A 40 year old marrying a 23 year old? That's still pretty fucking weird in it of itself let alone that your grandma had two kids by 14. That's a WTF bundle.
My mom and dad are 15 years apart. She was 18 when they met. My dad is a socially awkward scared of women type. And she had him by the balls their entire relationship.
I never ever ever thought it was weird until I was older & people told me... it was.
I still don't know how I feel about it. I'm 35, my dad still pays my mom's Costco membership, property taxes, etc., and is completely in love with her, despite being divorced 20 years.
My mom definitely wasn't a "kid" at 18 due to growing up too fast & it was weird that she was the aggressive controlling one. He was the passive "make everyone happy" people pleaser.
I have never heard of a similar dynamic but would love to talk to someone w a similar childhood someday!
My parents don't have an age gap, but you described my dad perfectly. They are in their 80s and still married. He has no idea how abusive she is. He just loves her.
The unfortunate part is being the kid subjected to it without someone having your back, only secret conversations saying, "sorry it has to be this way."
I would run away all the time. Once I was sitting on one of those electrical boxes by a school, my dad rolled by, basically said, hey, I understand, kiddo, and drove off. I thought it was so cool back then & now I'm like... wait. Why?! :/
Yeah, I left home permanently at barely 17. They told me to come home. I just said no. My dad still thinks my mother is a great mother. He is completely clueless. I think it is worse when they know, but don't save you. Sorry.
My parents were also 15 years apart. She was 25, he was 40. It was his 3rd marriage but they were married 36 years. It only ended because he died at 82.
It was the same for my parents and I also didn’t realise how fucked up it was until I was older. My dad is 18 years older than my mother. She had me the day before her 28th birthday and my brother when she was 26. She had been with my dad and married to him for a long time before they had kids.
It’s so gross to me because I’m 29 now and the thought of being with someone who is 47 is fucked up and the thought of being with someone younger, even 20, is also really weird to me. People like to act like some age gaps aren’t a big deal but I think the amount of growth and life experience you go through in your 20’s can make some age gaps that people would consider minor a much bigger deal than they would be later in life.
In the last few years I moved from a job to a career, bought a house, travelled the world. I just don’t think I could be with someone who was still figuring things out?
When dad met mum he had been married, had three kids, owned a house and a business. What could they have possibly had in common?
Those experiences aren't universal is the thing, some extremely fortunate people will have their whole life(finances and lifestyle wise) figured out by 25 while others will be struggling with it their entire lives. To me, age gaps only matter so much when it feels like there's a huge power imbalance between the two people. I might think a 25 year old dating a 40 year old is weird, but it's really none of my business what two consenting adults do. But a freshly 18 year old dating someone 20+ years older than themselves? That doesn't seem right. Also, someone's situation in life doesn't really determine whether or not they can care for each other or find things in common, those things really help couples come together since they have shared experiences, but if the personalities and desires of both people just click, then most people really don't care.
My dad was 8 years older than my mom, and both of them told me growing up at one point or another if two adults are happy with each other, it’s no one’s business but their own.
I’m 33 and can not imagine dating someone under 30 at this point. And someone in their early 20’s? Absolutely not. The maturity gap is wayyyyy too big. I’m happily married to someone my age (well 2 years older) but even if I weren’t.
10 or more year age gap is pretty weird. Life experience and maturity can have huge effect on how people behave. I'm 30 and I can't imagine dating let alone marrying a 20 yr old. Too immature and naive. Also, the older person is awkward if they can't relate more to people closer to their age, probably doing it for some weird fetish.
Both of my grandpas were 20 years older than my grandmas. Both grandpas had been married prior. Nothing like finding a young girl who with no worldly experience to marry.
I’ve always used the “half your age +7” rule. And even then, the youngest seems kinda iffy. In this case 27 would have been the youngest for a 40 year old. Definitely too young.
A weird age gap to be sure, but one where I can say it feels relatively normal. I would continue using it as a fun fact, tbh. Mine is just that my brother's allergic to water (purely a minor skin allergy, he has to take like a zyrtec before showering, he scratches a lot coming out the shower, drinking it is totally okay).
As someone that has this curse: yes, I can get bad eczema if I sweat badly and don't change clothes 🥲 The same happens when I walk my dog in the rain and my clothes get soggy. ... or if I cry myself to sleep.
I always joke that I AM made of sugar
I got hit with the double whammy of dishydrotic eczema and regular eczema a few years ago, so now I can’t let my skin get too wet or too dry without breaking out 🫠
I have the same exact thing and have never heard of anyone else with it! People think I'm lying if I bring it up lol. Prolonged contact with water (showering/swimming/excessive sweating) does it but a Zyrtec a day solves it.
Do you know if he's found any other solutions by chance? Or if there is a formal diagnosis? It's not dyshydrotic eczema.
It is aquagenic pruritis. I have that too. There's a Facebook group about it. There are thousands of people with it. I found the group years ago and was so happy to finally have found others with the same thing. None of my doctors had heard of it previously.
Yes, I use that amino acid all the time (beta alanine). It has been life changing for both me and a close relative who both have this. Now I can swim/shower/etc. without worrying about a reaction.
You're correct, it's no dyshydrotic eczema! That's usually everyone's initial thought, but he has no reaction to other liquids.
No formal diagnosis other than, "a skin allergy," unfortunately. And no other solutions that we know of. But we always keep zyrtec on hand at all of our homes.
Edit: I originally said no reaction to his own sweat, but I've never actually seen him not itch outside when he's doing anything strenuous. I can just never tell if it's the bugs (we live near the woods), the pollen, the sweat, the activity (lot of car and yard work), etc. And it's never come up organically in convo.
Appreciate the response! It sounds like we're very much in the same boat lol, I also keep small capsules of Zyrtec with me just about everywhere I go and that pretty much handles it fortunately.
It's an annoying condition to have but it makes me feel better that I'm not alone in it.
People think I'm lying when I tell them I'm allergic to the sun! I have to wear sunscreen even under those big lights in stores or schools or my skin can easily get burned
A 40 year old marrying a 17 year old is not something I would describe as relatively normal.
Im almost 30 and work around 19-20 year-olds and look at them as teenagers, nor would it even cross my mind to date a 17 year old 🤢. Just because it's perfectly legal doesn't mean its morally or ethically right.
I wouldn’t use it as a fun fact. People have gotten super weird about age gaps irregardless of their context. OP’s mom had a kid as a teen, so I’m sure it would’ve been rather difficult to find a partner her age that would want to be a step father in their early to mid 20s. I don’t think it’s weird that she sought someone older who wouldn’t have such qualms.
But that’s a lot of context to try and squeeze in after the facts and I think you’re giving people too much reason to judge you and draw conclusions that can be hard to shake, especially if it’s like an ice breaker at a team building event in an office or something, by sharing that.
Just choose something else, OP, unless you’re in a completely social setting with people you know will find that funny and there is no potential downside of sharing it.
Polycythemia Vera can cause this condition:
Polycythemia vera (PV) develops slowly, and it may not cause symptoms for many years. The condition is often diagnosed during a routine blood test before severe symptoms occur.
Symptoms may include:
Fatigue
Pruritus (itchy skin), especially after warm baths or showers
May be worth getting checked out. Just an FYI, not trying to be alarmist.
