This Grandma was in the first generation that had the pill. I remember my mother lamenting that she would not get to be a young grandmother because I had access to contraception. She was right. I had my first child at age 27 in an era when early twenties was the norm. I am beginning to realize that I was never in what was considered the “norm” for us, but then, again, we Boomers broke the mold.
This past week, I heard laments from two long (we never say old) friends. One, whose mother was a great-grandmother at 58, and now has six grandchildren whose family conditions have caused her to be a primary caretaker of four of them for a period, lamented that her family should have used the pill and delayed childbirth! Three generations were young mothers and now she is the sandwich, with stress and angst greater than she thinks she can manage.
Grandma was at the different spectrum, telling the daughters not to marry before 27, and if they never married, I still wanted to be a grandmother by the time they were thirty five. My dear friends, at the time, thought I was crazy to promote having a child without a marriage.
The second dear friend was one of those who thought I was crazy then, but no longer. It took her decades of change, biological, societal, and scientific to change her mind. Now, she finds herself lamenting, with egg freezing becoming a new norm, that she is going to be too old to be the “hands-on” grandmother she wants to be when her last two children finally get around to having children.
I loved the title of the article by Jessica Bennett in the October 27, 2014 Time Magazine: “The Big Chill: Why Egg Freezing May Be Our Generation’s Pill.” She calls egg freezing “a way to circumvent the biological glass ceiling” and reviews the recent announcements by corporations, including Facebook and Apple, that are covering the cost of freezing eggs and in vitro fertilization. I love when she says, “women today have greater autonomy over virtually every aspect of their lives: marriage, birth control, career. Isn’t it time our biology caught up?” Of course, her thesis is that this health care coverage is good for business, helping “companies recruit and retain talented women who worry about personal time frames in a way that men rarely do.” Hmmm. Didn’t I read recently that researchers are tying autism to “old” sperm?
How can any mother of daughters complain when we hear “egg freezing is also a matter of equality.” We want equality for our daughters in every way, especially pay equity, but that is another topic for another time.
When our daughters become older mothers, we too are older when we become grandmothers. However, remember we are not our chronological ages and we must look to our functional ages. Yesterday, this Grandma did four sets of ten repetitions each of deep squats. Why? To keep my functional age young so that I can keep up with four active grandchildren. Yes, I do hurt today, but will do more reps of squats tomorrow.
I started this post by saying we Boomer Grandmas broke the mold. However, we still are the sandwich generation, and with greater stress also juggling careers that previous generations did not have, and we have to be patient to allow our children to juggle their careers and life. Our children have learned a lot. They have learned that we can have everything, but not all at once.
In the meantime, we grandmas can keep moving– read the posts about research studies on aging and what we can do to keep ourselves functionally young, anticipating the future grandchildren, when we will not be as chronologically young as we would like to be.
I am on my way to buy that stress ball kit, to increase my grip and function, which I have not had enough time to do! Maybe I will just buy it on line. Gaiam is a great brand and has different levels and I do not have to search the stores.
It is easier to handle the little stuff in life, and let the big stuff just happen.
Joy,
Mema