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.

My mum had a degree by 21 then was a SAHM with children then got another degree in her early thirties, followed by a professional career and in her 40s a masters degree and more career success. She was a granny twice by 50. She's very upper middle class. All her children are successful professionals with degrees too

(Not that people are somehow lesser if they don't have degrees, but clearly some people cannot compute that having children young isn't a blocker to professional success)

My mum had a degree by 21 then was a SAHM with children then got another degree in her early thirties, followed by a professional career and in her 40s a masters degree and more career success. She was a granny twice by 50. She's very upper middle class. All her children are successful professionals with degrees too

(Not that people are somehow lesser if they don't have degrees, but clearly some people cannot compute that having children young isn't a blocker to professional success)

I wouldn’t ask anyone at that age! People in their late forties can have kids who are starting their own families or can have kids starting primary school! Far too wide a range at that age to be asking like it’s “normal” to be a grandparent. In my circle it’s definitely unusual, people I work with and am friends with average a first baby from 32-36.

1 in 5 sounds like quite a lot to me? And half of women have had a baby by 30. Having a baby in your 20s isn't really unlikely.

I am so confused by the classist comments on this thread. We are not taking about teenage pregnancies. Having kids in your 20s is perfectly reasonable. There are loads of benefits to having kids younger - a massive one being that you likely get more time with them and they’re more likely to know their grandparents. In fact I know lots of young children now who likely will have lasting memories of their great grandparents and I think that’s pretty cool.

There are benefits to waiting too of course - on a personal level I’m glad I waited until my 30s as I am more financially stable and more mature. That’s because I was a bit of a mess in my 20s - some people grow up quicker than I did.

I wish I’d been ready to have kids in my 20s. I changed career only a few years ago so if I’d had my head screwed on from the start and was ready to settle down, I could easily have been in a good position to have kids 10 years earlier.

I am dreading losing my mum one day. Now I’m an adult and have my own child, I value family relationships more than ever and I wish I had all the time in the world with them.

I don’t judge people having kids later either but it can’t be unreasonable to say that each generation having kids 40 years apart instead of 20 does make a big difference in that way. There are other factors that might outweigh sheer number of years spent together, but some people are definitely ready for kids in their 20s so why wait?

As do you 🤭

Of course it's normal. Having children in your 20s is completely normal

If you were young enough that the only way you could be a grandmother would be if you and/or your child became parents as teenagers, I could understand potentially being offended. But that’s not the situation here. You could easily have grandchildren if, say, you’d had a baby at 23 and that child became a parent at 24. Those are normal adult ages.

Except it really would be unusual for someone at 35 to be a grandmother, it would involve at least one teen pregnancy. It would be an odd thing to ask. The only reason to be offended though would be if someone was assuming there were teen pregnancies for no reason, or mistaking the age of the person, thinking they were a good deal older.

The OP however is at a totally reasonable age to be a grandmother, even if it is less common than it used to be, and even if some have young kids at that age. (In the past people often had young kids, and were also grandmothers, at 49.)

So why would the OP be offended?

I suspect the real reason is because she's uncomfortable with the fact tat she is old enough to be a grandmother. But she is, and there isn't anything wrong with being 49.

So where is it offensive? Does she think they are implying she is a chav? Because that would be more offensive than the question by a lot.

This. There's pros and cons to each. I had my children when I was 21, 23 and 24. My sister has had her first at 34.

I'm glad I had mine young in terms of energy and time with them. But I didn't really start maturing until I was around 29. I wasn't as financially well off as I am now either.

My sister is older with a newborn and she has had a fantastic life and has built a nice life to raise her baby in. But she's knackered now and she's going to be 50 with a 16 year old and I'll be 50 with a 26 year old 😅

Well that's certainly true 😁 But then you don't have the same adventures as when you're in your 20s (and you wouldn't want to either). All I'm saying is it would be quite rare for someone to plan to have a baby at 25 now, fully accept that was more normal 40 or so years ago. It's rare for me to come across anyone in their 40s with adult children, let alone grandchildren.

I had DC quite late in life. I was out at a soft play many years ago and some random woman came up to me and said something about taking the grandchildren out. I said "I don't have grandchildren - I'm the mother" and instead of just saying "ok" or anything similar, she said "Are you sure?"

Yes lots of women my age have grandchildren. But equally lots don't. How about instead of making assumptions we just keep conversation sensible.
So, you have grandchildren and the other person doesn't, or you don't know if they do - you could say, "My grandchildren love [xyz]" which gives the other person time to contribute with "so do mine" or "My kids love it - I don't have grandchildren" or whatever else is necessary.

🤣🤣🤣 are you sure, I'm pretty sure you know who did and didn't come out of your vagina

I can’t think of anything I wanted to do in my 20s that I didn’t want to do in my 30s or 40s. Quite the reverse - the thought of doing a skydive would have appalled me in my 20s, I absolutely loved it when I finally did it.

According to gov.uk average age of a first time grandparent is 49, so actually yes it is the 'norm'. Presumably because 20 years ago it was more usual to have children in your early 20's. As the trend now is to have children later in life that norm will presumably start to increase.

