Why did grandparents in the 70s-90s seem older but yet more able bodied than younger looking grandparents today?

[Anonymous]

Just thinking back on this Saturday morning - maybe it was my view as a child and young person but grandparents looked older but were doing a lot more in the home and with grandchildren. I grew up with grandparents who raised their grandchildren and while they were the same general range as many grandparents today, it just seems different.

[Anonymous]

My grandparents did lots of manual labor at work and talking care of the home. Think it kept them stronger. They did all their own yard work, and all their own house cleaning and all their own cooking.

[Anonymous]

They whined less. Overall more capable.

[Anonymous]

Grandparent here. I'm 80. All my grandparents and one of my parents were dead by this age. I'm doing great; keep house; help out with grandkids.

You've got some serious ageism going on here. Also you probably need a larger sample from which to generalize.

[Anonymous]

If you look back at the styles from then, many people looked older than their actual ages. Our parents also didn’t micromanage our grandparents so it probably was much easier for grandparents. Kids weren’t over scheduled like they are now either.

[Anonymous]

For the same reason your doctors all looked old when you were a kid and now some of them look like middle schoolers. You were looking at them from a different perspective.

[Anonymous]

They grew up in a less polluted and degraded world. Strong infants survived their childhoods and grew up to have a good immune system. They also did not have junk food (because of cost) available, and they did a lot more physical labor. They did not have so many chemicals and endocrine disrupters in their system like today.

Now, we survive childhood diseases and get many medical interventions. However, we are frail because we have environmental pollution, lack of physical activity, junk food, lack human connection and sense of family, too many medical interventions to prolong our lives - and we are not only dying early but we have a bad quality of life when we are alive.

[Anonymous]

Grandparents are older today. In 62 and not a grandparent yet. I had kids in my 30s and my married DC in their 30s have not had kids yet. By contrast, when my mother was my age she had 2 grandchildren in elementary school. And when my grandmother was my age she had grandchildren in high school. I was in college when one of my grandparents died at 65.

[Anonymous]

In the olden days - People married young and had kids young. They did not move far away from home. So they had help and they were actually young.

I got married when my mom was 48. My DD is getting married now when I am 60. Will I be able to help her raise her kid like my mom helped me to raise mine?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grandparent here. I'm 80. All my grandparents and one of my parents were dead by this age. I'm doing great; keep house; help out with grandkids.

You've got some serious ageism going on here. Also you probably need a larger sample from which to generalize.

This.

OP, you are only remembering people who were alive. There was a lot less medical intervention available 30-50 years ago. You were either healthy or dead.

[Anonymous]

Your premise is wrong! Grandparents today are more able bodied and live longer.

[Anonymous]

Well, in the 70s and 80s at least, as far as I can remember, they were probably stronger and healthier. Lifestyle diseases have run rampant since then due to processed food and a sedentary lifestyle. My Michigan grandparents were outside tending their gardens pretty much every day in spring, summer, fall -- and that is a good workout. They also didn't eat much processed food and ate out very rarely -- I only remembered eating out in restaurants with them if it was a birthday or if it had been a long day at the country club (they had to pay for a certain amount of food there whether they ate it or not -- so we ate there). My Texas grandparents also didn't eat much processed food and my Grandather walked to his office everyday in University Park.

As far as looking older, that is mostly style. And hair coloring was morally questionable to that generation. (I have no idea why, lol. But there was a big ad campaign for one of the drugstore box hair dyes in the 70s that was "Does she or doesn't she?" -- like it would be gossip about someone dyeing their hair, lol).

[Anonymous]

Not in my family. I my family on both side by their late 60s they just want pampering. By late 70s they are far gone with dementia and difficult and nasty. The only difference is my grandparents and great grandparents were willing to go to facilities so it was easy to visit and make sure the nasty was medicated away. My parents prefer to be at home, refusing to stay on meds. My mother makes strangers cry and loves it. She gets so much excitement out of trying to figure out what buttons to push. I will be flying off to another country to die in peace in the early stages of dementia if being abusive is my destiny.

[Anonymous]

It’s the lack of hair dye and the awful short hair women used to have.

I think my parents are just as active as my grandparents were. They all became grandparents around 60. I was 30 when I had my first kid and my mom was the 5th child of her parents so her parents were 30s too

[Anonymous]

People “looked older” to us because from the time they married and became parents to the time they died, they had roughly the same hair and clothing styles. That short, styled hair and the simple A-line dresses of the time and they carried that look though their entire adulthood.