For Getting Really Tired of being asked if I am my DD's Grandmother/caregiver

[adventuremom]

I am an older mom, 52 with a 7 year old. I have other kids the oldest being 18 and yes, my youngest was born when I was 44. In her 1st month I was stopped by a stranger and asked " who was I holding the baby for?" I have been asked am I the grandmother, the care giver and finally, this stranger looked at me and said" so you are???" Her mother damn it! It's not vanity but really, I get it, I am the older mom with some grey hairs and wrinkles but to my DD, I am Mom. I would never just go up to someone and who is overweight and ask " so who are you holding that cake for?" Ok I am done, but it happens very very often. I get it, you think I am too old for this but I view my DD as a gift and to her, I am just Mom.

*seen by foreign locum not locus

I had DC3 at 42 and I'm probably 25 years older than some of mums at the school gate but I can still give them a run for their money in the parents race on sports day.

TBH there are some mums in their 20's & 30's who are overweight and badly dressed who look as if they haven't so much as pulled a brush through their hair,let alone touched up the grey roots and I'm pretty sure that must be equally embarrassing for their DC'S.

Kids will always find their parents embarrassing and I'll bet that those who were embarrassed about their parents age would have been equally mortified by something else.

But Ruby - she is old enough to be a GM - whereas I'm too old to have children or does that jut make it worse

It happens. Easy to say, I know, but try to not let it get to you. They're strangers and their opinion is of no importance.

I don't get mistaken for granny (yet!) but I do get asked if I'm my kids mum because I'm a different colour to them. Had a dr ask me how long I'd had them. i said since the day I gave birth to them!

I've had people ask me if I'm sure

well, they were ten and a half pounds, so yeah, fairly sure I'm remembering right

Waxmytash, I dressed appropriately to drop off my dd at her new friend's house earlier and she warned me if I was invited in, I wasn't to gawp at their extension! So many ways you wouldn't even have dreamt of to embarrass your children.

"""The age you have your first DC at is certainly linked to education and to social class.""

I'm beginning to think that if I'd had a baby at 22 instead of 36, then I would have had time to get back in to the job market while still young. When I went back (to a different job) I felt I was filed under 'mum'. Oh it can all be argued both ways but I think it could have worked out for me, the ''have a baby now, sort the rest out later" approach.

Bunbaker but I would dress like that anyway? I tend to go for either jeans and slogan t-shirts or recycled sari skirts, funky leggings and boots.

All those that are assuming that older person with child = grandparent is working on the assumption that everyone has A1 fertility and is willing and able to get pregnant almost by merely thinking of it. For those of us that had issues, the feeling is that people are being rude. I hate to think how parents who have lost children feel when people come out with this stuff.

I've a friend a year younger than me (mid 40s) who has a daughter exactly the same age as mine. I've a friend of 29 who has a 10 year old. I've friends the same age as me with late teens/early 20's kids, and a friend younger who has just become a grandmother. Ultimately, never assume.

I think Pedestriana is right. It can come across as rude because it is often connected to fertility. I think that would be the case the other way around too. If you assumed a woman in her forties was the mother, she might think that was an assumption about fertility.

If I am lucky enough to be a grandmother in my forties, I would not want people to assume I'm the mother.

Aghh I accidentally put my foot in it with an older mum. In my defence she worded something strangely which made it sound as if her daughter wasn't hers! I don't think she took offence as I clumsily backtracked. It is really difficult.

I work with a woman who is in her 50s, looks late 40s and is a great grandmother already.

People are just rude. Ignore, or pretend you don't speak English.

"If you assumed a woman in her forties was the mother, she might think that was an assumption about fertility."

I wouldn't. It wouldn't occur to me. I think some people look for offence in everything.

I had DD at 41 due to fertility issues BTW.

I've been on the other side of this, my sister is 17 years younger than me so when she was a baby I would look after her quite a bit, take her for walks and round the shops etc...like an excited big sister does.
You wouldn't believe how many tuts and disapproving looks I got, people were so rude and wouldn't hold doors open for me, the way people normally do for mums with babies. Clearly they assumed she was my baby.
I felt like wearing a t-shirt with ''she's my SISTER!!!'' on it. People can be so judgemental and just jump to conclusions.

