My grandfather was born in 1904, his son (my father) was born in 1941, I was born in 1979, my son in 2020. Great-grandparents have been out of the picture for awhile on my side of the family.
The window for great-grandmothers is closing
111–120 of 494 posts
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#112If 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 plen…
The wording here is a bit odd, almost like blaming people for delaying childbearing. The world is complicated and a number of factors have produced this outcome in the developed world. My parents were factory workers and they encouraged me to study a university degree as a sure way to a successful career. I finished my degree well into my 20s, but then the economic collapse of 2008 happened and I spent several years…
I don't blame people, just noting that at least in my own youth all I heard were reasons to wait.
Good luck! Funny enough my wife and I are from the US and we waited until we knew our kids would have EU citizenship before having them. And raising kids without a support network sucks, I can't pretend otherwise.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#113If 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 plen…
The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child. I'll leave it to my children on how it turned out in my 30s. Generally I'd expect older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally regulate, which is a really critical ability when dealing with the 4th day of 3 hours of sleep and a colicky baby (for example). Also no point. But…
It's complicated. It's definitely true that we're less mature in our 20s than we are in our 30s. But, also, maturity doesn't just accumulate on us like growth rings. You can easily be a completely immature thirty-something if you don't have the kind of challenging life experiences that cause maturity.
Probably the number one life experience that increases maturity is having kids. If you'd had kids younger, you would have grown up faster too and earned some of the maturity needed to raise them well earlier.
Of course, there's an obvious counter-argument that no one should deliberately have children as a tool for their own person growth. That's fair. But it's also reality than you can never be fully prepared for any situation until you're in it. Sometimes you just have to accept that live is one long improv scene and do your best.
I'm not saying anyone should have kids early, or at all. But I think there's pernicious, unhealthy meme in our culture today that says kids deserve perfect parents and therefore no one should have children until they're perfectly prepared, but that's just an impossible bar.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#114US Rep. Lauren Boebert is a grandma at 37, and her mother (if alive - I don't know) will turn 56 this year.
one of my childhood friends is a grand father at 47. He'll probably make it to great-great grandfather to someone if those trends continue.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#115If you ever sit down and really think about it, it is absolutely wild how profoundly the invention of the birth control pill has changed the course of human history, our cultures, and human society.
It's gotta be up there with, like, writing and fire, in terms of shaping the destiny of our species.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#116For pete sake, don't break up the flow and over-complicate your very first sentence with irrelevant asides like this: > A friend and I were talking about our families today when I realized that my grandmother (this grandmother) became a grandma (not my grandma) at 45. I got confused and distracted trying to solve the riddle of why his "grandmother" was not his "grandma" [0] when it had nothing to do with the point he…
I no longer read anything in parentheses for this exact reason. It seems people tend to write their "live-edits" and "related thoughts" in parentheses rather than spending a moment to figure out what they want to say and writing it clearly. I've found skipping anything within parentheses tends to improve my understanding while reading.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#117Aren't life expectancy at birth figures heavily skewed by infant mortality rates. I think this is quite a commonly misunderstood statistic for this reason. So while it's true that in the past a new born baby's chances of becoming a great grandparent were much lower than they would be today, that would mainly be due to the low chances of them ever reaching adulthood and becoming a parent at all, rather than the chance…
I thought this as well, but I did a little research before responding, and it looks like even though this is broadly true, people still weren't living particularly long before the modern era. For example, in Ancient Greece, a man who lived to 15 would expect to live to 37-41 years, in Rome if a man made it to 20 they could expect to live to 60, in the late medieval if you made it to 25 you could expect to live to ~48…
There's some uncertainty about this, and while not properly controlled for obvious reasons, a study of lives of men of renown in 5th and 4th century Greece found a median life expectancy of around 70: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#118For pete sake, don't break up the flow and over-complicate your very first sentence with irrelevant asides like this: > A friend and I were talking about our families today when I realized that my grandmother (this grandmother) became a grandma (not my grandma) at 45. I got confused and distracted trying to solve the riddle of why his "grandmother" was not his "grandma" [0] when it had nothing to do with the point he…
i would have said it like this:
my grandmother became a grandma to my cousin at 45
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some see people as burdens, some as assets. I think this is a very important world view conflict.
The situation can be far more nuanced than this. It's not the people, it's the cars, cows, planes, land, and fuel they consume.
For most of those things, people produce as much as they consume. So more people doesn't make things worse.
Fossil fuels are a bit of an exception, but the transition to non fossil fuels is in full swing, and will be complete long before the oil runs out.
Land is a better argument, though multi story buildings is a partial answer. Either way, we are very far from running out of land.
Re: The window for great-grandmothers is closing
#120Aren't life expectancy at birth figures heavily skewed by infant mortality rates. I think this is quite a commonly misunderstood statistic for this reason. So while it's true that in the past a new born baby's chances of becoming a great grandparent were much lower than they would be today, that would mainly be due to the low chances of them ever reaching adulthood and becoming a parent at all, rather than the chance…
This is such a rookie mistake to make (by the author). Can’t believe that people who write about this topic still don’t know this in this day and age.