The window for great-grandmothers is closing

I (and I'm sure others) call this the idiocracy bias. While your friends are mulling over the ideal age and economic circumstances to have children, there are plenty of other families not thinking about this. They're having kids in their late teens and early twenties.

That doesn't mean we're doomed to live out the idiocracy future, but it explains this blog post.

It's very anecdotal.

There are countries where the average age of first childbirth is still in the early 20s, and countries like Switzerland, where it's over 30.

Among western countries, it looks like the median age for a mother's first child has gone up about 5 years in the past 50 years, which obviously reduces the likelihood of a great-grandparent even with increasing longevity offsets, but it's still going to happen because there is a natural cap to this figure.

Some of my relatives had told their toddler "we're going to granny of your grand-dad".

Yep, that's 5 generations at once. That particular sub-branch has children later so they are a full generation ahead of my own branch, so I've told.

If you haven't read the article, it's about how people having kids later means you won't meet your great grandparents.

My mom had me when she was 23, and her mom had her at 22. I'm in my forties and still have two living grandparents, and am very grateful for them. I remember a lot of days where my grandmother watched me and my sister, and she was able to do that because she was only in her late 40's herself and plenty mobile. I knew two of my great grandmothers, one of them only dying in my teens.

Not everyone can rely on parents to help with childcare, but it is worth keeping in mind that if you wait until your mid 30's they might not be able to catch a running toddler like they could a decade earlier.

My mom also managed to have a really good career, though she went to night school when I was around 6 and worked her ass off in general. But, she had a high earning partner to support her.

I don't really have a single point here, except that I worry we've ignored the less-obvious downsides to people delaying childbearing until their mid 30's.

You see, the thing is, it's deeply classist. It's also misplaced outrage. The poors have been doing this for millenia and we still have a society that progresses rapidly and much of the heavy lifting that moves us forward is done by folks you and others here are denigrating. If they believe the things you disparage it's because the governments and systems that the "smart" and wealthy have created have utterly failed at getting those people educated and involved.

Using your education to feel better than others doesn't serve us to advance as a society. I suggest that if you're as smart as you think you are then you find a way to frame the issue such that you're lifting up those people and not punching down.