When I was pregnant with my son at 36, I mostly thought about becoming a mother. I didn’t, however, give much thought to my mum becoming a grandmother. I assumed that she would be much like the mother I knew: silly, loving, dependable.
Turns out, as a grandmother, she is all those things. But she is also now 73. The arthritis in her knee continues to get steadily worse. She walks slowly and sometimes with a slight limp. When she finally saw an NHS consultant last year, he said it was a “miracle” she was still getting about, let alone attending her weekly dance classes. She will need a new knee.
Another miracle: this hasn’t stopped her from running around after my son, playing football with him or getting on the floor to help him build a tower.
And yet. I have watched her wince with pain. I have seen how she’s needed to sit down and take breaks. Our house is full of steep staircases, and the last time she looked after our son, she pulled a tendon. To make things harder, we live over 2.5 hours’ drive away. As kids, my mum used to drive us across Europe, but now spending too long in the car is not an option. Often she takes the train, but they are wildly unreliable and slow. Whenever I drop her off at the station or wave goodbye to her car, I feel awash with guilt. Is this too much?
As spending time with her three-year-old grandson becomes increasingly physically demanding, I’ve started to wonder whether I was being selfish to have a child in my late 30s. Was it selfish to only consider what – and when – having kids would mean to me? Or should I have thought about my mum, and what it would mean for her, too?
We had planned to start a family sooner, but Covid-19 arrived and the world shut up shop. Watching friends attend hospital scans, masked and alone, frightened for their unborn babies, made us take pause. When flight bans were eventually lifted, I decided I wanted to complete a research trip across the US that had been postponed. Perhaps these are decisions I will come to regret.
My partner’s relationship with his grandmother, or nan as he called her, who lived until she was 99, had a significant impact on him. Some of his most treasured memories are the times he spent with her as a boy. There’s a unique tenderness and love reserved for his grandmother that is profoundly moving. Obviously, I would love my son to have such a meaningful relationship with my mum, but I’ve started to worry that I left it too late.
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When he is 10, she will be 80 – the age she’s always (half-) joked she’ll take up smoking again. I can’t stop unhealthy vices, but I do hope she’s still as fiercely independent, mobile and as full of energy as she’s always been. I’ve had a lifetime of watching an incredibly self-sufficient and tough mother: a single parent of two with a very demanding job for the Met Police who has survived cancer. She has always seemed indestructible to me. It’s impossible to imagine her any other way.
It’s not hard to see the profound joy my son brings my mum. I see how much energy they give one another: immediately laughing and giggling and being busy about something or other when they are together. And yet, a toddler is physically draining; coaxing them into coats and shoes, lifting them in and out of car seats and buggies and baths, keeping up with them as they soar across the park or demand yet another game of hide-and-seek. They are best met on the floor, at their level, but sometimes they need to be picked up and carried.
It goes without saying that the younger you are, the easier this is. But it’s not just the ease; it’s the participation. The more you can sit in the rocket ship and fly to the moon, accepting that privileged invitation into their imagination, arguably, the greater the bonding. And if I’d had my son younger, I would have given my mum more of this – without the pain or the breaks. In turn, my son would have more experiences with her, and be able to collect more of the memories that my partner holds on to. I can’t help but wonder if there will be time for her to instil a lifelong respect for outspoken, independent women, as my partner’s nan did to him?
The average age of a woman having her first child in the 1980s was around 25. My mum had my brother at 30, and then me four years later in 1985. Today, the average age of women having their first child is 31. I guess that means both my mum and I were late to the party. My grandmother, however, had her three children throughout her twenties – something that was utterly unthinkable to me when I was that age.
Rationally, we know we can’t live for our parents. Yet that doesn’t stop some of us from doing it. We make choices, conscious or otherwise, in the hope of pleasing them or gaining their approval – a habit from childhood we can’t shake. I knew my mum would be delighted to be a grandparent, and I was eager to give her something I knew would make her happy. As a single parent who brought me up with a lot of sweat, blood and tears, maybe there’s even a case to be made that I owe her that.
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For the avoidance of doubt: I don’t want to offer up yet another stick to beat older mothers with. Society showers us, and our geriatric pregnancies with enough shame as it is. The ancient habit of labelling women “selfish” when in fact they are simply not doing as men want them to do, is not something I want to perpetuate. It’s also not always a choice. Many people are starting families later because they simply can’t afford to do so any earlier. A 2024 study by UCL found that only a quarter of millennials who want children are trying for them because of the cost.
And so I don’t say this to chastise myself, or those like me, but more in an effort to understand where the boundaries are: when we bring a child into this world, we are creating something deeply important in the lives of others, too, and we should talk more about that. Especially, if I want my son to benefit from the relationship, not only in terms of helping with the occasional babysitting, but in building a relationship that will enrich and enhance his life.
It is, of course, too late for me to be asking these questions. We are where we are, as my mum likes to say. And therefore, the guilt isn’t actually very useful. Similarly, no one can prepare you for the experience of having a child. And therefore, I’m not sure anyone can truly plan for something they can’t understand. In other words, I couldn’t have known I would harbour these feelings until I was a mother, and my mum was a grandmother.
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