said earlier I'll be worried when it stops!

At the family planning clinic, the nurse asked me "is this good news, or bad news?"
I said good, and she smiled and said congratulations. In her job, I suppose she always has to ask. You risk offending many people if you just assume.

"Is this good news or bad news?" Seems like a more neutral way of asking, I don't think I would have minded that.

Ragwort I see that insensitivity isn't confined only to those of us at one end of the age spectrum.

I think that's one of the interesting things, it seems to me that what is considered 'the right age' to become a mother is perhaps getting tighter and tighter than it was in previous years, so if you have a child outside of that narrow window, older or younger, it seems to provoke more comment than it might have done before.

My Mother had me at 36.... I remember constantly being asked as a child if she was my Grandmother. She also looked old for her age. At 13 when she turned 50 I was teased a fair bit about having a Mother so old. It was horrendous as a child when all my friends Mother's had had them at 23-26ish.

It did lead me to me being very very embarrassed of my Mother, never having friends over etc. I would have killed to have had a Mother like my friends who turned 40 when my friend was 16!

This all meant I had DS in my middle 20's, so I get called 'young Mum'! It's hard to get the timings right. I sometimes wonder he'll be embarrassed that DH and I were in our 20's, but I hope not!

I got this last week but loved it. Largely because am now 47 and dd1 is 14, but they thought I'd had her early 20s

So what is the 'right' age according to society then?

Not that I plan to change my reproductive plans to fit with what society wants but I would be interested to find out...

My mother was a 'geriatric' mother in the 80s and was 40 when my brother was born. That seems a lot more normal now.

I'm starting to feel a bit miffed that I haven't had any young mum comments! I've recently turned 24 and about to pop with dc1. I must look old for my age

I've found people were more surprised (and likely to comment about my age) about me being married at 21 than pregnant at 23

Lap it up. I had two children by the time I was 23 but then i had another at 29 and everyone thought I was 'old' you can't win

24 (soon to be 25) is not young..I had 3 dc by age 26.