To think asking people if they have grandchildren is like asking if they are pregnant - just don't!

[Liesmorelies]

I was talking to a colleague last week and she suddenly asked if I had grandchildren. I think she already knew I had children but not their ages - I don't know her well and we weren't discussing our children at the time.

It really took me aback and, I admit, offended me a bit. I'm 49 and have been told a few times I look younger. Not because I'm so attractive (I'm not!) but my skin is pretty good and no grey hair and, while I'm quite insecure about my looks, looking older than I am is not among them. Or wasn't. It is now.

I know you can have gc at 49 but it's quite unusual and no one where I work who is the same age as me has gc- all have dc around the same age as mine (late teens).

If someone was clearly in their 40s/50s but I wasn't sure of their age I just wouldn't ask it unless I knew for a fact they had adult dc, just like I wouldn't ask if someone was pregnant just because their figure suggested they might be!

It also makes me worry that she was being a bit snide, which is also an upsetting thought.

I think that depends where you live @LikeWhoUsesTypewritersAnyway. If you live in London, people often think you’re the babysitter or nanny if you have kids in your 20s (where I live at least). I got married at 30 and the most common question we got asked was why we were getting married so young. Both by younger people and people much older than us! We had people in their 50s and 60s telling us we had our whole lives ahead of us. Whereas at home where I am from, people assumed I was 24 because I hadn’t bought a property (I was 36). It’s location dependent in a way. Now my friends who are all late 30s with newborns do all live where I am from. And my sisters friends are all either child free or are having babies at 40 for the first time.

I only ask those in their 70s or 80s if I see evidence of grandchildren, ie seeing them in a care home and multiple pictures of young children around. Generally I ask more generic questions like do you have any family, as I work in the NHS and have encountered it all - offending people, making people tearful etc with these topics, it’s just being sensitive. Of course you might offend someone sometimes, but you should really be striving not to offend people I think. Within reason of course.

Exactly. The late 40s early 50 year olds picking kids up at my dcs primary are 9 times out of 10 gps

Its not though. As already mentioned on this thread. If you Google it the average age is 49. Some older some younger.

Apart from 2 people I work with who don't yet have kids at 33 and 34, every friend or colleague, uni education or not has had kids in their 20s making their parents GPS in their late 40s early 50s. Me and DP included. My next door neighbours and next door but one neighbours included.

@K0OLA1D fair enough, but that isn’t my experience of the experience of any of my peers! And I’ve worked in primary schools for years too. It doesnt mean they are.

My grandparents were also at least mid 60s when I was born in the 80s. So my mum was in her 40s picking me up from school.

So I’m not saying you’re wrong but you aren’t completely right. It’s different for everyone! And thats okay. I would be offended by the question and you wouldn’t; that’s okay too. Doesn’t mean you’re right or I am wrong. It’s a difference of experience and opinion. That’s what life is all about.

Well you’ve posted this on a public forum so people are going to give their opinion and not everyone’s is going to be agreeing with you. Did you honestly think that everyone was going to say yes you are right? Saying no one you know is a grandmother at 49 maybe true for you but it isn’t the norm for all people which is you got the comments that you did. Would maybe think about how you word things in future if you’re going to be on MN.

For those talking about the average age being 49, that is worked out by some being very young and some being older and then it is the middle number, it doesn’t mean it’s the most common age… I had an uncle who had kids at 16 and his kids had kids at 16 so he was 32 as a grandparent. Average that to my granny’s age (other granny) of late 60s being the first time grandparent and you’ll get something in the middle which is around 49.

I don't mean to be rude @Catinthereallysmallhat but did you actually read the post you quoted? I said I have found MN useful for looking at things from a different angle - does that suggest I only want people to agree? I don't think so. It's just that I haven't found many of the posts on this thread particularly useful. I said in the OP I know I could be a grandmother, yet people piled on to tell me I could be a grandmother! I know that - it wasn't my point. The thread went on a tangent that I didn't find very helpful, which is ok and obviously lots of people were interested in the direction it went in. I think I worded the OP fine but obviously I couldn't control the way it went, and that is obviously the nature of MN and that's fine - you can't win them all!

To be fair, I found it useful when people pointed out that she just sees me as older than her - I'm sure that's right, and also she might have had her kids a bit younger than I had mine (I think - I don't know hers or theirs precise ages) and therefore she might assume that mine are older than they are.

The whole first chunk of this thread was people saying that younger (under 30s) mums were reckless/socially deviant/unambitious/small minded/uneducated. It would undoubtedly have had a different tone if it had been older mums saying "I wish I could have started a family that young but it wasn't an option". Instead it was implied or outright stated that a younger grandmother was somehow inferior or that it would be "offensive" for someone to think they could be a 50 year old grandmother.

But if people are going to cheerily insult younger mums in every direction then quite rightly people are going to explain that none of those (quite nasty) stereotypes are correct.

I did think this too @OP, young people look at older people and just see a generic older person 😂 when I was 20 I thought 30 was old. So she probably does just see it that way. And she may grow older and be offended at such a question herself! Who knows. I don’t find these threads very helpful though, people just seem to get really irate for no reason. It can’t be a discussion it has to be very accusatory and gets nasty very quickly for no good reason.

