GRANDMA

Grandmothers seem to be the epidomy or epidome of old age.  You may remember the advertisement this last couple of years of grandma in a wheel chair being dumped over a cliff.  Or you might have heard, grandma is being thrown under the bus.  But consider that the average age of women having their child was 25 in 2006.*  So lets say that a woman has her first child at 25  and that child has a first child also at 25.  The first mother then becomes a grandmother at 50.  While 50 might seem old to a, say, 17 year old, grandma is 12 years from being able to receive early Social Security and 15 years from qualifying for Medicare and probably is still working for pay.  The grandchild will be in high school by the time grandma qualifies for Medicare.  Let's say that, that child also has a first child at 25, then grandma becomes a great grandmother at the age of 75, old perhaps, but still short of the life expectancy at birth for women in the U.S. of 80.8 yrs.

Recall, however, that 25 is the average age for a woman at first birth of a child.  Even if we run the same sequence at an age of first birth by a woman of 30, she can easily become a grandmother at age 60, still two years shy of early Social Security and five years from qualifying for Medicare.  If we run the sequence for age 20, the woman becomes a grandmother at age 40, 22 years from early social Security and 25 years from Medicare coverage.  She would become a great grandmother at age 60 and a great great grandmother at age 80, still within the life expectancy of an American woman at birth.

Whereas grandmother does sound old, in life grandmotherhood normally isn't all that old. She probably is still working and doesn't qualify for even early Social Security or Medicare.  Whereas we probably should shift to great grandma for typifying old age, I doubt it will happen.



* http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db21.pdf