Older parents

[EssexSue]

I was 23, 25 and 26 when I had my three. I have eight grandchildren aged 24, 21, 19,14,13,12, 8 and 5. People always thought the oldest three were mine but sadly not the younger 5. I must have aged a lot in those 5 years.

[caj]

Originally Posted by louiseybobs

I had my one and only at 24 I'm 31 now

My parents had us young, my mum and dad had 3 children before they were 20.
Losing dad this year made me realise how lucky we were that they had us so young, I got to have my dad for 31 years before he passed away.

And my grandad, he was the best grandad, I had him for 27 years, he was young at 73 when he died.

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My parents, too, had me and my bro quickly. I'm so blessed with the relationships they have with my kids, who are now early 20s. Both grandparents on their dads side died before they could form strong memories of them.

[Loobylou_82]

I was 28 with the 1st, 32 with 2nd, 37 with 3rd, he is 29 now. Would love to do it all again.

[kempydee]

I was 32 with my first, 39 with my 2nd.

I work with teenagers so I think I was put off having my own kids! Hence having them in my 30’s.
I would have had another (so early 40’s) but had horrible pregnancies and even worse births (hence the age gap between them) so I counted myself lucky I had 2 and sent the hubby for the snip!

I was a classed as a “geriatric” mum with both. Yet at the hospital aged 39 I was the youngest mum in there!

[DisneyDaffodil]

Originally Posted by Mel49

I had my first DS at 29, second DS at 37 after secondary infertllity and my DD at 39. DH was a year older. It wasn't quite how I had planned it as Mother Nature had other plans but always said I'd stop trying at 40.

Funnily enough my DD (now 14) was discussing the advantages and disadvantages of older parents the other day. The main disadvantage was losing grandparents (my Mum died this year at 78, my Dad at 80 and my father in law at 90 last year) and the fact that she is likely to lose DH and me while relatively young and if she has kids we will miss out on seeing them grow up. Overall though with our family dynamics there were quite a lot of advantages in her eyes ranging from more tolerance as more life experience, being taught life skills and manners, more caring having had older grandparents who were ill and she felt we cared more about her as a person than some of her friends younger parents. Although we are more "old fashioned" and stricter in some areas she actually made me feel quite good as I always thought she might resent having older parents although she may some day.

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I do understand what you mean about missing out on grandparents, as I said above I had our first two when I was in my early 20’s, my DH just a couple of years older than me. Their paternal grandparents were both dead before they were born, and my father died before they were 5 so even though I was quite a young mum, they only had one grandparent. Our younger child lost her only grandmother when she was just 3. So, even our older children weren’t fortunate enough to have all of their grandparents, although their one remaining nanna was wonderful for them 💞

Both our older sons haven’t had any children yet, and they are in their thirties now, DD is 20 and also career minded so unlikely to want children young. So none of our prospective grandchildren are likely to have us around for their whole childhood, despite the fact that we were young having our first two.

My relationship with our youngest is fantastic, as with you, I felt she may be embarrassed or ashamed of having older parents but it doesn’t seem to bother her at all. At 20 she still enjoys going on holiday with us, asks my opinion on clothes (doesn’t always agree but asks 😂 ) and I've been to several rock concerts with her (and really enjoyed it and she’s enjoyed my company too)

[MOUSEMARSH]

I was 42 when DW had our Bella, to be honest I'm glad I wasnt any older. I was 35 when we had DS. We did make a conscious decision to have kids later in life so we could travel.

[Lisa123wm]

I had just turned 26, and just turned 28 with my first two and 32 with the last one.
My mom had me at 16, I knew I didn’t want to have kids that young, but I didn’t want them ‘old’ either.
There’s pros and cons to both I guess.
I know lots of women who have had kids in their 40s - even their first one.

I can’t imagine my kids having kids of their own. My eldest is autistic, my daughter isn’t at all maternal and has recently been diagnosed with endometriosis 😢(awaiting op). My youngest is the one I think may have them if any of them do, hopefully not for at least 10 years 😆

[amy56]

Life has taught me that whatever we think and plan, life does it’s own thing!

My parents were young (had me in their mid twenties) compared to virtually all of my friends parents (some of whom had them in their early forties - unusual back then I guess as I’m now 46). Anyway... on paper their elderly parents might not be around now, but all of my friends have at least one parent still living, but most have both - I however lost my dad when he was just 53, and my mum died in November and was a young 70 year old - life doesn’t always work out as we expect and more and more people are having children when they are older now and there are pros and cons to all ages I think.

I was 29 when I had my eldest and 32 with my youngest - I was probably in the middle of all my similar aged friends to have children, one of my best friends from primary school didn’t have her children until she was in her forties - I feel so tired I can’t imagine my teens being 5 again now! But perhaps having young children keeps her young?

[vanlou]

Originally Posted by Smilesonfaces

I was 39 with youngest. Husband 3 years older.
If I am really honest I wish we had had our children earlier. Our parents were older too, MIL was 45 when husband was born and it has meant our children only knew one grandparent.

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OH and I were 27 when we had our 1st and 30 when we had our 2nd. They have grown up for most of their life with just 1 grandparent so age isn’t always the measure of that.


I thought I wanted another in my early 40s, then I had a scare and suddenly the idea of being at the school gates in my 50s didn’t seem such a wonderful idea. I think you need to really think carefully about it, but if it is what you want then go for it. I think you just cope with what you have.

[Scaramouche]

We want to start trying at the end of this year, I’ll be 29 and DH (he will be DH by then!) 37.

Both of us assumed we would have had them earlier in life, we’re both worried about being too old, mum had me at 23 so I do feel I’ve waited a bit too long.