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Comment by droopyEyelids | Hacker News Reader

Fertility isn't the only consideration with having children when you're old.

Skin elasticity and athleticism decreases with age, and that translates into worse tearing, and more difficult births, longer recovery, and more trouble keeping up with a baby after all that.

Then, on top of all that, your parents are entering their sunset years rather where you have to help them rather than having grandparents young enough to help you with your kids.

It's also linked to things like low birth weight. I sure wish my wife & I had started earlier.

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Can you imagine having two generations of kids at 20 years old? ‘Grandma’ will be 40 when she has her first grandkid.

I'm 41 and my boys are 4 and 8. It's wild to even consider I could have been a grandfather by now if my life choices had been different. Wouldn't be such a bad thing though, at 40 you're still pretty young so I could've had my freedom back by now. As it is I'll be 55 by the time they're out of the house and probably won't be able to pick mountain biking back up...

And then if they wait a while I could be pushing 70 before my grandkids arrive. Great-grandkids might be a relic of a time gone by...

> Great-grandkids might be a relic of a time gone by

They seem to be the case for me. My five are 20-30. I see no avenue for grandkids where it takes 3-4 incomes to afford minimal living expenses.

I find it surprising that this is something that has to be imagined. I run into real world examples of this all the time. It isn't the norm, but it sure isn't something that requires imagination to see all around us.

I broke this trend in my family. When I met my then-partner's parents in undergrad, they were of similar age to my grandparents. Didn't bother us, but I think they were surprised.

This has probably been the default situation for most of history I'd think.

Great-grandma would 60, and hell, with some luck, great-great-grandma might have been kicking around still at 80!

Yeah, it'd be fuckin' great because the grandparents could help out a lot more, get active quality time with their grandkids when they're old enough to remember it instead of being that furniture-like senile person stuck in a chair of whom they have few fond memories, and so on.

I got married at 20 and had my first child at 22. I'll likely be a grandparent in my 40s.

From a selfish perspective, I was too young to really understand what I was taking on, and it's been difficult at times. I missed out on many things. Not much of my adult life has been focused solely on my needs.

However from a family perspective, it has worked out quite well. I worked some difficult jobs at first but eventually got my degree, started a career, left to cofound a startup, bought a house. Kids are doing well.

People think you have to do all that before you have kids, but that's not true. When you're already young, kinda dumb and kinda poor then you can make it work.

I'm now 37 and my youngest is 10, so I'm not running around chasing kids anymore. I've got enough energy to help them with school. I like being a young dad now.

I can imagine (and know many people like this). It's pretty common in non-Western or poorer countries where people had kids earlier due mainly to economic reasons (and also lack of availability of birth control).

This was very common in my extended family in rural North Carolina. Most of my cousins didn't attend college, partnered up quickly, and started families. Not always in that precise order . . .

Honestly, I think for them it just wasn't that odd in their community. I grew up in a more suburban area and the baby boom was definitely a few years later comparatively speaking.

I have several aunts and uncles who are great-grandparents and in the 60-70 year old range.

That sounds normal to me.

I was born when my mother was 17. I had my first daughter when I was 25 (and therefore her grandmother was 42). I’m 38 today.

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