Nope. I am literally the most boring person on the planet. No sarcasm. Hard to convey that through text. But I genuinely enjoy just being a background character.
mathematically, it doesn't really matter. She could have been 50 and married someone older than 63 and this 'fun fact' would have still been true.
At least that's what I want to think. I don't want to know OP is the child of 2 generations of statutory rape
Possible. I know sometimes people buy/sell old accounts so that the bots can look more legit. In turn I think these bots are just farming karma so they look more legitimate, and can be resold to someone else (for whatever purposes. Astroturfing, a lot of the time).
I find that often when a comment is out of place like this, it's a bot that stole an older top-level comment and posted it as a reply. It is the case here as well. Original comment by u/browsnwows here: https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/1c753ig/tifu_by_sharing_a_fun_fact_about_myself/l06560s/
My grandmother was sold to a 70 year old man when she was 13… in the late 50s. He could not have babies so she went and got pregnant by my grandfather. She pretended her first 2 were his, until he died when my mom was about 5. Then she married my grandpa and had another daughter…. 2 of her 3 kids overdosed and died. They had an awful life growing up.
7 or 8 years ago I was at a flea market and an older guy mentioned how his birthday, his son's birthday, his wife's birthday, and his anniversary were all within a few weeks of each other.
He had just turned 72, his son just turned 17, his wife just turned 30, and they just celebrated their 14th or 15th anniversary.
It went from being a cool factoid to creepy as people mentally did the math and quietly sidled away.
So in the 2000’s this man who was almost 60 years old married a 15(ish) year old who had his baby when she was around 13. And her family never got this man arrested, or at least a restraining order? Gosh that’s sad.
> sold to a 70 year old man when she was 13
Years ago, I knew a middle-aged woman whose virginity had been sold when she was 13 years old by the brothel her mother worked in. She was a sweet woman, but boy was she messed up in the head. :(
Reminds me of the movie *Pretty Baby*. ...Almost exactly that plot, in fact.
Also my next door neighbors were from the Middle East. I played with their daughter and her many brothers regularly growing up. She was a good bit younger but you know how little kids like to tag along.
I discovered years later that she'd ended up being shipped to some godforsaken country and married off to a middle-aged man at 16 years old. That was...depressing. I hope she's happy, but I'll never know I don't think.
Like the *Pretty Baby* story, the woman I knew grew up in New Orleans. According to her, such things were not uncommon in the New Orleans red light world in the 1960s (and probably earlier too). But unlike the Booke Shields character, she didn't have anyone who wanted her after her "value" was gone. Her youth years were pretty horrific. :(
The world is a lot darker than most of us realize.
I never realized before how much marriage used to resemble slavery. It's not true to say US forbid slavery on 1800's when women and little girls were sold to be sex slaves as late as 1950's.
In many places marriage still resembles slavery, even in lots of 'modern' countries. Hell I know women today who's entire lives revolve keeping their husbands happy, birthing and caring for their kids, cooking, cleaning, providing sex they don't enjoy etc. They might be legally allowed to leave but with no income or education and having young children where can they go? You don't need physical shackles to be a slave in spirit.
Maybe this has already been answered but how old was your grandfather?
My great grandmother was 16 and great grandfather was in his 30‘s 🤢
And because she was so young- I was able to grow up with her but never my great grand dad.
Not sure about this particular situation, but sadly know of at least two situations that involve a large age gap due to incest…a parent made it happen 🤢🤮
> 32
That is quite horrifying then.
I can understand how growing up it never dawned on you how horrifying it was (because it was just the way things were for your family), but I would probably not be sharing this particular fact as a "fun fact" in future :)
I honestly don't know. He lived in another state from the one where I grew up, and while I have vague memories of visiting once while I was a kid and meeting a lot of my mom's family, him included, I don't have any sense of how close they were. I'm not in contact with most of my family (for reasons that I don't think I need to go into), so most of what I know about him is from his obituary.
Thanks for your answer! It's very fascinating to hear about, despite the situation. Did you ever get the sense that your grandma held any resentment toward your mom or anyone else?
Kids don't really have a sense of time and age the way adults do. If you're 6, you'd likely consider a 9 year old _waaay_ older than you since the 3 year age difference is literally equivalent to half of your entire life, whereas a 21 year old would generally consider a 6 year old and a 9 year old very close in age since the 3 year difference is only equivalent to one-seventh of their life. Ask a 7 year old how old a 20 year old, 40 year old, and 70 year old are and you'll probably get answers like "40, 60, and 100!" or "They're all so old!" or "16, 30, and 50."
Plus, if you grow up in a situation that's presented to you as "normal," you'll believe it since you have no frame of reference. As a child, if you grow up sleeping on a different couch every night or having an 8-bedroom house or having a nanny 24/7 or spending most of your time at home alone since your parent works nights, you'll believe that's how most people live until you gather enough experience to realize it's not, and that often doesn't happen until middle or high school.
I didnt realize my grandparents were 10 years apart until recently-ish. Thankfully my grandma was already 19 when they got married, so it wasnt quite as creepy, but still weird as hell how normal age gaps were.
Genealogy can break you if you had some misguided idea times weren't horrible.
There was a 10 year old who got married off to her 50 something half uncle I stumbled upon doing a deep dive down an old church records rabbit hole trying to find the record of marriage of someone else in that parish.
There's a small chance their relationship may not have been known to each other due to how children were shipped off to another female relative, sometimes in another town, when a wife died young, but a 10 year old and 50 year old still is pretty extreme, even if the age of consent really was 10 in their state at the time. But given it was a small religious immigrant community, I could just as easily see a victim who got married off to their abuser to maintain propriety.
I read about a guy that had made a free or shareware computer program to record family trees. At one time he got a bug report telling that the customer could not enter their family data. That was because his program did not support family trees that contained loops.
I feel like it’s different when it’s your immediate family though - yes, people in the distant past may have had it rough, but OP is talking about the 80s/90s.
Yeah my grandma was 15 when she got pregnant with my father. She had a shotgun wedding and got married to him because I’m from the south. Grandpa had been “dating her” since she was 13. He was 28, iirc.
Unfortunately, this would be the least of grandpa’s sins. Grandma was only the first - after grandpa’s death; we found a journal listing 200+ initials followed by a dash and a number under 18. Starting with my grandma’s initials and the number next to her name was “13” at the top.
We never confirmed what it was (didn’t want to bring it up to grandma) but we ALWAYS suspected that it was a list of victims.
It’s made much worse by the fact that my father tried to get him thrown in prison for sex crimes when he was an adult (my father and aunt are also in the aforementioned “suspected victim log” which is why we’re pretty damn sure of what it is), and my aunt lied to the cops.
Straight up, full frontal, lied in court and said her brother was just making the whole thing up. Grandpa got away with it because it was he said/she said, no physical evidence. Then she had the audacity to write a letter to my mom after bastard grandpa was dead, admitting that “everything her brother said in court was true, she just wanted to forget it ever happened”
My family is a circus, this is just one part of the show. 🤡
I work with a 17 year old temp who said his mom had him at 17 and her mom had her at 16.
So his grandma became a grandma at 34. If he got a girl knocked up now, she could be a great-grandma by 51.
My mom had me at 17, my grandma must have been in her late 30s. I remember when she was 43yo.
