To ask you how older mothers REALLY think about younger mothers

[Flyingfish2019]

I am much younger than most of the mothers of my children’s friends and look even younger than I am. I wonder how other mums think of that.

I was pregnant with my first at 16 and with my last at 36, so I have been both. I think the mothers at either end of the scale worry about how other parents look at them - do they think I'm a teenage Trollop/ my kids grandma sort of thing😁
I think very young mums have a bit of a chip in their shoulder about being judged though. I did. And I think it's mostly unwarranted, few other parents really care.

I feel a mix of jealousy and gratefulness.

Jealous that they probably have more energy, less worries, more time on average with their children and potential GC and they'll still have good amount of time for a career and enjoying life when their kids are grown up.

Also grateful for my 20s spent partying, making friends, travelling, getting valuable work experience at a time when the jobs market wasn't quite so competitive.

Sorry, how exactly am I judging anyone?! All I highlighted was that travel, career, fun etc does not NEED to stop if you have children in your 20s.
I can assure you that I’m perfectly secure in my life choices and also pointed out that it doesn’t bother me in the slightest whether people choose to have their children in their 20s/30s/40s.
Slight overreaction to my point, I think.

On here the general opinion seems to be that a young mum is anyone in their 20's? I would consider a young mum to be 21 or under. My good friends are 32-45(I'm 33) with the younger ones 32-34 having the oldest children (13-15 plus younger ones) and being the more confident and experienced mothers of the group despite the fact we would have been considered very young having our children.

I don't feel judged now, in fact I quite like the fact that people look shocked when I say that my children are 14 and 11 (every one tells me I look mid 20's), or get mistaken for one of the kids when I help out at shows!

As I said in my first post though, I do think that some people make assumptions about young mums and I did meet with some judgments when they were young.

One of dd1's friends parents are 58 and 64, we're friendly and she said she would never have planned to have children so late, it's just the way it worked out for them. They are good parents in the same way that DP and I are good parents. They don't have as much energy or patience as us, but they were more financially secure from the start than we were and there fore their kids have had a lot of opportunities that way (we are pretty secure financially now, but we weren't when they were small).

Sorry, should have pointed out that my response above was to thedisorganisedmum

Who cares?! I've been a teenage mum and I've got a 18 year age gap with my youngest I don't think anything.

I had my (only) child at 22. I'm now 35 with a 13 year old but look about ten years younger than I am so I get some bemused expressions when it comes up in conversation that I have a teenager!
I love being a younger mum and feel very in tune with my child; we have very similar interests (music, fashion, social media etc) which I think has a lot to do with my age. Her friends talk to me openly and I think that is also due to the fact that I seem to relate to them.

I think I'm a sort of medium aged mum - I was 31 when DS was born - and I don't give it much thought. My mum friends range from 22 to 43 and this has come up in exactly one conversation where we all shared our ages and were quite surprised at how big the range was, precisely because it didn't feel it!

The one thing I do think is a slightly strange contradiction is how many people say that if you have children at 20 you'll be 'free' at 40, but also that you'll have much more help from your parents. In my experience (one half of my extended family is like this) families where everyone has children around 20 the women aren't 'free' of childcare at 40 (the men are, though), they're starting a particularly intense period of doing loads of childcare while also still working.

I don't really understand this thread at all. It's like asking what do blonde mums think of brunette mums

Fuck All OP.

There are definitely people who have looked down on me because of my age, I also look younger than I am. I had my first at 19, second at just turned 21, 3rd just before I was 30. Best thing that ever happened to me having my children young and I know they are well behaved and doing well at school.

To be honest I kind of think it's more... Natural? To have kids younger, that is.

Life is currently structured around education, then setting yourself up in a career and enjoying yourself, then having kids. But I have a friend who started at 21, has 3, and they're all in or approaching school age. She had great family support, so could mix her education and motherhood, and is now hitting her thirties with more stamina and freedom than the rest of us. She's a band 5 nurse, so it hasn't held back her career, and she and her partner cooperate well so that they have a great social life too. By the age of 45, they'll all be over 18.

So I have to say that even though I didn't choose that path myself, I envy the neatness of her life!

She had great family support, so could mix her education and motherhood, and is now hitting her thirties with more stamina and freedom than the rest of us. She's a band 5 nurse, so it hasn't held back her career, and she and her partner cooperate well so that they have a great social life too. By the age of 45, they'll all be over 18.

But this is what I mean - surely if her kids have children at the same age and she also offers 'great family support' then she's not going to be child-free at 45, she'll be starting a new and pretty gruelling second shift? I can see the theory of why it all works out better to start young, but in practice it's not the women who had their babies at 20 who have cushy lives in my experience - but then, ON AVERAGE, they tend to have started with fewer advantages in the first place.

