These threads confuse me. I’m an old mom (just had my 4th at almost 40) and a young-for-DC mom (pregnant with first at 29) at the same time.
The experiences don’t strike me as that radically different. Maybe they will become different later?

I was. I think it had the opposite effect. People thought I was younger than I was

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Supposedly this area is full of women who had kids later in life (I am one of them) but I don't really see them or know where to find them. Or maybe they are so well maintained through procedures and salons and gyms that it's hard to tell who is over 50. If you are late 40s or older and have kids in elementary (or younger) state your age and kids' ages. Tell me I'm not alone.

For those of you who had kids late, do others often assume you are the "grandparent", rater than the parent? I see this all the time are our kids school....

My parents used to get mistaken for my kids’ parents . They loved it, btw!

I had my kids at 35 and 37. I was the youngest of 3 (my mom was 26 and my dad 29 when I was born). They looked incredibly young for their age in 60s/70s and when they would take them out to lunch or the movies strangers thought my kids were theirs. To be fair, my parents looked as young as some of the parents on my kids’ sports teams back when my kids were in kindergarten.

People thought I was in my 20s when I had my firstborn and the preschool director at my son’s NW preschool used to refer to me as one of the “younger” moms—I was 37 for c-sakes!

49. DH is 60. We have an 11yr old.

56 years old with a 10 and 12 year old. The kids make me feel young again and challenge me in new ways since their era is so different from mine and when I grew up. Thankfully, my kids are grounded ????, hopefully they will stay that way. I also appreciate the fact that I can afford to stay home with them since I’ve worked and saved for so many years before having them. And now can afford to send them to camps, etc.

I’m 51 with a sixth grader. People still ask me if I’m going to have another kid, so I guess I can’t look that old.

I’m 52 with a 3rd grader. I’ve never been mistaken for a grandparent either.

I am 56 with a third grader and never been mistaken for grandma. I did take her rollerskating yesterday and showed off my cool spins and jumps from the 70's--that probably dated me a little bit, but no one thought that I was her grandmother.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Supposedly this area is full of women who had kids later in life (I am one of them) but I don't really see them or know where to find them. Or maybe they are so well maintained through procedures and salons and gyms that it's hard to tell who is over 50. If you are late 40s or older and have kids in elementary (or younger) state your age and kids' ages. Tell me I'm not alone.

For those of you who had kids late, do others often assume you are the "grandparent", rater than the parent? I see this all the time are our kids school....

I'm 53 with a second grader. I have never been mistaken for a grandparent.

Anonymous wrote:Supposedly this area is full of women who had kids later in life (I am one of them) but I don't really see them or know where to find them. Or maybe they are so well maintained through procedures and salons and gyms that it's hard to tell who is over 50. If you are late 40s or older and have kids in elementary (or younger) state your age and kids' ages. Tell me I'm not alone.

For those of you who had kids late, do others often assume you are the "grandparent", rater than the parent? I see this all the time are our kids school....

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 58 youngest is 13. Wife is 56.

Also have a 17 and 19 year old

So bizarre. I'm 58 and my spouse is 59. Our "kids" are 37, 33, 31 and 29 and our grandkids are 7 and 5! That's the way it's supposed to be, for me.

fify

NP here. What is bizarre to me is having a child at 21. So to each their own. Assuming your 37 year old is the one who has at least the 7 year old grandkid...they're already 9 years slower than your own schedule of having a kid at 21.

I echo PP that, to each their own. To have at 21 or 41 is all fine. Let it be.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 43 with a 3- and a 6-year old. I love my kids and being a mom and am contemplating one more baby. I come from a line of women with strong and long fertility. Oh, and I live in New York City where almost all of my friends had at least one child in their late 30s or early 40s, some in their mid 40s. There is a single mom at my older child's school with 3 kids: one she gave birth to herself at age 52, and the other two were twins via a surrogate when she was 55. She is 70 now and has 3 high school kids, and she looks amazing (although I should point out that she is well off and probably has a lot of help).

That’s sad. My parents were very healthy 70+ year olds in my late 40s (not when I was in HS!!). Age 70 to 80 is very different. These kids are going to be in college and struggling with elder care issues that people usually don’t deal with until their 40s and beyond. Not to mention never having their grandparents around.

+1
It's not fair to the kids. I have a friend who is an only child who dropped out of her PhD program to become a full-time caregiver for her elderly dad. She received her Masters, but her career plans were totally derailed in her field.

So would she have preferred not to have existed, as opposed to having to change her career path in her twenties from the exact one she set out on? Would that have been more "fair"?

Because nothing in life is "fair." Plenty of people's PhDs get derailed, for plenty of reasons less grave than ill parents...bad advisors, health issues, depression, having kids, failed qualifying exams, whatever. Academia is a fragile career path where if anything at all goes wrong, you fall off it. And generally you land on your feet doing something else. It's not the end of the world.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 40 with a 2 and 4 year old, and I'm around the average age of moms at my son's preschool. One of the other moms is 47 and she just had her second baby. I wish her well, but I would never want to trade places with her! The 10 year jump from 37 to 47 seems more significant than the jump from 27 to 37.

How do you know? You’re not even there yet. I’d say 17 to 27 is significant but it’s all kind of the same after that. I’m 50s with two in elementary, fwiw.

This is nuts.

Nuts is your (not very nicely expressed) opinion.

50's w/ elementary school kids is the entire point of this thread.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 58 youngest is 13. Wife is 56.

Also have a 17 and 19 year old

So bizarre. I'm 58 and my spouse is 59. Our "kids" are 37, 33, 31 and 29 and our grandkids are 7 and 5! That's the way it's supposed to be, for me.

fify

NP here. What is bizarre to me is having a child at 21. So to each their own. Assuming your 37 year old is the one who has at least the 7 year old grandkid...they're already 9 years slower than your own schedule of having a kid at 21.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 58 youngest is 13. Wife is 56.

Also have a 17 and 19 year old

So bizarre. I'm 58 and my spouse is 59. Our "kids" are 37, 33, 31 and 29 and our grandkids are 7 and 5! That's the way it's supposed to be, for me.

fify