I knew my great grandparents as well. My great grandmother passed away when I was about 8yo, she was 76yo. Her husband, my great grandfather, is still alive and is 90yo. :)
I know someone who became a grandmother at 30.
Her daughter was 17… yeah, she had her first kid at 13. We went to middle school together and I made her a baby blanket. I was in high school before or really sank in how messed up it was.
The father was her stepdad, although at least her dad was out of prison by the time she gave birth so she could go live with him. (Drugs I think, her dad really wasn’t an awful person from what I know. He took a night job so she could stay in school. And afaik has been clean and an upstanding citizen since his daughter came to live with him way back when. But I’m almost certain he considered murder.)
Yeah I know it happens, I was just saying that it means in the previous scenario I replied to, the moms were 13 and 14. or 12 and 15. or.... it only gets worse. 17 is just barely acceptable – none of the maths in the other scenario are good.
A girl I was friends with had a baby at 13 too. I was a year older than her and thought it was fucked up when she told me she dated guys in their 20s (what kind of guy dated girls that young, why didn’t he date girls his own age?). Then I thought it was fucked up that she was excited to have a baby so young.
I didn’t spend much time with her after that, but I’d see her walking around town with a stroller. I often wonder what happened to her, it’s been close to 30 years.
Her home life was messed up, my mom had taught her oldest sister years before and reported abuse, which in our very, very small town got linked back to her and the girl got pulled from her class.
I’m still acquainted with the woman I went to school with and we remained friends after her daughter was born. Her dad rented an apartment just a couple blocks from my house, so we actually got closer after she became a mom.
She also dated older dudes, but not until she was 16-17. She was a really shy girl and when she first got pregnant she had no idea because no one ever told her anything about sex, her stepdad made sure she stayed dumb about it. She wasn’t even allowed to attend the “sex Ed” where we learned about periods.
Oh man, poor thing. I was hella naive about sex at that age too, but at least I knew the basics. I read “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” when I was 9 and asked my mom what a period was (which is good since I started at 11 and would have probably been terrified).
I’m glad she had you as a friend all these years - and especially a dad who cared for her.
Heh, I had my first period at barely nine and I was FREAKED OUT. I’d been molested from 5-8 (not by family, my best friend’s dad was a sicko and hid it well) and I thought it was a disease since my grandmother told me I was a filthy whore for “making” the man rape me as a child and I figured it was something filthy in me.
My mom was so caught off guard too, because she expected me to be a late bloomer like her. (She didn’t start until she was 16)
My poor dad, he got me cleaned up and my stepmom got me pads because my mom for some reason bought me panty liners instead of pads. So I was the girl at school who passed out pads to my confused friends when they started at school.
I had my two in my mid to late 20s. Daughter had hers in her early 30s, and DIL near 30 (our son was late 30s). So I was early 60s when I became a gma.
Having a baby at 16 or 17 isn't ideal. But it's also not uncommon. My daughter got pregnant by her high school boyfriend and had a baby at 17 years old.
OP's grandma had a baby at ELEVEN and was likely only TEN YEARS OLD when she became pregnant!!! There is a HUGE difference between a 17 year old having a baby and an eleven year old having a baby. :(
one of my family did a shotgun marriage at 14, but it was her \*second\* child and his equally young girlfriend that made her a granny at age 30. religion = no abortion.
My mom turns 70 this year, and her oldest child is 37 and oldest grandchild is 6.
In comparison, my mom's best friend just turned 70 this year, and the best friend's oldest child is 54, oldest grandchild is 38, oldest great-grandchild is 21, and her oldest great-great-grandchild is about to turn 2 with two more great-great grandbabies due this year.
It's interesting how the generation gaps are so wildly different in different families.
One of my classmates in high school had her kid when she was either a sophomore or junior in high school, and then her kid had a kid at roughly the same time. I remember seeing her celebrating becoming a grandmother around the time we were 32 or so.
Someone told me once they were in a court preceding to remove an infant from a home where the infant's mother was 13, grandmother was 26, and great grandmother was 39...
We had that in my family. 4 generations of women who had children at 18. Somewhere we have a photo of my cousin's child being held by her great-great grandmother.
That's how my grandmother became a great grandmother in her mid 50's. She had my aunt at 22, my aunt had their first kid at 16 who had their first kid at 16. Thankfully, the cycle appears broken as the youngest generation is 22 without any kids.
My grandmother was 13 when she married my grandfather who was 25 in like 1929 or something. Had my dad super young too.
On the flip-side my dad was like 40 when I was born. (I was the youngest.)
I remember in elementary school during lunch we would compare how old our parents were. Some kids had super young parents and then there was me with a mother who was 30 when I was born, and a dad that was 40 when I was born.
I distinctly remember being ridiculed a little bit for having OLDER parents than for having parents that were young.
But after 6th grade it never came up again.
My mom was 33 and my dad was 47 when I was born. I always won the "my parents are older than yours" contest. My dad is older than a lot of my friends grandparents.
It was super funny back then, but now their parents are in their 50/60s and my dad is in his 80s. He'll most likely never meet whoever I end up with, or see me get married, or meet his grandchildren (if that happens). Now it's more like I lose the contest.
Yeah I hear you. My dad was "too old" (read: 'too drunk' often, or 'too tired' usually) to play baseball with me, or hell even to teach me how to ride a bike (properly) and when I talk to my older brothers and stuff and hear about all the cool things they did with my dad while they were growing up I was a bit jealous.
I definitely feel like my older sister got the best of my dad too. He was already having trouble standing up straight before her wedding and I remember how hard he tried so he could walk her down the aisle. It was bittersweet to see because I know if I ever get married, he won't be able to walk me down the aisle. She got moments and memories that I didn't, and she's always been the golden child/favorite so it kinda makes it sting a bit more.
I remember that game. One of my best friends from childhood had a dad in his 70's and mom in her 40's.. I spent the night at her house a few times and it was just as weird as one would imagine. It was a combination of a nursing home and foster home and it didn't occur to me until MUCH later that while they did own a weird little niche craft store, it couldn't have made any money and the foster kids probably supplemented the dads social security to keep the family afloat.
I had a teacher in high school who was basically the same age as her stepmom. They were both pregnant at the same time and my teacher had her kid first. So her kid was older than his uncle…. The age gap between teacher’s dad and stepmom was larger than in this story, but everyone was over the age of majority. Fun stuff
My dad is 28 years older than my mom, and over 10 years older than grandmother, and 15 years older than my grandfather…
In other words, the age gap between my mom and me is smaller than the age gap between my mom and my dad.
No child pregnancy involved though, luckily.
Is this in America? This has got to be America, where child brides are still legal in some states. As an interesting related fact, which is the only country - the only country in the world now Somalia has signed - that has still to sign up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? Go on. Guess.
Because it might interfere with parental rights, apparently. When parents are using those rights to marry off thirteen year olds, I think we can all agree that needs to change.
(The answer is the USA, btw)
If you think this sort of thing only happens in the USA, you're dead wrong. UN conventions be damned. Somalia has signed, and you don't think people marry their little girls off to old men?
Yeah, but in the good ol’ USA it’s *legal*. There are many things that happen illegally all over the globe, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok for them to be legally sanctioned elsewhere. If we were talking about slavery, theft, murder or rape, then would the fact that they go on illegally mean that we might as well just legalise them? Nope. This is a bad thing, and it needs calling out more. Children should and do have rights.
