Another dumb comment from a stranger

[Night Elf]

My cousin, in her early 30s, has a 1-yr old son. Today, she met her neighbor for the first time. She's lived next to him for 6 years. Anyway, he asked if the baby was her grandson. When she said no, he commented that she sure waited really late to have a child. Good grief!!

[LaxMom]

:blink:

[catz]

:confused: How rude is that!? I had my first at 30. I know plenty of older (and quite wonderful and active) moms than me.

[Sophia]

Sounds nutty :confused:.

 

I'm 47, and I've noticed that the older I get, 30 somethings tend to look younger and younger.

I can't imagine thinking a 30 y.o. looks old enough to be a grandma, lol.

 

Wait~unless the neighbor is a teenager who thinks anyone over 30 is ancient.:tongue_smilie:

[Laurie4b]

so like, at 15, she had a kid and at 15 her kid had a kid? Sounds like the guy is either from a culture where babies are had pretty early (like in the teens) or he is kind of socially out of it--maybe a cognitive deficit that involves loss of inhibitions or autism spectrum or something like that. I can't imagine an early 3o year old looking old enough to be a grandmother.

 

I was once tutoring a kid and he asked me how old I was. I answered and in shock, he exclaimed, "You're older than my GRANDMOTHER!" I was 50 I think and he was about 10. His grandmother was quite a bit younger than I was. :)

[elegantlion]

I can see why she waited so long to meet him. :glare:

 

I was 30 when ds was born.

[kitten18]

I can see why she waited so long to meet him. :glare:

 

No kidding.

 

 

:001_huh:I might have punched him in the nose.

 

 

I was 31 when my DD (oldest) was born, I've NEVER considered myself and "older" mom.

[Lara in Colo]

Well bless his heart, he stuck his foot in his mouth!!

We shall all pray for his recovery!

 

Lara

[Hedgehog]

Well bless his heart, he stuck his foot in his mouth!!

We shall all pray for his recovery!

 

Lara

 

:lol::iagree:

 

Perhaps your cousin should have asked her neighbour how he liked his foot sandwich.

 

What a twit!

[Alte Veste Academy]

When I was at the pool with the kids this summer, a (probably 12 year old) boy asked me if I was DS5's grandmother.

 

:glare: :001_huh: :boxing_smiley: :thumbdown:

 

I'm 39 and I don't even have any wrinkles yet, thank you very much! :glare: I'm not proud to say that I called him a kidiot in my head all the way home. I was nice at the pool though (if you count laughing out my no, which is really as polite as I could be at the time).

 

I honestly think some people are just used to seeing younger mothers and grandmothers. Some start early and some start late. Early reproducers skew the image of what later reproducers should look like as mothers vs grandmothers. I guess that's the opposite of my amazement at women who look too young to be grandmothers. :tongue_smilie:

[IsabelC]

Ouch! He needs to remember the saying, "when you're in a hole, stop digging!"

[unsinkable]

My cousin, in her early 30s, has a 1-yr old son. Today, she met her neighbor for the first time. She's lived next to him for 6 years. Anyway, he asked if the baby was her grandson. When she said no, he commented that she sure waited really late to have a child. Good grief!!

 

His comments were unnecessary.

 

People always tell me that I looked way too young to have kids as old as mine. The way (some) people gone on about it, it makes me think they think I had my kids when I was 16.

[I talk to the trees]

Well bless his heart, he stuck his foot in his mouth!!

We shall all pray for his recovery!

 

Lara

 

My thoughts exactly!!! :lol:

[Dmmetler]

The sad part was that when I was pregnant with DD, I was teaching in a public school in an inner city area-and had several kids comment that "Wow, you're old to be having a baby! My auntie is your age and she's going to be a grandma!"

 

I was 32. And the sad part was-they were right. A lot of them had family members who had been pregnant at 15-16, sometimes earlier, and who were grandparents in their early 30s. It was typical for grandparents to raise their grandchildren-and some of those grandparents had grandkids in 4th-5th grade before they would even have qualified for "advanced maternal age" in a pregnancy themselves.

 

At the same school, one of my 6th graders asked me who the baby's daddy was. I replied that she'd met my husband. Her response "I know he's your man, but who's the baby's daddy??". The idea that you had a baby with someone you were actually MARRIED to was completely foreign to her.

 

It was experiences like this that convinced me that DD wouldn't be going to that school-or the neighborhood district we lived in when we had her, which wasn't all that different except that the conversation would have been largely conducted in Spanish. So we moved to a suburb, then started looking at private schools, and ultimately decided to homeschool. There are some parts of the village I don't want raising my child.

[unsinkable]

The sad part was that when I was pregnant with DD, I was teaching in a public school in an inner city area-and had several kids comment that "Wow, you're old to be having a baby! My auntie is your age and she's going to be a grandma!"