Oh for sure there are always some people who have them young. I know a woman who had six starting at 21 between degree and postgrad. And I’m not ascribing a value to any choice (I don’t have any children myself and I’m delighted others do cos we need them). But it’s not the norm in the degree, work for a few years, get married around 30 track, was my point, which is a lot of MN. It’s a lot more so, elsewhere. I remember going camping aged about 32 with a boyfriend, in Northumberland. We had this massive bell tent, no kids, no pets, just us. And everyone else there seemed to be families with at least 2 kids, often 3 or 4. And most of the parents were younger than us. Or our age. And I could tell
they didn’t know quite what to make of us. And in return I felt quite immature. But it was noticeably massively demographically different from our life in the south east. I don’t think that’s a particularly horrendous thing to say.

Yes, but surely people are not so blinkered that they don't know that many people have children in their 20s?

That is just not weird or unusual.

Why would the OP assume that her work colleague's social circle is the same as her own?

People need to broaden their perspective a bit.

There are definitely regional differernces, which I suspect have a lot to do with cost of living. People in very hig CoL areas tend to be longer before feeling secure enough to have families.

And there are also things that creep in with income and class. For people who are going for expensive professional degrees, there can be a real push for them to do that younger and delay kids while establishing a career after that.

That often makes sense for people with no spouse, however I do think that for many women a better model would actually be to have kids earlier and push education a little later, and then establish a career, and I wish people would allow for more flexibility around those things. (Of course if you are very wealthy you will have more options around this stuff.)

If you are in a trade on the other hand you may well be done your training and into work, maybe even owning a home, by your mid 20s. And with other kinds of jobs there may be no particular benefit to waiting to have children in terms of your career so why wait to have them until you are older?

But people saying that anyone having kids in their 20s is some kind of uneducated low class person is really ignorant. They are probably mainly people who live a very narrow life, tbh, and only know people just like themselves.

A little, maybe it is better if we all never ask anyone anything and op how do you know you haven't said something in conversation that someone else then turns into some dramatic thing?

No it isn’t!! The average age of a first time mother in the UK is 30. Therefore on average you’d expect that a woman of 40 might have a ten year old and perhaps some younger children. It would be a rarity to find someone whose mother had children very early AND had done the same themselves and become a grandmother at 40, not remotely the norm or a question that anybody of 40 would expect to be asked. It’d be more likely for a woman of 40 to have a toddler child of her own than a grandchild!

You need to calm down love. The op is nearly 50, which is no spring chicken and is at the age where yes can be a grandmother. If you read the thread there are PLENTY of posters on here that had their kids in their 20s, and mothers were grandmothers on their late 40s. So hardly rare. Just because it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. The op is sensitive because she thinks she’s old. Your opinion isn’t fact. Louder for the dense people at the back 👍🏼

I’m not your “love” and nor do I need to “calm down”. Who are you, David Cameron?

It’s irrelevant what people have posted. Of course a thread like this will attract people who can’t distinguish between their personal life story and statistics (or appropriate and inappropriate manners, it seems). Anecdotes from self-righteous angry people do not constitute statistics.

I referred to the statistical facts based on UK demographic data. In fact, actually the average first time mother in the UK is now 31, not 30 (I just double checked the stats and it’s risen from last time I looked at this data). So, on average (even accounting for the fact the average age of birth of first child has continued to rise in recent decades) it wouldn’t be reasonable to assume someone might be a grandmother until they are in their late-50s at least (and that would be if they were, for example, out on a trip with the first child of their first child).

As I said, statistically it is far, far more likely that a woman seen with a small child who is in their 40s is the mother than the grandmother. Being a grandmother in your 40s in the UK is a rarity these days (although there may well be more prevalence in some geographical areas/ social circles than others) and therefore to ask a complete stranger in their 40s if they are a grandmother is rude because it’s unlikely to be the case, and most grandmothers would be much, much older than that. These are statistical facts. And that’s aside from it being rude and intrusive and potentially insensitive to ask such personal questions to someone you’ve just met, anyway.

As is calling people dense because your personal experiences don’t happen to correlate to national statistical data, or accepted social norms in terms of polite conversation.

You seem rather put out by this question and mention you have been told you look younger. Could this be about vanity and turning 50? It was not unusual to be a grandparent in your late 40s a couple of generations before yours when people had children sooner. My mum was a nana only a few months after turning 50. My sibling's child was born when they were 20, but they had left home at 18 and been working full time. Your colleague might have simply been making conversation and 49 is so close to 50. It isn't unusual to be grandparents in your 50s. My sibling's child was almost 20 when she gave birth and made my sibling a grandparent at 39. They were angry initially their daughtee was having a baby at only 19, but the LO is adored and my niece's sibling is married and had a baby at 25 making my sibling a grandparent again.

This is one of those things where our responses depend entirely on the norm in your family and the people you know.
I'm 53 and was asked similarly by a colleague last year if I had grandchildren and I definitely had a WTF moment as the norm in my family is to become grandparents in your 60s and, among my friendship group I was one of the first to have a child at 30. So I definitely needed to, in Mumsnet terms, give my head a wobble and realise that the woman wasn't being nasty just asking a question based on her own experience. But yeah, I understand the WTF moment

Yes! I see what you mean about your background….the late Queen Elizabeth was 50 when she became a grandmother for the first time!