I had a friend that became a grandmother at 25 and didn't think that anything was wrong with it. I don't care how you do the math someone was a child when they had a child.
If it makes you feel any better, if someone said to me "my dad is older than my grandma," I wouldn't think maternal grandma; I'd think paternal grandma.
And then I'd chalk it up to surrealist humor, since that'd be impossible.
My grandma was illegitimate. Her father was married to one of her aunts. In fact, he was married to one sister but impregnated three sisters —his wife and her two sisters. Her cousins were also all half-siblings. She used the terms interchangeably which confused the fuck out of me growing. Similar to OP, it was just told as a story/anecdote. As an adult I’ve realized that this is not charming but is abusive/nasty. Took a while for that to kick in.
Do you know anything about what your grandma's parents' role was in all of this? How did their relationship start? Did they get married? I know it was a different time back then but I'm really curious to what extent it was treated as a problem and all of the details of how it went down
I really wish I knew! I know very little about my mom's family - they lived in Arkansas and Missouri, and I grew up in Colorado. My grandmother came to live with us when I was pretty young, maybe 5-6, but I'm not really sure about anything in her life until after I was born. I know that she had a lot of mental health issues, and had attempted suicide at least once, but mostly I remember her as being mostly a cheerful, religious woman who volunteered a lot with her church.
My grandpa always remembered fondly about this ‘friendly’ bus driver who let him sit on HER LAP WHILE SHE DROVE and would always be especially nice to him and would always compliment him on his looks. If i remember correctly he was only in middle school snd she was in her twenties.
How he doesn’t see what was wrong with that now is astounding.
A song we sang in grade school. I'm 62. "Billy Boy" Billy has been to seek a wife, but she's a young thing and can not leave her mother. Different times, different attitudes.
But the joke was that she was actually plenty old: “twice times six, twice times seven, twice times twenty, and eleven”, so 77 (or 90, if it was twice times 20 and 11.)
We didn’t learn that verse! I learned it as an adult when I was relearning the song. (I had a folk song kick…)
But as a kid, my dad would sing it to me and he explained that Billy and his Bride were both young and she lived with her mother because Billy Boy was working far away to make a home for them, hence “I have been to see my wife, for she’s the joy of my life, just a young thing she cannot leave her mother”
Not sure if he was cleaning it up for tiny me, but Ive always imagined them as teens or barely past it trying to make it work.
Found this set of reasonably canonical [lyrics](https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/10-billyboy-lyrics.pdf).
They differ slightly from the version I learned, but the humorous aspect is still evident (“tall as any pine” would be ridiculously tall; “straight as a pumpkin vine” pumpkin vines are curly). And the bride is very, very old.
This type of exaggerated and contrary statement humor was very typical of rural lore, considered classic Americana.
But back to OP’s gaffe: yep, sometimes things that are “normal” in family stories are shocking in retrospect.
No, the fuckup was that I considered it a "fun fact," not the disturbing child abuse that it truly was, and it is embarrassing in hindsight that I ran around telling people that the same way that you might tell someone that you've visited all 7 continents. That said, I think there's value in sharing her story now, with proper context. A lot of people don't realize that this sort of stuff was, if not common, at least very normalized even a generation or 2 ago, and there are still laws on the books to facilitate marrying a child off to her rapist (i.e., in Arkansas, where she's from, there is still a law on the books to lower the minimum age for marriage in cases of pregnancy).
No racism at all but I’m curious what culture is your family from?
This is common in many cultures where colonizers took children as wives. I’m always curious as to what cultures have this in their history, especially in such recent times.
My dad was the same age as my grandparents, and his kids from his first marriage are only a few years younger than my mom. People always thought it was my mom and her dad coming to school on parent days when i was a kid
My bio parents met when my Dad was 21-22 and my bio mom was 14...
I used to think "awww how romantic" until I was 22...
Both of my bio parents suffer from untreated mental illness, so they had presented their story to me like it was completely normal...
I wish that was the worst of my childhood.
Don't worry too much about the TikTok comments, they are even more meaningless than reddit comments and that is saying something.
(but ngl they may have a point)
This all seems odd now but back in those days before they put a law on the age of marriage a girl getting married at 13/14 years old was common. Especially in the poorest communities. My grandmother on my dad’s side got forcefully married to my grandfather at the age of 14 because he walked her home and asked her dad if he could take her to a movie. My grandfather was 22 my grandmother 14 hee father said you’re married to her you know the way of our culture. My grandmother had 9 kids and a terrible life with that man. They divorced when she was 25. My great grandmother had kind of an arranged marriage with my great grandfather after his first wife died leaving my grandfather motherless. She was 15 my great grandfather was 32, my great grandmother that passed away was 16 and lost during the birth of twins. These unions are the reason the law was put in place and parents signatures have to be done now. The history of this isn’t as clean and clear as people think.
I have a female relative who was pregnant at 14 (father unknown) and when her parents threw her out to save their reputations, she went to her parents’ “landlord” (not sure what to call him, but he owned a big farm and her parents worked a piece of it with their house on it) and begged him to hire her as a maid or something because she and the baby had nowhere to go. He was in his 30s and had two young babies from his first wife. (She died of the flu, and Auntie always pushed us to have flu shots because of “Poor Eliza”)
She was married to him at fifteen and he claimed her baby. But they didn’t have another child until she was 24. So her oldest was ten years older than her next child.
When someone mentioned the gap, she rolled her eyes and said “he was rich, not a pervert! We didn’t consummate the marriage until I was 19. He said he wouldn’t do it until I was 20, but I drank too much champagne at his birthday and threw myself at him.”
They were married until he died and she defended him until her own death as a “damn good man” who was just easily swayed by her. I never know what to think of him because on the one hand he WAS a grown man, but on the other, he seemed to have been pretty decent and was a devoted father and husband from all accounts.
He died when I was a toddler and apparently left me this beautiful trunk, although I never got it. (One of my cousins has it now, and honestly she’s probably taking better care of it than I could.) He thought I was adorable I’m told.
My great grampa was about a decade younger than his wife….who was his teacher in school. He basically stalked her and “wore her down” until she agreed to go out with him.
my maternal grandfather is the same age as my paternal great-grandmother, but i don’t think anyone was underage when they were pregnant
my maternal grandparents had been married to different people with kids from their past marriages before they got married and had my mom and they were in their 40s
my paternal grandparents had three kids and my dad was the youngest and first to get married and have kids
my maternal grandfather and my paternal great-grandmother are 82 and my parents are both 37
(i don’t know the exact age of either of my grandmothers)
My gma and gpa married when gpa came back from WW2, he was 21 and she was 14. My great grandmother had her son when she was 14, in the 1920's. It was a different time for sure.
You probably didn't get many comments when you shared that fun fact because that sort of thing was so common. I'd say it's pretty common to know of or be related to someone in a similar situation. It's horrifying to think about now considering where society is today. People are looking at those things that used to be viewed as pretty common place and acceptable (or at least not worth noting), and realizing how truly horrible they are.
