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The window for great-grandmothers is closing

• binarymax 3y ago
  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.
  • CalRobert 3y ago
    Absolutely, but for some reason pointing this out is considered massively classist in some quarters. I don't really think it's classist to say that if people who don't value science, think climate change is fake, fear outsiders, etc. have 6 kids, and people who hold different have 1 or none, it will have a large impact on public policy in a generation.
    • thriftwy 3y ago
      Is it better to be one of those 0 to 1 kids, science valuing types who fear insiders? They're not okay with a significant fraction of their peers, which does look maladaptive to me.
    • earthscienceman 3y ago
      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.
      • mason55 3y ago
        > 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. I think the issue is that there are two groups of smart & wealthy people. There's a mid-level of people who are happy to have more than they need and don't have the Machiavellian drive to extract every last ounce of money and power. And there's an upper-level who are fine exploiting anyone and everything. There are of course altruistic people who are extremely wealthy. But sort of by definition, the middle-level is never going to have the drive & energy to fight that upper-level, who's willing to do anything. I guess my point is that there are two groups of smart & wealthy people, and the ones complaining about the lower class being exploited are not the ones who are doing the exploiting. It's a classic setup where the upper class keeps the middle class happy enough to not make it worth the middle class joining the lower class in revolution. And they aim the ire of the lower class at the middle class while they exploit the lower class.
        • pixl97 3y ago
          I'm pretty sure it was Mondays episode of the Daily Show that covered this pretty well in the intro. There are a lot of different groups out there, but the rich and greedy group does seem to lock up a huge amount of resources and propaganda.
      • parpfish 3y ago
        yeah, the classism in the "poor/uneducated people are having too many kids!" always has this assumption that class and values are perfectly presevred across generations and ignores the social mobility and the fact that children are capable of making their own path and not just following in their footsteps. children raised in big families by uneducated, closed-minded parents often rebel against their parents and espouse different views. just look at any subreddit that has youths are complaining about the backwards views of the parents/uncles/grand-parents -- i know it's not a representative sample, but children challenging their elders views is not an anomaly. on the flipside, there's the trope of only children raised being raised by high-class, open-minded families turning into spoiled, selfish brats.
    • cool_dude85 3y ago
      Pointing out differences in age of first child for different groups (race, class, etc.) is not necessarily classist. It's the part that so often comes next, "therefore, we should..." that causes offense. Anyway, what's wrong with having 6 kids? People used to do it all the time and society was fine. Why shouldn't we set up our society in a way that allows this as a reasonable possibility?
      • titzer 3y ago
        Because of ecological overshoot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot), which is a real problem (https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/earth-overshoot-day/#:~:text=Earth%20Overshoot%20Day%20marks%20the,We%20are%20operating%20in%20overshoot https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/earth-overshoot-da....). Gradual population decline through declining birth rates is the least jarring and least fascist way of getting human population down to sustainable levels.
        • cool_dude85 3y ago
          "Number of kids you have" is a strange place to focus on environmental impact, don't you think? A modest household with 6 kids, even one that lives to developed-world standards, has much less of an environmental impact than a single billionaire with a private jet. Like, orders of magnitudes less. If the family has one car and doesn't eat a lot of beef they probably have less of an impact than a family with 2 kids and 2 cars that goes to McDonald's a few times a week. Basically, the environmental impact of having more kids is sort of drowned out by various consumer choices, which are in turn drowned out by societal choices that no one family can impact at all.
          • MauranKilom 3y ago
            FWIW, "number of flights you take" also drowns out your eating habits in environmental impact. Compared to how much they cost, flights have stupid CO2 equivalents. However, I don't know why you are comparing a single billionaire vs a single X kid household. Like, the number of each (or even of private jets) are not even _remotely_ in the same ballpark. Which is why "number of kids" is not at all a strange place to focus on environmental impact, but "billionaire lifestyle choices" is.
    • maxerickson 3y ago
      Isn't it wildly classist to so patly assume that attitudes are that transmissible? My great grandfather had like 10 siblings and worked on a farm. What's that tell you about me?
      • vel0city 3y ago
        You may be pretty radically different from your grandparents, outliers always exist, nobody's futures are truly written in stone. But what percentage of your distant cousins are more like your great grandparents?
        • psychoslave 3y ago
          You don’t need to wait the answer to take into account that they most likely aren’t farmer for most of them. Though of course it doesn’t mean they all topped the social pyramid as it is by definition structurally unclimbable for most with its power distribution.
          • vel0city 3y ago
            "More like" not "exactly like". I'm not expecting them to all be farmers. But say, having similar-ish religious views, similar-ish social views, etc.
            • psychoslave 3y ago
              And how should we measure that?
              • vel0city 3y ago
                There are literally hundreds of ways to slice population statistics other than just primary occupation. Practically any of those, maybe! Do you find your primary occupation entirely defines every aspect of yourself?
                • 3y ago
    • anonym29 3y ago
      What about the wealthy assholes that think climate change is fake, pay thousands of dollars to have the catalytic converter removed from their own vehicle to deliberately increase it's exhaust emissions, eat hundreds of pounds of top-grade beef per year, are flying around seemingly constantly on their private jet, but have zero children? Are those otherwise-horrible people comparatively cleansed of their sins solely from their decision to not have kids? Is it not classist to hold more contempt for the poor rednecks in some flyover state with the traits you describe than the conservative millionaires and billionaires hiding among us?
    • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      If you don't have children who will live in the future world, why would you deserve an opinion on how that future world should operate?
    • keybored 3y ago
      > I don't really think it's classist to say that if people who don't value science, think climate change is fake, fear outsiders, etc. have 6 kids, and people who hold different have 1 or none, it will have a large impact on public policy in a generation. “Classist” is a faux-woke term for the belief that certain socioeconomic groups are better than others. If you believe that certain socioeconomic groups are inferior compared to [probably upper-middle class people] then that is by definition classist.
  • nkozyra 3y ago
    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.
    • jonhohle 3y ago
      Longevity plays a big role. My grandmother is 96 and grandfather 94, so even with a first child at 29 they’ve still had over a decade with their great grands. I had 6 great grandparents still alive when I was growing up. My parents were young, so will probably be in their 70s for great grand kids and if they make it near 100, could see great-greats (wild!).
  • hyperpape 3y ago
    What you wrote sounds superficially plausible, but you're overcorrecting. It is true that the average age of first birth varies widely based on socioeconomic factors, but it's up for all groups. The average age to have a first child was 21 for a woman in the US in 1972. In 2018, it was 26. For women without a college education it was 23.8, but that's still higher than it was in 1972. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/04/upshot/up-birth-age-gap.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/04/upshot/up-bir.... The US is not the most extreme country in this regard either. So yes, there will probably be fewer great-grandmothers in the future, though of course there still will be some.
    • binarymax 3y ago
      2016 looks almost binomial. We also need to take into account population size (significantly more in 2016 compared to 1980). It could be that there are just as many young women having children - but there are now more mothers >30. So maybe there won't be less great grandmothers, just a lesser percent of the population.
  • jofer 3y ago
    If that were the case, then the demographics data would not show a major shift. It would just bias of a relatively small group. However, demographic data clearly shows a trend over the past several decades. Look up "Mean Age of New Mother" statistics. E.g. here's data from the US: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db232.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db232.pdf It's more dramatic if you extend the data back to the 70's. You can see the same trend in most countries. On average, people are having their first children at a significantly older age than a couple of generations ago. That doesn't mean that folks _aren't_ having children early at all. E.g. I have _tons_ of friends that had kids as teenagers (and a lot at 14, too) and were already grandparents years ago in their 30's. But that's not representative of the overall population. This means that children knowing their great grandparents really is becoming more rare today than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
    • binarymax 3y ago
      I don't think mean is a good measurement for this. It's probably also being skewed by new science and treatments enabling more mothers to have children in their mid 40's. I want to see distributions!
  • nemo44x 3y ago
    "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." - Jesus
    • jesusisntreal 3y ago
      [flagged]
  • pengaru 3y ago
    > That doesn't mean we're doomed to live out the idiocracy future, but it explains this blog post. We're already living in the idiocracy future. Actually, the film needs a sequel something fierce, smartphones and now AI is fast making our reality post-idiocracy.
    • RGamma 3y ago
      "Don't look up" is a sort of spiritual successor. Of course, as you said, there's room for more, now that half the population is TikTok'ed.
      • hackable_sand 3y ago
        Satire is a cathartic tool that helps us reflect on the absurdities of daily life. Critically, satire challenges us to introspect beyond the facile projection of its themes and subjects. Cynical acceptance and refusal to engage with the source material is another exercise in anti-intellectualism. That being said, Don't Look Up wasn't good satire for me. It was funny and well made, but negligently validates emotional ignorance.
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    There may be "many" people not thinking about it, but there are measurably and verifiably not plenty, which has a definition something like "more than enough". Fertility rates in western countries, including the United States, are below replacement level. There is a far more disturbing dystopia waiting for us than Idiocracy.
  • keybored 3y ago
    I remember that scene. But I think it’s more about neurosis bias: thinking that there will ever be a perfect time to have children. Which never comes. So it just never happens. Contrast that with having children young. Maybe you might be financially worse off in the long run. But most people seem to make it work. So if the goal is to have children eventually? The young parents win. In any case. Shouldn’t people be a bit embarrassed to embrace such an upper-middle class sneerfest in current year? Idiocracy? Christ.
  • mschuster91 3y ago
    > 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. On average, birth rates have been shrinking virtually everywhere on this planet over the last decades.
• cacheyourdreams 3y ago
  Aren'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 chances of parents living beyond 47.
  • gampleman 3y ago
    Exactly. While life expectancy from adulthood (say 20 yo) has increased (i.e. UK males have gone from expected average 60y to 80y between 1841 to 2011 [1]), it hasn't increased nearly as much as the life expectancy from birth (i.e. 33% vs 98% increase over that period). [1]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/howhaslifeexpectancychangedovertime/2015-09-09 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
    • levocardia 3y ago
      The increase for a 40 year old is still nearly 14 years of extra life, though. That's a big difference.