Lol at 'what they REALLY think!!!' like it's some HOT TOPIC

they don't think anything.

most groups of parent friends are all different ages

and even aside from that, differences in parenting style/lives/likes/dislikes that make for chat or gossip would be more likely to be down to other factors not age - finances, education etc.

NEWSFLASH! is that there is NO NEWSFLASH

I don't really think anything. Other than that they might find the physical lack of sleep running around after a toddler etc less exhausting than me. I think they must look at me and wonder why I waited so long. Which I wonder myself sometimes! I guess I wonder if maybe they feel like they might miss out on partying their way through their 20's....but then when I think about it I realise they will have their 'life back' at 40 and be able to do whatever they want from then on.

I guess, like anyone, it depends on their circumstances as well. If they were settled and wanted a family it's a bit different to a 16 year old who had a baby which was mainly looked after by the grandparents if they all lived together.

Some of my friends had a baby over 10 years before I had my first. We are still friends. To be honest I look back and wish I'd been more supportive,at the time I didn't realise how hard and how life changing it was so it must have been hard for them

What do you think about older mothers? What do you imagine they think about you?

Only thing I think is I wonder how much more energy younger mum's have than me or are we all just knackered haha x

I'm a younger mum at 25 with a 4 year old and a 1 year old. I don't know How anyone keeps up with young kids when they are older than me, I'm beat as it is 😂

I had my first at 20 so was a younger mum. I made loads of mum friends, most of whom were about 10-15 years older than me. I met people at baby groups that I'm still friends with now, 19 years later. I hope they didn't have any negative feelings towards me, they certainly didn't show it off they did. They helped me with some things, like offering me second hand furniture when I moved into my first flat with DD, moving out from my parents house, or looking after DD on odd occasions when I needed to be at uni and my childcare fell through. I helped them with other things, like babysitting sometimes (DD was portable and I didn't have a partner to worry about), or taking their dc1 to activities when their dc2 was a small baby (I used to take a friend's DD to toddler swimming with me every week for about 6 months). We were friends, so that's what friends do, age doesn't come into it.

My second DD came along when I was 30, so no longer a younger mum, but not an older mum either. My friends with children the same age as dd2 ranged in age from 21-48 at the time of giving birth. I've stayed friends with the older mums from that group, but that's not because I thought anything about the age of them, I just had more in common with those particular women. And my life is busier now, so I have fewer close friends.

The only things I sometimes think about really young mums (teen-agers) is "I wonder how she's coping". Because i know I wouldn't have coped at 16/17/18. I barely coped at 20, and that was living with my parents who gave a massive amount of support. And I am glad dd1 has not gone down that road of being a very young mum, as it does mean you miss out on things.

I had my first at 23 and my last at 40. I don’t care how old anybody is when they become a mum, I don’t judge.

We are all in the same boat, trying our best.

I usually think, 'god I look old'.

I’ve definitely had judgements about being a young parent but I wasn’t that young really, just appeared so. Two clear occasions were both grandmother age and one I was able to clear up her misconception. I remember trying to join the pta but they weren’t keen and didn’t bother getting in touch after meeting me. I haven’t bothered since and went back to work. It felt more they weren’t interested in me, preferring to keep to people of a similar age, while other people have had to clarify who I was - sister, childcare. I had one very snotty mother comment on my second pregnancy after she had mistaken me for a teenager weeks earlier (I was late twenties, married, mortgaged, DH higher tax band salary and I’d got a good degree, career and travelled a lot beforehand).

I remember trying to join the pta but they weren’t keen and didn’t bother getting in touch after meeting me. I haven’t bothered since and went back to work. It felt more they weren’t interested in me

Yeah, but how do you know it was because of your age though? I’ve had similar brush offs by other mums, loads of times, btw and I’m a very boring age for having dcs.

I don’t assume it’s because of what makes me different from them; I’m not originally British. I just think they’re a bit cliquey and closed minded 🤷‍♀️. You’ll get that everywhere sadly.

I don't think anything of other mothers. Too busy trying to keep work and home going to have thoughts like that!

I'd feel sad for a school age mum in the same way that I do for first time mums in their 40: what an ordeal!

I remember a FB from a young mum (her words) asking for friendly playgroups because she felt horribly unwelcome in the ones she had tried so far.

I was going to these groups, I don't know what she was expecting, the organiser was very friendly at the entrance, people would make small talks with each other around the drink table. No, there wasn't a welcome committee. On this occasion, it was all in her head though, no one cared if she was 18 or 45, and treated her exactly the same.

Sometimes it really is just in your head.

I really don't care how old or young a mum is, so long as they are friendly all is good.