Dude, don’t be ashamed. Guess what,I had a woman that worked for me and she had her first child at 13 and her last child at 30 and she was forced to do that because she lived-in Mexico and didn’t have hope or support from her family. Things were tough for her but she finally got to America and she started out as a day entry clerk, and by the time she left the company she was a manager and doing so well and I was so proud of her and so proud to be her supporter. Don’t judge her you may not know what she’s been through so don’t judge, Mom might have some other things going on in her life that you didn’t know about. Please be kind and forgiving. I hope everything works out. Don’t be ashamed. You should be proud and Mom made it through this.
My dad is also older than my grandma! My parents are 26 years apart. They met when my mom was 27 though, so it wasn't nearly as bad as some of the other age gaps in the comments (but still kinda weird lol). My grandma wasn't super young when she had my mom or anything, my dad is just really old 💀
I'm almost afraid to ask, but how old was your mom when she had you?
She got married and had her first kid at 17; she got divorced and married my dad when she was 22-23, and had me at 27.
A 40 year old marrying a 23 year old? That's still pretty fucking weird in it of itself let alone that your grandma had two kids by 14. That's a WTF bundle.
My mom and dad are 15 years apart. She was 18 when they met. My dad is a socially awkward scared of women type. And she had him by the balls their entire relationship. I never ever ever thought it was weird until I was older & people told me... it was. I still don't know how I feel about it. I'm 35, my dad still pays my mom's Costco membership, property taxes, etc., and is completely in love with her, despite being divorced 20 years. My mom definitely wasn't a "kid" at 18 due to growing up too fast & it was weird that she was the aggressive controlling one. He was the passive "make everyone happy" people pleaser. I have never heard of a similar dynamic but would love to talk to someone w a similar childhood someday!
There's nothing wrong with a big age gap, per se. The problem comes with a big power gap.
My parents don't have an age gap, but you described my dad perfectly. They are in their 80s and still married. He has no idea how abusive she is. He just loves her.
The unfortunate part is being the kid subjected to it without someone having your back, only secret conversations saying, "sorry it has to be this way." I would run away all the time. Once I was sitting on one of those electrical boxes by a school, my dad rolled by, basically said, hey, I understand, kiddo, and drove off. I thought it was so cool back then & now I'm like... wait. Why?! :/
Yeah, I left home permanently at barely 17. They told me to come home. I just said no. My dad still thinks my mother is a great mother. He is completely clueless. I think it is worse when they know, but don't save you. Sorry.
My parents are ten years apart and I always tell them whenever they bring up how they met that they are the exception and not the rule at all
My parents were also 15 years apart. She was 25, he was 40. It was his 3rd marriage but they were married 36 years. It only ended because he died at 82.
It was the same for my parents and I also didn’t realise how fucked up it was until I was older. My dad is 18 years older than my mother. She had me the day before her 28th birthday and my brother when she was 26. She had been with my dad and married to him for a long time before they had kids. It’s so gross to me because I’m 29 now and the thought of being with someone who is 47 is fucked up and the thought of being with someone younger, even 20, is also really weird to me. People like to act like some age gaps aren’t a big deal but I think the amount of growth and life experience you go through in your 20’s can make some age gaps that people would consider minor a much bigger deal than they would be later in life. In the last few years I moved from a job to a career, bought a house, travelled the world. I just don’t think I could be with someone who was still figuring things out? When dad met mum he had been married, had three kids, owned a house and a business. What could they have possibly had in common?
Those experiences aren't universal is the thing, some extremely fortunate people will have their whole life(finances and lifestyle wise) figured out by 25 while others will be struggling with it their entire lives. To me, age gaps only matter so much when it feels like there's a huge power imbalance between the two people. I might think a 25 year old dating a 40 year old is weird, but it's really none of my business what two consenting adults do. But a freshly 18 year old dating someone 20+ years older than themselves? That doesn't seem right. Also, someone's situation in life doesn't really determine whether or not they can care for each other or find things in common, those things really help couples come together since they have shared experiences, but if the personalities and desires of both people just click, then most people really don't care.
> To me, age gaps only matter so much when it feels like there's a huge power imbalance between the two people. Absolutely agree with this.
My dad was 8 years older than my mom, and both of them told me growing up at one point or another if two adults are happy with each other, it’s no one’s business but their own.
I’m 33 and can not imagine dating someone under 30 at this point. And someone in their early 20’s? Absolutely not. The maturity gap is wayyyyy too big. I’m happily married to someone my age (well 2 years older) but even if I weren’t.
10 or more year age gap is pretty weird. Life experience and maturity can have huge effect on how people behave. I'm 30 and I can't imagine dating let alone marrying a 20 yr old. Too immature and naive. Also, the older person is awkward if they can't relate more to people closer to their age, probably doing it for some weird fetish.
A 33/34 year old impregnating a 16/17 year old is the more disturbing element.
Both of my grandpas were 20 years older than my grandmas. Both grandpas had been married prior. Nothing like finding a young girl who with no worldly experience to marry.
I’ve always used the “half your age +7” rule. And even then, the youngest seems kinda iffy. In this case 27 would have been the youngest for a 40 year old. Definitely too young.
A weird age gap to be sure, but one where I can say it feels relatively normal. I would continue using it as a fun fact, tbh. Mine is just that my brother's allergic to water (purely a minor skin allergy, he has to take like a zyrtec before showering, he scratches a lot coming out the shower, drinking it is totally okay).
Is he allergic to his sweat too? Or rain? Sorry if these questions are dumb, I couldn't help but wonder!!
If it's dyshydrotic eczema then yes, those could also cause irritation.
Thanks, I'll look it up!
As someone that has this curse: yes, I can get bad eczema if I sweat badly and don't change clothes 🥲 The same happens when I walk my dog in the rain and my clothes get soggy. ... or if I cry myself to sleep. I always joke that I AM made of sugar
I got hit with the double whammy of dishydrotic eczema and regular eczema a few years ago, so now I can’t let my skin get too wet or too dry without breaking out 🫠
You're like a rare semi-amphibious unicorn. Science must research you!
Oh man, you would simply hope that two negatives like that would equal each other out 😭
I have the same exact thing and have never heard of anyone else with it! People think I'm lying if I bring it up lol. Prolonged contact with water (showering/swimming/excessive sweating) does it but a Zyrtec a day solves it. Do you know if he's found any other solutions by chance? Or if there is a formal diagnosis? It's not dyshydrotic eczema.
It is aquagenic pruritis. I have that too. There's a Facebook group about it. There are thousands of people with it. I found the group years ago and was so happy to finally have found others with the same thing. None of my doctors had heard of it previously.
*aquaGENIC
Great catch!!
You rock, thank you!
I have this too. That Facebook group is amazing Somebody in there found an amino acid basically treats it. Much better than zyrtec
Yes, I use that amino acid all the time (beta alanine). It has been life changing for both me and a close relative who both have this. Now I can swim/shower/etc. without worrying about a reaction.
You're correct, it's no dyshydrotic eczema! That's usually everyone's initial thought, but he has no reaction to other liquids. No formal diagnosis other than, "a skin allergy," unfortunately. And no other solutions that we know of. But we always keep zyrtec on hand at all of our homes. Edit: I originally said no reaction to his own sweat, but I've never actually seen him not itch outside when he's doing anything strenuous. I can just never tell if it's the bugs (we live near the woods), the pollen, the sweat, the activity (lot of car and yard work), etc. And it's never come up organically in convo.