  • jncfhnb 3y ago
    Pretty sure the probability of making it to adulthood has never been below 50% excluding war, plague, or famine (which were common, so hard to normalize)
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • ako 3y ago
      Wikipedia seems to suggest you might be wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_over_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_over... For example, for Ancient Rome it says “ while the ~50% reaching age 10 could expect another 40 years of life”.
• thriftwy 3y ago
  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.
• CalRobert 3y ago
  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.
  • titzer 3y ago
    My family has really long generations. Going back 7 generations for me patrilinearly is exactly 280 years; 40 years per generation. When I was young my grandparents were already in their 80s and both grandfathers gone before I was 14. Sadly, both had mental decline (stroke, Alzheimers) and I never knew them in their right mind. They'd be in their 110s today. The idea of knowing my great-grandparents, who would be in their 140s-150s today, is basically unthinkable for me.
    • WillAdams 3y ago
      Same. When my were in school and had friends who were visiting great-grandparents in nursing homes (and in one instance great-great), I had to explain that my great-grandfather was a Civil War veteran, and that I'd only met my grandfather (who worked as a sharecropper alongside freed slaves and the children of freed slaves on my great-grandfather's farm) once. One of those children lived behind us when I was growing up, and if I'd paid better attention when helping him with his garden would have taught me how to plant by the moon and stars --- he did teach me how to gut and skin a squirrel.
• bloak 3y ago
  Although life expectancy was a lot lower in the past than today that was mostly due to infant mortality. It's true that a lot of women died during childbirth, which meant that the life expectancy of women was less than that of men (I think), but I would guess that a woman who survived giving birth to at least one child who survived probably had a "reasonable" chance of surviving to 60 or 70. So I don't think great-grandmothers would have been that unusual in the past.
• bluedino 3y ago
  My wife is only a few years younger than I am, but she still has all of her grandparents. They are around age 80. I didn't have my first child until I was almost 40, and my grandmother on my father's side died the week we were going to tell everyone that we were having a kid. My other three grandparents all died in the 1990's. Also, many of my cousins had kids before they were 20, some of them became grandparents before I even became a parent. And likewise, I ended up with aunts/uncles that became great-grandparents before my dad became a grandparent.
  • jeffbee 3y ago
    Some of my high school friends (a married couple, for the obvious reason) were grandparents before I had my first child. The great grandmother in this story was 50. Getting knocked up at 17 runs in families. I just checked the CDC stats and Oklahoma still has the 2nd-lowest age of mother at first birth for non-Hispanic whites, which is because that state has way too many churches and nowhere near enough sex education in schools.
• epolanski 3y ago
  At this rate even grandparents... Most of my (37) friends in Italy does not have children. Some of us are late children so the parents are between 70 and 80.
• parpfish 3y ago
  i think an interesting orthogonal trend is how changes in family size affect grandparent relationships. my grandparents were in the generation that had lots of kids, which leads to lots of grandkids. that meant that family gatherings were huge crowds where they served as a figureheads and i didn't really develop a one-on-one relationship with them. but when i look just one generation removed, i see smaller family sizes so grandparents have far fewer grandkids. and they're developing actual relationships with their grandchildren in a completely different way.
• 1123581321 3y ago
  Our children had several years with their great-grandmother. We treasured that time for them and even arranged for her (my wife's grandmother) to live with us for a few days a week after she could no longer stay in her home alone. We were able to keep this arrangement for a few years. Our children aren't adults yet, so we don't know if our children will have children young enough that our parents could meet their great-grandchildren, but we're glad we didn't prevent the possibiliy by starting our family late.
• modeless 3y ago
  > this source for example claims global life expectancy jumped from around 47 to 72 from 1950 to 2022 I believe this is because of reductions in child mortality more than increases in adult lifespan. So it doesn't affect the number of great grandmothers that much. Having kids older is definitely a big change for society and individual families, though. Every day as a parent I wish I was 15 years younger and my parents were too. It would be a huge difference in our energy levels and that's so important when you're hanging out with young kids. And it's 15 years less time that we will be able to spend together with our kids.
  • jobigoud 3y ago
    When kids die as infants they don't have time to have any meaningful interactions with their great-grand parents so the point of the article still stands somewhat. The age of great-grandmothers is low infant mortality + parents making kids early.
    • modeless 3y ago
      People had more kids (and then some) to compensate for the infant mortality, so I don't think it reduced the number of great grandmothers much.
    • burnished 3y ago
      They very clearly did not put that much thought into it, not sure why you are making this up.
  • hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Yeah, the thing that kinda annoyed me about the article is that it even acknowledges this fact ("even though life expectancy at birth as I’ve used here isn’t the best proxy for this"), but then for some reason refuses to make the next rational leap that there were plenty of great grandmothers in previous generations, totally invalidating the article's main thesis. Obviously there have been huge changes in family size, parental age at first birth, etc. over the last few decades. I'd argue the lack of great-grandmothers is going to be the least consequential of these changes.
• keiferski 3y ago
  It's interesting to compare this some research which says that children of older fathers and grandfathers live longer. If I understand this article correctly, it's saying that if the paternal grandfather was also older when becoming a father, that's even better. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-18392873 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-18392873
  • silverquiet 3y ago
    Huh, anecdotal as heck, but my great-great grandfather (the only one I know about) had the line that led to me in his 50's after his first wife succumbed to Spanish Flu. I buried his youngest daughter at the foot of his grave 154 years after he was born; she lived to be 94 and so did my grandfather. Thinking about it even more, the women on that side of my family also had no problem having kids into their 40's.
• ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Heh. I knew a guy in his late thirties that was already a grandfather (do the math). I would bet that there's a good chance he's still around (I knew him about 40 years ago).
• ilamont 3y ago
  Research confirms a narrowing of families with fewer children and fewer cousins, but it also notes it's more likely for people to know their ancestors: In their analysis, Alburez-Gutierrez and his colleagues made three major predictions about family structures, also called kinship networks. First, extended family size will likely decrease over time. Second, the composition of families will narrow: Alburez-Gutierrez explains that people will have fewer close-aged relatives in their own generation, such as siblings and cousins, and more ancestors, such as grandparents and great-grandparents. Third, age gaps between generations will grow as people increasingly have children later in life. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shrinking-family-sizes-may-change-our-experience-with-aging/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shrinking-family-... Another thing to keep in mind: there is a lot of variability depending on the community and social standards. People in Utah will have a different experience than folks in the Bay Area. In rural northern New York and Ohio, the Amish population has exploded with couples marrying in their early 20s and families typically having at least 5 or 6 kids, sometimes more than 10. My spouse had our kids in her late 30s, but they have no first cousins on either of the side of the family (of the 6 people in our generation, we're the only two who had kids). Of all of our kids' dozens of friends growing up, only one had more than two siblings and they were an immigrant family. OTOH, my wife works with people who had kids in their late teens and early 20s and are grandparents by the age of 40, and that's typical in the community.
• juujian 3y ago
  The article got one thing wrong. Life expectancy of 45 doesn't mean that people drop dead at that age. High infant mortality is one main reason for low life expectancy. That's why you have many people of old age even in the middle ages when life expectancy was abysmal. So I am not convinced that great-grand parents is such a recent thing.
• psychoslave 3y ago
  Not necessarily false, but the author jump a bit quickly to the conclusion with the data it takes for granted. It’s well known that life expectancy was far lower before due to high rate of child mortality. This means that the main cause of the life expectancy is more people reached adulthood. All the more, great-grandmothers always had far less chance to die early by being turned into a cannon fodder or driven to suicide through toxic masculinity social pressure (though it’s not like having more chance to be raped by invaders or beaten/abused/repudiated by your own relatives was much more fun). Still to this days, on the average women have generally a higher life expectancy in most countries.
• commandlinefan 3y ago
  My kids got to meet four of their great grandparents, although they were still very young when they did pass away - I have pictures of them with their great-grandparents, but they don't have any memories of them. Mine were all long gone before I was born... I don't know that anything is being "lost" in the sense that it was something we used to have. Meeting one's great grandparents was very rare in generations past and continues to be.
• bdcravens 3y ago
  I'm 47. My grandparents were born in 1908. My father was born in 1939, and I was born when he was 38. I have no kids, but we didn't get around to trying IVF until I was over 40 (my father would have been 78)
• lanstin 3y ago
  Count everyone on earth as your relative.
  • omoikane 3y ago
    https://xkcd.com/2608/ https://xkcd.com/2608/
• keybored 3y ago
  > It’s slightly paradoxical — in the past, I’ve thought about how since life expectancy is increasing, there probably will be more great-grandmothers. But on the other hand, people are having children much later too. Apparently two or more independent variables create a paradox.
• ccppurcell 3y ago
  Just a little point that the life expectancy given there is "at birth" and unless I'm mistaken, it's the mean. Which means infant mortality contributes enormously to this figure. It's a misconception that in the past you would only rarely see someone much older than 50. I'm not sure how this would affect the analysis. But it's worth bearing in mind. I'm sure there were plenty of great grandparents before 1900. That usage of great seems to stem from the 1500s. https://www.etymonline.com/word/great-grandfather#etymonline_v_41229 https://www.etymonline.com/word/great-grandfather#etymonline...
• ffitch 3y ago
  I once read that the significant growth of life expectancy could be attributed to lowering rate of child mortality, and that life expectancy for adults has changed less dramatically. If that’s the case, the point that overall life expectancy going from 47 to 72 affected the “grandmother window” is probably inaccurate.
• voisin 3y ago
  With the economy as it is, grandparents tend to work longer and both work, so the early retirement and single-wage of yesteryear are largely gone. This trend seems to be increasing. The value of intergenerational bonds and knowledge transfer will be lost as a result.
• pimlottc 3y ago
  For 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 was trying to make. And the "this grandmother" parenthetical could have just been a subtle inline link. > A friend and I were talking about our families today when I realized that _my_grandmother_ became a grandma at 45. Much clearer! 0: I think he meant that his grandmother's first grandchild, who born when she was 45, was someone other than the author, so technically she wasn't /his/ grandma at that moment because he didn't actually exist yet.
  • rgovostes 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • em-bee 3y ago
    i would have said it like this: my grandmother became a grandma to my cousin at 45
    • JackeJR 3y ago
      Append to that "x years before I was born"
  • enobrev 3y ago
    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.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • 3y ago
• a3w 3y ago
  Some people still get pregnant with 14, and the next generation makes the same "mistake", as that led to not an ideal family situation and wise parenting. (German here, so no foul play / illegal intercourse happening in most of such cases.)
