Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Unsettled moment

When I was a kid, I was vaguely aware that my grandfather had married and started a family pretty late in life.  I had little sense of relative ages or time when I was that young, but I understood that the family thought it remarkable.  I also remember thinking that I'd like to do that stuff when I was younger, so my parents wouldn't seem so old to my kids as my grandparents did to me.

It just hit me today that in a year from now, I will be exactly the age that my grandfather was when my father was born.

4 comments:

  1. The only thing is -- it's become a cultural norm to have children later in life. Most of the friends I had in CA who had kids eldest's age were 5-15 years older than me. I was considered the anomaly for having my first kid when I was 30.

    If you had kids later in life, you'd be following what's become a typical path. Never fear. Your kids will have peers whose parents are about the same age as you.

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    1. This is comforting to know. I had a feeling that this had something to do with my family's particular biases. They clearly expected the kids to start arriving before the newlyweds hit their late 20s.

      I gotta say, it's also messing with my head that so many of my old classmates from college and grad school now have children. Those Facebook pictures are like looking at an alternate universe.

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  2. What Fie said. Plus you will no doubt live longer than your grandparents, so not be practically as old.

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  3. Dude, I feel you.

    I'll be 38 next month, and I was born when my dad was about to turn 36--and he was 42 when my brother was born (my mom was 28 and 34). They're both still alive and in great health, which is reassuring. . . but growing up with the knowledge that my parents were "older"? Makes me feel HELLA old now.

    On the other hand, my spouse was born when his mom was barely 21. That means she had two kids in college when she was 41, which is younger than he is now.

    I think that's the future--just a huge variation in the ages of parents with same-age kids.

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