This is not the same, but when I was pregnant with ds

Sorry.

This is not the same but when I was pregnant with ds, my neighbour's dd (who is also my neighbour as she lives with her mum and dad) had just had a baby. I realised I was old enough to be ndn dd's mum, and therefore could easily be expecting my grandchild rather than second dc ..

Of course you are right bird. I guess it is not the norm to have kids that young where I am. All my friends and social circle went to Uni, graduated and got careers before they had kids, and so that is the norm for me, and what I want for my kids (though they will undoubtedly make their own mind up!). Of course you can go to Uni with a child, but you can't experience Uni in the same way as a normal Uni going 19 year old. You can travel the world with kids, but they get bored very easily, and are more interested in playing in the pool than walking the great wall of China, and its not the same as travelling the world with your mates when you are on a gap year (something I didn't do but wish I had and hope my kids get the opportunity to do so). Not everyone is made the same but I would be totally crushed if my 19 year old daughter came home and told me she was pregnant. Sorry but I would.

surely if you have your DC comparatively later in life then such comments are par for the course?

ultimately it is biologically a rarity to bear children in to your mid forties. It is much more usual to become a mother in your twenties and a GP in your forties/early fifties.

yes, yes social demographics can dictate to a degree but the biological fecundity of a woman and people's inherent perceptions of such are hardly post code dependent.

It wouldn't bother me if my DDs got pregnant young.

I'm not that fussed about travel and think it's overrated. I don't think the 'university experience' is anything to write home about either.

But I do think that motherhood is fraught enough without making daft assumptions based on the age of the woman - not the father - who carried the child.

If she loves her, who honestly cares - I don't!

Snap OP - I'm 52 and my dd is 7. I've yet to be accused of being her GM - to my face anyway

Rox19 I could answer yes to all your questions both at the grand old age of 44 and at 52. Couldn't have said yes to all of them when I was younger.

Lemonade, it's not remotely a biological rarity to have children in your mid to late forties. Before the advent of contraception, women would have gone on having children until menopause. What is new is more women having their first child in their forties.

And I think people's perceptions of 'normal' maternal age are absolutely postcode-dependent, if 'postcode' is shorthand for social class/relative prosperity. I work in a field that requires several postgraduate degrees, and often several short-term jobs before anything more permanent, which often delays people ttc, so my assumption on meeting a fifty-year old with a young child is that she's as likely to be its mother as grandmother, purely because that's my experience. It's not 'anomalous' for everyone. The friend of mine who had a child the youngest was 28, and it was an accidental pregnancy.

I looked up the stats out of interest. Here. Motherhood in the UK peaks in the 25-35 range as you'd expect (average around 30).
However when you look outside that range, roughly times more babies are born to women in their early twenties than to women in their early forties. Also as fishwives says, there were loads of women giving birth in their early forties back in the 1940s and 50s, just as many as today out of a smaller population. The difference is that nowadays some women (not the OP) have their first baby at that age.

I'm still baffled by the people who say this error is "rude". Nobody has explained what's rude about thinking a woman might have had a baby when she was twenty three or thinking that a fifty something woman is fifty something.

Unless the fiftysomething has had hugely expensive surgery to look 32 of course - then I can see why you'd be pissed off.

It happens to me frequently. I had my child using a donor. You can't will yourself not to be upset. If you are upset..... be it rational or not it is a your response. Can you (as I do) celebrate the joy of having a child that you cherish? That goes a huge way for me of outweighing the hurt/vanity whatever .... I feel when asked if I am the grandmother.

Might I suggest that some of you pop over to the FWR boards and let's talk about how outrageous it is that women are still so judged on their age and appearance? And how sad it is that some women only value themselves in terms of how youthful they look?

bertrand you're right, of course. But we live in the world we live in, not the one we'd like to live in.