• adverbly 3y ago
  Later, fewer kids. Another more prominent trend is the death of the cousin: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cousins-decline-canada-1.7103338 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cousins-decline-canada-1.7103...
• trey-jones 3y ago
  It's a very parochial article I think. Sure, there are some numbers for the trends and such, but I suspect that people will continue to have kids both when they are younger and when they are older to some extent. Which is more likely for you is probably heavily influenced by your socioeconomic status. This is just going to vary significantly from person to person. Examples from my own family: A great grandmother to my children died last year. Her oldest great grandchild at the time was 13. She missed meeting the youngest by a couple of months. This same oldest great grandchild also has a living great grandmother still, and one that died in 2003 and one that died in 2005. So even within the same family, and even for the same person, the experience of having a great grandmother can be quite different.
• hilux 3y ago
  US Rep. Lauren Boebert is a grandma at 37, and her mother (if alive - I don't know) will turn 56 this year.
  • chasd00 3y ago
    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.
• alex_young 3y ago
  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.
• munificent 3y ago
  If 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.
  • al_borland 3y ago
    I sometimes wonder what society would look like today without it. It would be vastly different.
  • Xenoamorphous 3y ago
    Why that and not other contraceptives?
    • bluGill 3y ago
      Because it is used. Others are easy to forget or use wrong. Many are enough worse from a pleasure standpoint that I rather obstain then use them. (of course I'm married so I have an easy outlet without worrying about stds)
      • brailsafe 3y ago
        The pill is also easy to misuse, I think it just has a higher tolerance for misuse in terms of continued effectiveness, but it does change if you're inconsistent
    • munificent 3y ago
      1. Scale of adoption. 2. Consistent effectiveness. 3. Able to be unilaterally adopted by women without consent of men (aside from systemic legal prohibition). The pill, to a greater degree than any other contraceptive, enables the people who are most responsible for the consequences of pregnancy to have the most control over pregnancy.
  • wil421 3y ago
    Farming machines changed it more so than birth control. Also farming practices like using fertilizer.
• kelnos 3y ago
  My last-living great-grandparent died when I was about a month old. I hope he got to meet me, though of course I wouldn't remember. The odd thing is that my parents (to my recollection) never spoke of him. My mother's parents died before I was born, and my father's parents died when I was around 10 years old. With the exception of my great-grandfather, my other great-grandparents died in the 1940s and '50s. They barely got to know their own grandchildren before they passed. My parents were unusual for their generation in that they waited until their mid 30s to start having kids (despite having been married for 9 years already). On my dad's side, he was the final child of my grandmother's third marriage; she was 42 when my dad was born (again, unusual for the time). No real point to this post, I guess. I just think it's interesting that people's experiences can differ so much. I only knew half of my grandparents, and even then only as a child; the idea of people being able to meet their great-grandparents wasn't even something I ever considered when I was younger. I don't recall for sure, but I don't think many if any of my grade-school friends had great-grandparents around either. I've always had a very small extended family, and hearing stories from friends as a kid about family gatherings always made me feel like I was missing out.
  • eYrKEC2 3y ago
    Most people don't know _the names_ of all 8 grandparents, but those people are the root culture of the family you grew up in.
• stevage 3y ago
  Standard comment about how one shouldn't use raw life expectancy in this kind of argument. Here you should use the life expectancy of people with at least one child. It's irrelevant to the argument how many people die before having children or at what age they die. In my case, my grandfather did become a great grandfather, even though he, my parents and my sister all had children pretty late. He just lived a very long time.
• deleted 3y ago
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• zachmu 3y ago
  Still think about this essay on the topic I saw on twitter a few years back: https://hmmdaily.com/2018/10/18/your-real-biological-clock-is-youre-going-to-die/ https://hmmdaily.com/2018/10/18/your-real-biological-clock-i... > If you intend to have children, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not banking extra years as a person who is still too young to have children. You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children.
  • decafninja 3y ago
    Alternately, you could be giving both them and yourself a better quality of life by waiting until you’re more ready. Obviously you don’t have forever to do this.
    • zachmu 3y ago
      I think this is the story people tell themselves, but as far as I can tell it's mostly just a story. Kids are resilient and don't need the material wealth college educated people tend to assume they will to have a good childhood. And as for parents, there's really a lot to be said for raising kids while you're young and energetic, it's just easier. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to convey to a childless person how meaningful parenthood will be to their life. It's something you have to experience firsthand to understand. That's why social norms and defaults are so important here.
      • silverquiet 3y ago
        And yet... > The recent proliferation of studies examining cross-national variation in the association between parenthood and happiness reveal accumulating evidence of lower levels of happiness among parents than nonparents in most advanced industrialized societies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5222535/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5222535/ I'm sure it is meaningful, but not everyone is willing or able to take on the stress of raising children. Seemingly less and less are as fertility declines across developed (and even developing) world. And you can say they don't need much, but without rigorous education, their future looks pretty grim to me. Won't you encourage your kids to attend the best college they can?