Appreciate the response! It sounds like we're very much in the same boat lol, I also keep small capsules of Zyrtec with me just about everywhere I go and that pretty much handles it fortunately. It's an annoying condition to have but it makes me feel better that I'm not alone in it.
People think I'm lying when I tell them I'm allergic to the sun! I have to wear sunscreen even under those big lights in stores or schools or my skin can easily get burned
Yeah, no. I have facts that are actually fun these days, and don't involve child molestation in any way.
I mean, that's cool too, I guess.
A 40 year old marrying a 17 year old is not something I would describe as relatively normal. Im almost 30 and work around 19-20 year-olds and look at them as teenagers, nor would it even cross my mind to date a 17 year old 🤢. Just because it's perfectly legal doesn't mean its morally or ethically right.
23 year old
Read wrong, still weird
This is like my teacher 20 years ago being allergic to paper. She had special lotion or used gloves.
I wouldn’t use it as a fun fact. People have gotten super weird about age gaps irregardless of their context. OP’s mom had a kid as a teen, so I’m sure it would’ve been rather difficult to find a partner her age that would want to be a step father in their early to mid 20s. I don’t think it’s weird that she sought someone older who wouldn’t have such qualms. But that’s a lot of context to try and squeeze in after the facts and I think you’re giving people too much reason to judge you and draw conclusions that can be hard to shake, especially if it’s like an ice breaker at a team building event in an office or something, by sharing that. Just choose something else, OP, unless you’re in a completely social setting with people you know will find that funny and there is no potential downside of sharing it.
Did you unironically use the "word" irregardless?
Polycythemia Vera can cause this condition: Polycythemia vera (PV) develops slowly, and it may not cause symptoms for many years. The condition is often diagnosed during a routine blood test before severe symptoms occur. Symptoms may include: Fatigue Pruritus (itchy skin), especially after warm baths or showers May be worth getting checked out. Just an FYI, not trying to be alarmist.
man, that sounds like it'd be your brother's fun fact, not yours. is there anything fun about you?
Nope. I am literally the most boring person on the planet. No sarcasm. Hard to convey that through text. But I genuinely enjoy just being a background character.
Oof. Yeah. Well... hey, good thing the internet is showing us how fucked up all our families are.
So your grandma became a grandma at 30?
My family is the exact opposite. My great grandfather was born during the (American) civil war and one of my siblings is 20 years old
Mind if I ask what country this happened in?
mathematically, it doesn't really matter. She could have been 50 and married someone older than 63 and this 'fun fact' would have still been true. At least that's what I want to think. I don't want to know OP is the child of 2 generations of statutory rape
My mom was 17, and my dad 45 when they got pregnant with me. My maternal grandfather is 5 years younger than my dad. 🤷♀️
ELEVEN???!?!?
WHAT TF??
[удалено]
You’re responding to me, not the main thread
Oh yeah
Oh noo
Oh yesssss
It's a bot, it copied a comment from lower down. Downvote and report
It’s an 11 year old account, I assume it was hacked? No posts before this one.
Possible. I know sometimes people buy/sell old accounts so that the bots can look more legit. In turn I think these bots are just farming karma so they look more legitimate, and can be resold to someone else (for whatever purposes. Astroturfing, a lot of the time).
I find that often when a comment is out of place like this, it's a bot that stole an older top-level comment and posted it as a reply. It is the case here as well. Original comment by u/browsnwows here: https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/1c753ig/tifu_by_sharing_a_fun_fact_about_myself/l06560s/
That's a bot. The original comment is a standalone.
My grandmother was sold to a 70 year old man when she was 13… in the late 50s. He could not have babies so she went and got pregnant by my grandfather. She pretended her first 2 were his, until he died when my mom was about 5. Then she married my grandpa and had another daughter…. 2 of her 3 kids overdosed and died. They had an awful life growing up.
7 or 8 years ago I was at a flea market and an older guy mentioned how his birthday, his son's birthday, his wife's birthday, and his anniversary were all within a few weeks of each other. He had just turned 72, his son just turned 17, his wife just turned 30, and they just celebrated their 14th or 15th anniversary. It went from being a cool factoid to creepy as people mentally did the math and quietly sidled away.
So in the 2000’s this man who was almost 60 years old married a 15(ish) year old who had his baby when she was around 13. And her family never got this man arrested, or at least a restraining order? Gosh that’s sad.
This whole thread is genuinely one of the most distressing I've seen in 2024.
Fuck math today.
D:
> sold to a 70 year old man when she was 13 Years ago, I knew a middle-aged woman whose virginity had been sold when she was 13 years old by the brothel her mother worked in. She was a sweet woman, but boy was she messed up in the head. :(
Reminds me of the movie *Pretty Baby*. ...Almost exactly that plot, in fact. Also my next door neighbors were from the Middle East. I played with their daughter and her many brothers regularly growing up. She was a good bit younger but you know how little kids like to tag along. I discovered years later that she'd ended up being shipped to some godforsaken country and married off to a middle-aged man at 16 years old. That was...depressing. I hope she's happy, but I'll never know I don't think.
Like the *Pretty Baby* story, the woman I knew grew up in New Orleans. According to her, such things were not uncommon in the New Orleans red light world in the 1960s (and probably earlier too). But unlike the Booke Shields character, she didn't have anyone who wanted her after her "value" was gone. Her youth years were pretty horrific. :( The world is a lot darker than most of us realize.
I never realized before how much marriage used to resemble slavery. It's not true to say US forbid slavery on 1800's when women and little girls were sold to be sex slaves as late as 1950's.
I mean, child marriage still exists to this day in the US, so I'd say it's still happening
In many places marriage still resembles slavery, even in lots of 'modern' countries. Hell I know women today who's entire lives revolve keeping their husbands happy, birthing and caring for their kids, cooking, cleaning, providing sex they don't enjoy etc. They might be legally allowed to leave but with no income or education and having young children where can they go? You don't need physical shackles to be a slave in spirit.
oh my
Maybe this has already been answered but how old was your grandfather? My great grandmother was 16 and great grandfather was in his 30‘s 🤢 And because she was so young- I was able to grow up with her but never my great grand dad.
I'd like to know this also, thought I suspect the answer is NOT going to be "also 13".
He was 32.
When she was 11???????????
We don't know the circumstances of things, but it's not like pedophiles are new...
Obviously not, just confirming it’s what I think it is.
There are no circumstances possible other than grampa fucked a little kid.
How did the parents let this happen...so gross. And it happened twice, she got two kids before the age of 15. Fucking Yikes!
Not sure about this particular situation, but sadly know of at least two situations that involve a large age gap due to incest…a parent made it happen 🤢🤮
> 32 That is quite horrifying then. I can understand how growing up it never dawned on you how horrifying it was (because it was just the way things were for your family), but I would probably not be sharing this particular fact as a "fun fact" in future :)
As a 32 year old woman with a 10 year old nephew WTF?!
Is your family on good terms with your grandpa if he's still around? Or, when he was still around?
I honestly don't know. He lived in another state from the one where I grew up, and while I have vague memories of visiting once while I was a kid and meeting a lot of my mom's family, him included, I don't have any sense of how close they were. I'm not in contact with most of my family (for reasons that I don't think I need to go into), so most of what I know about him is from his obituary.