Plus of course there will be the grandparents who are actually in their 60s but look like they are in their 50s... The op doesn't have a monopoly on looking "youthful". It's generally pretty hard to place someone's age. And age isn't just judged on skin and hair etc but about how we dress/act etc

It can be quite upsetting, if you wanted, but don't have DC or if you have DC who for one reason or another don't have and are unlikely to have DC of their own. A subject best left alone, unless the other person talks about GC.

It can’t be average because the average age of a first time mum is 30 or 31.

I don’t think it’s anything to do with age, and I’m surprised people are bothered by that, I’d just rather not discuss the fact my daughter had medical issues and is highly unlikely to have children.

Well of course she’s going to see you as older if you are older. How old was she? If she is say 30, then yes that’s almost a 20 year gap. And her mother could be your age. It doesn’t mean anything. She may be use to grandparents being younger. Who knows?

Is this you on another post? Please don’t feel the need to get surgery over a comment, if this is you.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5345826-to-want-to-accept-that-sadly-i-look-older-than-my-age?page=2

This is very true @K0OLA1D! I am 37 and people often think I am a lot younger I think mainly because I’m very short and I have a fringe which stealthily hides all my wrinkles around my forehead and eyes (as I noticed people stopping thinking this during Covid when I had no fringe trims and was wearing a facemask so all you could see were the wrinkles! I promptly stopped getting ID’d). But some people look a lot older and some younger. So it is hard to tell if they are younger grandparents or older parents or whatever. We probably often assume based on what we know, ie I would assume they might be the mum and you might assume GP on some occasions as we have had different experiences!

I didn’t read the angry parts of the thread - I skipped ahead as I can’t be bothered with all the angry tones no matter who they are pointed at. Snappy comments I skip past. But fair that the thread took the turn it did because people were perhaps being offended. But just serves for everyone to maybe realise what they were saying was offensive to people with different experiences than them and perhaps think twice in future! Same for the young girl in OPs original post. It seems on here people are so quick to try to prove that they are right instead of being open to having their perspective altered which is frustrating. It’s all just opinion and everyone is entitled to it. I previously would’ve thought it incredibly rare that people are grandparents at 49 but now I know it isn’t! I would still low key be offended by it though 😂

I’m 65 and am only just expecting our first grandchild . It has taken lots of fertility investigations and a miscarriage which obviously I wasn’t going to tell people about so I had been finding the have you got grandchildren questions a bit awkward to be honest.

Also some quite ageist comments from the older mothers

😅No that isn't me @Catinthereallysmallhat I haven't read it but I can see the poster is considering surgery - not a chance I would do that. Not how I'd choose to spend money and definitely not based on this comment!

I don’t know what you mean about myth to wait until you’re 37, as to me, the real myth is that you CAN’T get pregnant at 37 and the whole “fertility falls off a cliff after 35” business, judging by the number of women who find themselves accidentally pregnant in their 40s after they got complacent about contraception. It isn’t teenagers having abortions in greater numbers these days…

You don’t understand how averages work, do you?

Also, just to add, some UK stats don’t consider middle age to be until 50-60 these days! So to me being is your 40s is still very youthful, hence why I wouldn’t assume someone is a grandparent in their 40s. My hairdresser is 47 and I honestly have always thought he was younger than me, particularly with his lifestyle. I nearly choked when he told me his age. And he doesn’t have any kids yet but plans to. Working with elderly people I would consider anyone dying in their 70s to be dying very young as the majority of my patients are 80s and 90s, I’ve also had a large number of 100 year olds with the oldest being 107! All of this would skew my viewpoint on the topic.

@Crushed23 here, here! Most of my friends got pregnant in their first try around 35, 36, 37. I do know others that have had IVF but I equally know people in their 20s and early 30s who have gotten IVF or had to try a long time.

I personally have fertility issues but these were identified in my early 30s and were longstanding and aren’t related to my current age. My fertility issues actually the same scores wise on tests from back then. But having kids before 37 just wasn’t an option for me - I was renting and had to change jobs a lot to get the experience I needed to earn a bit more money to get a house and it was all not the stable environment I would want to bring a child into. I also, to be honest, didnt have any interest! I could’ve done IVF and frozen my eggs a long time ago but we didn’t think we wanted children at all. I’ve been with my husband 15 years. We have decided we do want kids now but if it doesn’t work then we will be okay with that seeing as we have already planned a life of no kids for all this time. So the 37 year olds missing out because they waited isn’t an experience that I am familiar with either! To be fair, the only person who ever told me this was the friend I had who had kids in her early 20s. She said that we would regret not doing it like her, which was frustrating because none of us were anything but supportive of her life which was very different to ours at that time! We didn’t say ‘you’ll regret being a young mum,’ we were just supportive of her doing what she wanted and being happy. Sadly she couldn’t be the same for us and she ultimately left the group.

Whoops forgot to tag the person above saying they are expecting their first grandchild and I can’t remember the name, but congrats to you! That’s very exciting. And sorry to hear about the fertility struggles. It can be so challenging.

Yes indeed.

Yes indeed.