• ninju 3y ago
  There's a saying (Chinese proverb maybe) regarding a having a healthy family tree * May you live to see seven generations * Which I took as mean grandparents to grandkids (with one "great" on either side) Good luck all
• Unfrozen0688 3y ago
  Its sad and a crisis. However I have money saved and a comfy job. Yet I am exhausted. Domapnied burned out mess adhd riddled anxiety kissless virgin
  • skulk 3y ago
    I don't know if this is the right time for you to hear this, but don't establish your identity around things that you haven't done. Or fine, do it, but once you have done them, you'll immediately realize how dumb it was to let not having done them define you.
    • Unfrozen0688 3y ago
      Its more I work 8h and I am exhausted and sit on youtube for 5h until bedtime and repeat thats my life
• deadbabe 3y ago
  We need more good examples of what “old parents” look like in modern society. Having a first child in your 40s is often painted as a pessimistic, undesirable situation to be in, where you will “lack energy” and patience to take care of a small child. But why? If we’re serious about extending lifespans the average age of parents should be going up. People should be using their younger years to establish themselves in society and build a sustainable lifestyle. By the time you are 40, the costs and demands of a small child should be effortless, easily solved with the riches you’ve accumulated. By the time you hit 60s, your child is graduating college and getting on with life. If you’re lucky maybe you live to 90 and even see them reach well into middle age. This doesn’t sound like a bad timeline.
  • dividefuel 3y ago
    This sounds horrifying to me. If everyone has their first child at 40, then grandparents are always 80+ years old, leaving little (if any) overlap in time and rarely good overlap as those usually aren't high quality of life years. I think many people find the grandparent relationship very important, and diminishing it so strongly seems pretty harmful.
  • iteratethis 3y ago
    Extending lifespan misses the point and is reasoned from the individual, and not the child. Lifespan extension adds to your maximum age but maximum age isn't the most pressing issue to begin with. When you're born and you have parents that are 20 versus 40, that is a dramatically different situation. Likewise if you have grandparents that are 50-60 versus 70 or already dead. Sure, more lifespan means you'll have more years together but you're completely dismissing the quality of those years. I feel the same way about relationships. Some people willingly only seriously settle in their mid 30s or even later. That means you did not share the other person's most energetic, adventurous, and exciting life phase. You're 40 and have zero shared history together, no stories, nothing. But hey, you're finally "comfortable". Fuck comfortable. The clock is ticking, hurry the hell up. You're wasting the defining and most valuable years of your life.
    • hackable_sand 3y ago
• danielodievich 3y ago
  My great-grandfather was widowed and remarried in late 1940ies to a woman who was his university-age daughter's friend (that daughter was my grandmother). Yeah, he was considerably older (late 40ies/early 50ies?) than her (like 23?). That lady is my great-grandmother (sure, she's not blood related to me but they had children and they are all my various uncles/aunts and cousins). When I brought in my children to see the family, they got to meet their both of their great-grandmothers, great-grandfather, and on top of that their great-great-grandmother. Now THAT's rare.
• racl101 3y ago
  Yeah, that is a pity.
• hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
  One kid is good enough so I don't regret getting one at 38. Letting grand parents help with child caring also carries a lot of downsides, especially if they live in.
  • obruchez 3y ago
    "a lot of downsides" Can you give a few examples? I only see upsides.
    • hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
      For a start, they have their own ideas of raising kids. This is already an everyday headache.
  • eYrKEC2 3y ago
    I read a statistic years ago that said that taking care of grandkids had a u-shaped mortality response. If you took care of them 2 days a weeks, it was optimal for mortality. More than that and you died younger. Less than that and you died younger. Yes, correlation is not causation, but that correlation is interesting.
• Scubabear68 3y ago
  I have an example that helps underscore the lesson here. I was adopted by older parents, in their mid-40s when I was adopted around 2 years old. They were the "youngsters" in their families, so it meant I was exceedingly young compared to my cousins and other relatives. Fast forward a few decades and my adoptive parents are deceased, and we have lost touch with the few relatives I have. My wife is in a similar situation. We adopted two older children, 7 and 3 at the time, when I was in my mid 40's. It has been great for us and for the kids, a challenge and an adventure, but the biggest miss is lack of family. We have no grand parents to fall back on, let alone great grand parents. It is incredibly difficult to raise kids without an extended family to help out. We manage, but boy do I envy those who have bigger families to lean into. Not to mention the network of cousins, etc that the kids can relate to.
• harel 3y ago
  We just said goodbye to my kid's great grandmother. They knew her very well and treated her like a their regular grandma. When my eldest son was just under 1 year old he met his great-great grandmother (who died shortly after meeting him at 105). I think me and my wife's parents will live to see their great grand children. It's not too far fetched to imagine.
• PaulHoule 3y ago
  For that matter, a small change in number of siblings makes a much larger change in the number of cousins. That is, if every family has N children, you have N-1 siblings and 2N(N-1) cousins. (Corrected thanks to comment)
  • deleted 3y ago
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• rayiner 3y ago
  In Christmas 2021, as COVID was winding down, we rented a house on the Oregon coast to see my wife’s family. My wife’s grandmother surreptitiously messaged me on Facebook to pick her up from her house so she could see our youngest, her newest great grand. Much to the consternation of my COVID-wary father in law. In her view, the point of living the 87 was to count up the great grandchildren (10 total). She died the next year (not of COVID). If my kids have kids the same time I did, as do those kids, then within the expected Asian male lifespan I should see at least one and hopefully two great grands.