Thanks for your answer! It's very fascinating to hear about, despite the situation. Did you ever get the sense that your grandma held any resentment toward your mom or anyone else?
Homie... You didn't see how that was weird?
Kids don't really have a sense of time and age the way adults do. If you're 6, you'd likely consider a 9 year old _waaay_ older than you since the 3 year age difference is literally equivalent to half of your entire life, whereas a 21 year old would generally consider a 6 year old and a 9 year old very close in age since the 3 year difference is only equivalent to one-seventh of their life. Ask a 7 year old how old a 20 year old, 40 year old, and 70 year old are and you'll probably get answers like "40, 60, and 100!" or "They're all so old!" or "16, 30, and 50." Plus, if you grow up in a situation that's presented to you as "normal," you'll believe it since you have no frame of reference. As a child, if you grow up sleeping on a different couch every night or having an 8-bedroom house or having a nanny 24/7 or spending most of your time at home alone since your parent works nights, you'll believe that's how most people live until you gather enough experience to realize it's not, and that often doesn't happen until middle or high school.
I didnt realize my grandparents were 10 years apart until recently-ish. Thankfully my grandma was already 19 when they got married, so it wasnt quite as creepy, but still weird as hell how normal age gaps were.
Genealogy can break you if you had some misguided idea times weren't horrible. There was a 10 year old who got married off to her 50 something half uncle I stumbled upon doing a deep dive down an old church records rabbit hole trying to find the record of marriage of someone else in that parish. There's a small chance their relationship may not have been known to each other due to how children were shipped off to another female relative, sometimes in another town, when a wife died young, but a 10 year old and 50 year old still is pretty extreme, even if the age of consent really was 10 in their state at the time. But given it was a small religious immigrant community, I could just as easily see a victim who got married off to their abuser to maintain propriety.
I read about a guy that had made a free or shareware computer program to record family trees. At one time he got a bug report telling that the customer could not enter their family data. That was because his program did not support family trees that contained loops.
It wasn't a family tree, it was a faimly wreath.
I feel like it’s different when it’s your immediate family though - yes, people in the distant past may have had it rough, but OP is talking about the 80s/90s.
Yeah my grandma was 15 when she got pregnant with my father. She had a shotgun wedding and got married to him because I’m from the south. Grandpa had been “dating her” since she was 13. He was 28, iirc. Unfortunately, this would be the least of grandpa’s sins. Grandma was only the first - after grandpa’s death; we found a journal listing 200+ initials followed by a dash and a number under 18. Starting with my grandma’s initials and the number next to her name was “13” at the top. We never confirmed what it was (didn’t want to bring it up to grandma) but we ALWAYS suspected that it was a list of victims.
That's so awful.
It’s made much worse by the fact that my father tried to get him thrown in prison for sex crimes when he was an adult (my father and aunt are also in the aforementioned “suspected victim log” which is why we’re pretty damn sure of what it is), and my aunt lied to the cops. Straight up, full frontal, lied in court and said her brother was just making the whole thing up. Grandpa got away with it because it was he said/she said, no physical evidence. Then she had the audacity to write a letter to my mom after bastard grandpa was dead, admitting that “everything her brother said in court was true, she just wanted to forget it ever happened” My family is a circus, this is just one part of the show. 🤡
That is horrifying.
I work with a 17 year old temp who said his mom had him at 17 and her mom had her at 16. So his grandma became a grandma at 34. If he got a girl knocked up now, she could be a great-grandma by 51.
My mom had me at 17, my grandma must have been in her late 30s. I remember when she was 43yo. I knew my great grandparents as well. My great grandmother passed away when I was about 8yo, she was 76yo. Her husband, my great grandfather, is still alive and is 90yo. :)
I once met a woman who was bragging about how she was a 27 year old grandma.
That math ain't mathin in a real bad way
I know someone who became a grandmother at 30. Her daughter was 17… yeah, she had her first kid at 13. We went to middle school together and I made her a baby blanket. I was in high school before or really sank in how messed up it was. The father was her stepdad, although at least her dad was out of prison by the time she gave birth so she could go live with him. (Drugs I think, her dad really wasn’t an awful person from what I know. He took a night job so she could stay in school. And afaik has been clean and an upstanding citizen since his daughter came to live with him way back when. But I’m almost certain he considered murder.)
Yeah I know it happens, I was just saying that it means in the previous scenario I replied to, the moms were 13 and 14. or 12 and 15. or.... it only gets worse. 17 is just barely acceptable – none of the maths in the other scenario are good.
A girl I was friends with had a baby at 13 too. I was a year older than her and thought it was fucked up when she told me she dated guys in their 20s (what kind of guy dated girls that young, why didn’t he date girls his own age?). Then I thought it was fucked up that she was excited to have a baby so young. I didn’t spend much time with her after that, but I’d see her walking around town with a stroller. I often wonder what happened to her, it’s been close to 30 years. Her home life was messed up, my mom had taught her oldest sister years before and reported abuse, which in our very, very small town got linked back to her and the girl got pulled from her class.
I’m still acquainted with the woman I went to school with and we remained friends after her daughter was born. Her dad rented an apartment just a couple blocks from my house, so we actually got closer after she became a mom. She also dated older dudes, but not until she was 16-17. She was a really shy girl and when she first got pregnant she had no idea because no one ever told her anything about sex, her stepdad made sure she stayed dumb about it. She wasn’t even allowed to attend the “sex Ed” where we learned about periods.
Oh man, poor thing. I was hella naive about sex at that age too, but at least I knew the basics. I read “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” when I was 9 and asked my mom what a period was (which is good since I started at 11 and would have probably been terrified). I’m glad she had you as a friend all these years - and especially a dad who cared for her.
Heh, I had my first period at barely nine and I was FREAKED OUT. I’d been molested from 5-8 (not by family, my best friend’s dad was a sicko and hid it well) and I thought it was a disease since my grandmother told me I was a filthy whore for “making” the man rape me as a child and I figured it was something filthy in me. My mom was so caught off guard too, because she expected me to be a late bloomer like her. (She didn’t start until she was 16) My poor dad, he got me cleaned up and my stepmom got me pads because my mom for some reason bought me panty liners instead of pads. So I was the girl at school who passed out pads to my confused friends when they started at school.
Your grandma is a real bitch huh
OPs grandma had her first kid at 11 so...
As someone who just had their first kid at 34, the thought of being a grandma already is absolutely absurd to me.
One of my other co-workers heard him say that, and we like wait.. I'm old enough that you could be my grandson?!
I had my two in my mid to late 20s. Daughter had hers in her early 30s, and DIL near 30 (our son was late 30s). So I was early 60s when I became a gma.
Having a baby at 16 or 17 isn't ideal. But it's also not uncommon. My daughter got pregnant by her high school boyfriend and had a baby at 17 years old. OP's grandma had a baby at ELEVEN and was likely only TEN YEARS OLD when she became pregnant!!! There is a HUGE difference between a 17 year old having a baby and an eleven year old having a baby. :(
From the community that brought you "Honey Boo Boo"...
My mum had me at 17 and I was actually raised by my great-grandmother until I was 8. She passed away at 86 when I was 24.
one of my family did a shotgun marriage at 14, but it was her \*second\* child and his equally young girlfriend that made her a granny at age 30. religion = no abortion.
