Dear LPG, 

I am talking to the ladies when I ask this question.  ‘Were you there when your grandchild was born?’ That is the day when tradition dictates that your status changes yet again as you reach one of those pivotal milestones in your life, which often happens while you are too busy to even notice.   

If you have the privilege to be there, the people may be different, and the equipment so much more modern, but all your thoughts are most likely to have a sense of empathic ‘been there, done that’, because no matter which generation of child is making their worldly entrance, the magic never changes.  My own mother (who now boasts 4 mum, 9 grandma, and 11 great-grandma moments) says that wherever you happen to be when the news of a new direct descendant hits, there is no feeling quite like it.   

However, in these days of egg freezing and delaying motherhood until much later in life, we already know that while babies are still being born, mums are waiting longer to reproduce, and the population growth rate is declining slightly in the Western world.   

I wonder if the result will be more regret for the next generation of grandmothers, great-grandmothers and their husbands, when they are older. I think that when they get to that stage when they need a little more of our children’s time, those young ones will be that bit younger and still involved with work and their own families to be there for their ageing parents.   


Even though having a larger family does not necessarily guarantee that one’s children will get involved when their help would most be needed, I have to wonder if all this greater vocational freedom and the resulting delayed generation will truly result in the absence of younger family members’ presence and support simply because their children will still be too young? 

OH, Kent. 

OH finds us some statistical internet evidence…

 

 

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