• softgrow 3y ago
  Both of my great-grandmothers died by the time by 12 months old. A message to my children - hurry up, make my living parents great-grandparents!
• smoyer 3y ago
  I attended my great-great-grandmother's 100th birthday party when I was 8 or 9.
  • tropdrop 3y ago
    Came here to say something similar: I didn't realize how rare this was until this thread, but as I kid I knew not only four of my great-grandparents, but even a great-great-grandmother. She died at 96 years old, but I was old enough to hang out with her a few times, and remember her. My great-grandfather is still alive and turned 100 last year. Since I'm already much older than any of my progenitors when they had their children, even if I live to his age it is unlikely I'll get to spend time with my own great-great-grandchildren.
    • smoyer 3y ago
      Agreed ... At this point I'm hoping to meet one of my grandchildren but my kids don't seem to be in any hurry.
• bananatype 3y ago
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• gr8_commission 3y ago
  When I was about 16 years old it became my life dream to get married young and to have kids young. My inspiring thought was that I could be a young grandparent and that my kids would be able to know their parents for a long time as well as their grandparents and great grandparents. I did get married at 19 and had my first son at 20. 3 years later I had my daughter. 5 months into my daughters life, the kids mother left us and I was stranded alone as a single father of 2 at age 23. That was 4 years ago and it was the most difficult time of my life. I moved back in with my parents and my then recently "empty cage" mother had to become a "mum" again while I slowly got back on my feet. I've been remarried for about a year now and everything is going very well. My daughter is about to turn 4 and my son turns 7 this year. I love thinking about how when I'm 30 my son will be 10 and when I'm 40 he'll be 20 etc. Before the divorce, I was very adamant on promoting young marriage/childbearing to others. In a perfect world I still think it's a good idea... but I am a lot more open minded and less critical. Life is so unique and never goes according to plan. I wouldn't recommend my exact life to anyone as it has its own unique and undesirable difficulties. When my own children grow up, I will strongly recommend against rushing anything with anyone until they're absolutely sure and have a good plan in place. My kids know and love their grandparents. They know their great grandparents. I am prepared physically and mentally for 2 more kids (yes I know, but I think I know better than I did at 19), but I cannot imagine doing the whole baby thing in my mid 30s or early 40s... I think my current age is a good time to just get it all out of the way. I like to think of it as delayed gratification and that having adult children at a relatively young age is a huge blessing. Let's see how it goes.
  • gr8r 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing. On a tangent... > I was very adamant on promoting young marriage/childbearing to others. In a perfect world I still think it's a good idea... ... Life is so unique and never goes according to plan ... rushing anything with anyone until they're absolutely sure and have a good plan in place Among other reasons, social media can suddenly change a person in very unexpected ways at an unexpected pace. Ppl are more connected to the infinite-scroll than ever before, more than to other ppl around them. It is no longer even our friends we watch and envy - its all "influencer" content.
• LeonB 3y ago
  My siblings and I did unusually well at school (relative to cousins and peers) - and it’s possible this was due to having an “older” father. There’s a 2017 study that older parents produce kids with a higher Geek Index — https://www.nature.com/articles/tp2017125 https://www.nature.com/articles/tp2017125 Seems “truthy” to me.
• 90d 3y ago
  Ah just what I needed, more anxiety.
• hm-nah 3y ago
  Apple will soon include A.I. in iPhones that will in essence provide an eternal simulation of each of us. Progeny will be able to interact with us in our own voices and likely in 3D. When openAI and its humanoid robots align, your AI clone will be uploaded to the unit. Unfortunately “you” won’t be able to enjoy or reciprocate “their” enjoyment. Similar to if you recorded a video to your family today and they watched it after you passed away.
• AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  My kid didn't get to meet his grandmother (my mom). She had me at 30, I had him at 46, one year too late. One of the problems with capitalism is that the highest achieving people (somewhat likely the actual "fittest" people in terms of genetic selection) don't have kids until they are much later, if at all. I don't want this to get too elitist, but this country (actually the entire first world aside from France) needs to figure out how to incentivize productive people to have kids. I always thought what we should do with the people in retirement for longer and longer periods of time is encourage them to provide some child care, even if it isn't their own. Especially in some countries (Japan, holy shit South Korea) that really are imbalanced. Although, tangentially, I think South Korea will solve its demographic bomb by toppling North Korea's government and immigrating a massive number of shellshocked North Koreans.
• michaelhoney 3y ago
  The author says that shorter life expectancies in the past means that there weren't many great-grandparents back in the day. I don't think that's the case: the shorter average life expectancy is due to infant and youth mortality. As long as you didn't die from what would nowadays be a preventable disease, people still got old: that's where the term "three score years and ten" comes from. So I think there were probably many 70yo great grandparents.