 

I was 32. And the sad part was-they were right. A lot of them had family members who had been pregnant at 15-16, sometimes earlier, and who were grandparents in their early 30s. It was typical for grandparents to raise their grandchildren-and some of those grandparents had grandkids in 4th-5th grade before they would even have qualified for "advanced maternal age" in a pregnancy themselves.

 

At the same school, one of my 6th graders asked me who the baby's daddy was. I replied that she'd met my husband. Her response "I know he's your man, but who's the baby's daddy??". The idea that you had a baby with someone you were actually MARRIED to was completely foreign to her.

 

It was experiences like this that convinced me that DD wouldn't be going to that school-or the neighborhood district we lived in when we had her, which wasn't all that different except that the conversation would have been largely conducted in Spanish. So we moved to a suburb, then started looking at private schools, and ultimately decided to homeschool. There are some parts of the village I don't want raising my child.

 

This is a derail...but something I wonder about grandmothers raising children.

 

If /when the grandchildren have kids anddon't care for their own kids, who will do it? The grandchildren's mother didn't raise her kids, so she most likely won't raise her own grandkids, KWIM?

[Heather in Neverland]

People have big mouths and no filter.

[DawnM]

Good grief.

 

I was 31 when my first son was born and 32 when the 2nd one was born. I adopted my 3rd but was 38 when he was born.

 

I don't think I would have been polite AT ALL to that neighbor.

 

Dawn

[Renee in NC]

His comments were unnecessary.

 

People always tell me that I looked way too young to have kids as old as mine. The way (some) people gone on about it, it makes me think they think I had my kids when I was 16.

 

People always say to me, "You don't look old enough to have a son in college!" to which I always respond, "I'm not!":lol:

 

In my case, I *did* have a baby in my teens, as did my mother, so she REALLY gets comments about having 7 grandchildren at 51 (and she looks younger.):tongue_smilie:

[Renee in NC]

This is a derail...but something I wonder about grandmothers raising children.

 

If /when the grandchildren have kids anddon't care for their own kids, who will do it? The grandchildren's mother didn't raise her kids, so she most likely won't raise her own grandkids, KWIM?

 

I don't know if that is necessarily true. A mother may not raise her own, especially if she is young, but as she gets older may end up in a better place and raise *her* grandchildren. If not, other family might - aunts, cousins, etc.

[Trresh]

His comments were unnecessary.

 

People always tell me that I looked way too young to have kids as old as mine. The way (some) people gone on about it, it makes me think they think I had my kids when I was 16.

 

 

This happens to me, too. I was 23 when I had my 14 year old (oldest) but I've been told on occasion that I don't look 30 yet. I'm flattered in a way but it sometimes makes me feel like people are walking around judging me and thinking I was pushing out kids left and right while still a teenager.

 

What I don't get is there need to ask me about it....people I've never even met!

 

I should add DD14 looks more like a DD16 (that's a whole other issue) so it makes it a little worse.

[arghmatey]

Comments like this reinforce my thought that people should be seen and not heard (unless the sounds escaping their mouths somehow improve upon silence).

Edited October 23, 2011 by arghmatey

[Dmmetler]

I don't know if that is necessarily true. A mother may not raise her own, especially if she is young, but as she gets older may end up in a better place and raise *her* grandchildren. If not, other family might - aunts, cousins, etc.

 

 

In my experience, the kids who were the worst off were those where the mother got pregnant young and then immediately moved in with her boyfriend (sometimes getting married, sometimes not)-such kids often had the worst poverty, were exposed to more drug use, and often were abused. Neither parent typically had a high school diploma, and it was rare for the father to stick around, often leaving a single mom who wasn't even out of her teens with maybe a 9th grade education to fend for herself-leading to a string of boyfriends.

 

The kids from teen mothers who were the best off were those where the family supported the mom. Often these were multi-generational groups of women, several generations, living together. The women would finish high school and generally work until they became grandparents, in their 30s, then quit and stay home and be moms, with the help of THEIR mother and grandmother and aunties and great aunts. Such kids usually had a fairly stable home environment, although often one still living in poverty, since it was supported by a few high school or maybe community college graduates working in low-paying jobs and public assistance, but there was always a grandma or auntie around for school events for the dozen or more kids such a family might have at a time, and while teen pregnancy was common and apparently expected, usually the kids were fairly well cared for, loved and respected.

 

It was a different family structure than one I was used to-but I could see why, in a population where the men are, sad to say, often unreliable, and teen pregnancy is expected, this worked.

 

Another thing, too-this neighborhood had, at the time I was there, the worst infant and prenatal mortality rate in the entire USA-worse than many 3rd world countries. It was typical for a family to have lost 2-3 children who died at or soon after birth. I hadn't realized just how bad that was until I lost my son when I was teaching at that school-and all these grandmas, mothers, aunties, and even older students rallied around me because they KNEW how that felt-something my middle class neighbors and friends didn't. I suspect that these family groups helped to support women through losing babies in ways that other family structures would not have. There were grandmas who had never had a living biological child, for example, but who nevertheless were the primary child rearer for their generation.