• MaysonL 3y ago
  My great-grandfather, whom I met a few times in the ‘50s, was born during the Civil War.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• drKarl 3y ago
  I see a lot of comments here focused on their individual experiences and opinions, which is fine. But on those comments I see a lot of people saying they won't have kids. Which individually is their choice, but collectively, combined with people who do have kids have them older which can lead to fertility issues when they want to have them, combined with the increase in the number of people who is LGBTQ+ which again it's their choice and nothing wrong with that individually, but as a species we can see how these factors combined, and other factors, are the cause of drop in number of children born in all countries. I recently read that in Japan there are more adult diapers sold than baby diapers because of drop in births and increase of aging population. This seems to be driving us to extinction as a species, just food for thought.
  • defrost 3y ago
    > are the cause of drop in number of children born in all countries. Yes. > This seems to be driving us to extinction as a species No. There are more people alive now than there ever has been. Ever. This will continue until at least 2100 when numbers may finally peak and then fall. When human populations numbers fall there is no sane reason to think that they will plummet to zero. It is far more likely numbers will decrease to the mid 10 billions and more or less stabilise.
    • drKarl 3y ago
      > This will continue until at least 2100 when numbers may finally peak and then fall. That's due to the higher fertility rate of countries like Niger, Angola etc which far outpace the declining rates of most of the rest of the world like China, Russia, Europe, Japan, South Corea, USA, etc.
      • arkey 3y ago
        After reading the comments I understand this MUST mean people in Niger, Angola, etc. are more financially ready to have kids than people in Europe, Japan, USA, South Corea, etc.
  • daveoc64 3y ago
• helpfulmandrill 3y ago
  I wish I lived in a society where I could have a kid at 25 rather than 35 without messing up my life. I feel like we ignore how nice it must be to have another 10 years with your parents in your life.
  • arkey 3y ago
    Why can't you have a kid at 25 without messing up your life? Some people do.
    • helpfulmandrill 3y ago
      That deadline has passed, but I was living in a one bedroom flat making no money at all at 25, as were most of my friends.
      • arkey 3y ago
        Apologies, I probably misunderstood your comment and I'm sorry if you missed out on something you hoped for. I agree, today's society in many places can make it very hard for young people to start a family.
• hateful 3y ago
  I've always had this weird thought - that doesn't really pass the ethics test, but here it is anyway. I was raised by my grandmother - let's just say my parents were not ready. And I know a lot of parents that want their kids to have kids but the kids aren't ready. What if it would become the norm for Grandparents to raise the children? That way the second generation can focus on their careers, etc and the first generation could raise the third. That wouldn't mean the second generation wouldn't have a role and be a part of the process. Of course, there would have to be consent on each level - and if it was part of the culture maybe there would be. Also, technology may have a role in this also - if no one has to actually carry the children, the second generation could be more willing. The whole point is that this happens all the time, but it's always seen as a break from the norm, not the norm. What if we just embraced it? The next generation would happen earlier, the first generation would have their grand kids and the second generation would have time to "wait" for whatever reason. Again, I know this doesn't really work out, but it's a thought I've always had.
  • jzb 3y ago
    Even leaving aside the ethics (which...yikes) I think this kind of falls down, logically. Parents want to become grandparents after having the experience of being parents. If you cut the "being parents" out of that cycle, why would you even want grand kids? And having been parents prepares grandparents to step in if needed. If you skip the parenting step, why would they be any better at it just because they're 20 years older? Also, frankly, infants are hard. They're great when you can give them back. But the loss of sleep and everything is something that does not go well with being in your 40s and beyond. It's hard at any age, but doubly so later in life. All that said, it'd be great if society placed more emphasis on extended family involvement and if we start to really embrace remote work that might be more possible. (e.g., stop making people move thousands of miles away from their families just for jobs...) But accelerating child-having just for the sake of great-grandparents... bad idea, even leaving aside the ethics.
    • jobs_throwaway 3y ago
      what are your ethical qualms?
• supertofu 3y ago
  The framing of this essay bothers me, because it suggests that losing great-grandmothers is a bad thing. But why can't we focus on the enormous positive effect of girls having the option to fully mature into women before bearing their children? Maybe instead of focusing what we lose with the absence of great-grandmothers, we should focus on what we gain with the decline of girl-mothers.
  • pyuser583 3y ago
    There’s a huge and well thought out consensus teenage parenthood is bad. It’s talked about a lot. Not as much as it used to be, but that’s because it’s become common sense. People don’t talk about common sense consensus positions. But good things can have bad side effects, and people can be so happy about the good thing, they don’t see the bad thing. Talk about the advantages of delayed child bearing all you want, but it won’t be a particularly original conversation.
    • supertofu 3y ago
      I don't really care if the conversation is original, if it means we live in a world where girls are granted the opportunity to grow in knowledge and experience before sacrificing their bodies and lives to childbearing and childrearing.
      • pyuser583 3y ago
        And posting articles like this doesn’t take away from that in any way.
• alex_smart 3y ago
  Great-grandparents? The window for grandparents might be closing! If you have your kids at 35, and your kids have their kids 35, you are 75 by the time the grandchild turns 5. The amount of quality time you might have to spend with your grandchild could be approximately zero (depends of course on your health).