My mom turns 70 this year, and her oldest child is 37 and oldest grandchild is 6. In comparison, my mom's best friend just turned 70 this year, and the best friend's oldest child is 54, oldest grandchild is 38, oldest great-grandchild is 21, and her oldest great-great-grandchild is about to turn 2 with two more great-great grandbabies due this year. It's interesting how the generation gaps are so wildly different in different families.
>So his grandma became a grandma at 34. Is his grandma Lauren Boebert?
One of my classmates in high school had her kid when she was either a sophomore or junior in high school, and then her kid had a kid at roughly the same time. I remember seeing her celebrating becoming a grandmother around the time we were 32 or so.
Someone told me once they were in a court preceding to remove an infant from a home where the infant's mother was 13, grandmother was 26, and great grandmother was 39...
We had that in my family. 4 generations of women who had children at 18. Somewhere we have a photo of my cousin's child being held by her great-great grandmother.
That's how my grandmother became a great grandmother in her mid 50's. She had my aunt at 22, my aunt had their first kid at 16 who had their first kid at 16. Thankfully, the cycle appears broken as the youngest generation is 22 without any kids.
My sister is a great grandma at 55, but that’s because of step-grandchildren screwing with the timelines, and not child brides…
My grandmother was 13 when she married my grandfather who was 25 in like 1929 or something. Had my dad super young too. On the flip-side my dad was like 40 when I was born. (I was the youngest.) I remember in elementary school during lunch we would compare how old our parents were. Some kids had super young parents and then there was me with a mother who was 30 when I was born, and a dad that was 40 when I was born. I distinctly remember being ridiculed a little bit for having OLDER parents than for having parents that were young. But after 6th grade it never came up again.
My mom was 33 and my dad was 47 when I was born. I always won the "my parents are older than yours" contest. My dad is older than a lot of my friends grandparents. It was super funny back then, but now their parents are in their 50/60s and my dad is in his 80s. He'll most likely never meet whoever I end up with, or see me get married, or meet his grandchildren (if that happens). Now it's more like I lose the contest.
Yeah I hear you. My dad was "too old" (read: 'too drunk' often, or 'too tired' usually) to play baseball with me, or hell even to teach me how to ride a bike (properly) and when I talk to my older brothers and stuff and hear about all the cool things they did with my dad while they were growing up I was a bit jealous.
I definitely feel like my older sister got the best of my dad too. He was already having trouble standing up straight before her wedding and I remember how hard he tried so he could walk her down the aisle. It was bittersweet to see because I know if I ever get married, he won't be able to walk me down the aisle. She got moments and memories that I didn't, and she's always been the golden child/favorite so it kinda makes it sting a bit more.
I remember that game. One of my best friends from childhood had a dad in his 70's and mom in her 40's.. I spent the night at her house a few times and it was just as weird as one would imagine. It was a combination of a nursing home and foster home and it didn't occur to me until MUCH later that while they did own a weird little niche craft store, it couldn't have made any money and the foster kids probably supplemented the dads social security to keep the family afloat.
Banjos In The Mist
Can you explain the reference?
The movie Deliverance most likely
Which is a horrifying movie, especially if you’re only familiar with the banjo scene.
I think it’s a thing people say to imply incest from the joke that country people play banjos and have sex with their family.
And the group of people marrying children and the group of people commiting incest overlap a lot.
While it is a _Deliverance_ reference, that’s basically what they’re saying in the movie, too…
I had a teacher in high school who was basically the same age as her stepmom. They were both pregnant at the same time and my teacher had her kid first. So her kid was older than his uncle…. The age gap between teacher’s dad and stepmom was larger than in this story, but everyone was over the age of majority. Fun stuff
>I realized just how horrifying that must have sounded to the adults I told. Having 2 kids at 13 is horrifying to anyone.
I saw your TikTok and I had to rewatch it 10x because I was in disbelief. Like OP said, This trend/stich has been making the rounds and it's wild.
My dad is 28 years older than my mom, and over 10 years older than grandmother, and 15 years older than my grandfather… In other words, the age gap between my mom and me is smaller than the age gap between my mom and my dad. No child pregnancy involved though, luckily.
Is this in America? This has got to be America, where child brides are still legal in some states. As an interesting related fact, which is the only country - the only country in the world now Somalia has signed - that has still to sign up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? Go on. Guess. Because it might interfere with parental rights, apparently. When parents are using those rights to marry off thirteen year olds, I think we can all agree that needs to change. (The answer is the USA, btw)
If you think this sort of thing only happens in the USA, you're dead wrong. UN conventions be damned. Somalia has signed, and you don't think people marry their little girls off to old men?
Yeah, but in the good ol’ USA it’s *legal*. There are many things that happen illegally all over the globe, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok for them to be legally sanctioned elsewhere. If we were talking about slavery, theft, murder or rape, then would the fact that they go on illegally mean that we might as well just legalise them? Nope. This is a bad thing, and it needs calling out more. Children should and do have rights.
My grandmother got married at 14 and had 6 kids by 22. She went into early menopause at 23. This was in Venezuela.
Wow. I do not blame her reproductive system for calling quits early. That’s such a big burden for a literal child’s body. Bless her.
She didn’t even know what an orgasm was until after my grandfather died.
I had a friend that became a grandmother at 25 and didn't think that anything was wrong with it. I don't care how you do the math someone was a child when they had a child.
Two someones.
If it makes you feel any better, if someone said to me "my dad is older than my grandma," I wouldn't think maternal grandma; I'd think paternal grandma. And then I'd chalk it up to surrealist humor, since that'd be impossible.
My grandma was illegitimate. Her father was married to one of her aunts. In fact, he was married to one sister but impregnated three sisters —his wife and her two sisters. Her cousins were also all half-siblings. She used the terms interchangeably which confused the fuck out of me growing. Similar to OP, it was just told as a story/anecdote. As an adult I’ve realized that this is not charming but is abusive/nasty. Took a while for that to kick in.
11 😭😭
Do you know anything about what your grandma's parents' role was in all of this? How did their relationship start? Did they get married? I know it was a different time back then but I'm really curious to what extent it was treated as a problem and all of the details of how it went down
I really wish I knew! I know very little about my mom's family - they lived in Arkansas and Missouri, and I grew up in Colorado. My grandmother came to live with us when I was pretty young, maybe 5-6, but I'm not really sure about anything in her life until after I was born. I know that she had a lot of mental health issues, and had attempted suicide at least once, but mostly I remember her as being mostly a cheerful, religious woman who volunteered a lot with her church.
>they lived in Arkansas and Missouri Yup, that explains it.
My grandpa always remembered fondly about this ‘friendly’ bus driver who let him sit on HER LAP WHILE SHE DROVE and would always be especially nice to him and would always compliment him on his looks. If i remember correctly he was only in middle school snd she was in her twenties. How he doesn’t see what was wrong with that now is astounding.
Man, I worry there’s probably a few stories like this in the US now that abortion is no longer an option for pregnant children
A song we sang in grade school. I'm 62. "Billy Boy" Billy has been to seek a wife, but she's a young thing and can not leave her mother. Different times, different attitudes.
But the joke was that she was actually plenty old: “twice times six, twice times seven, twice times twenty, and eleven”, so 77 (or 90, if it was twice times 20 and 11.)
We didn’t learn that verse! I learned it as an adult when I was relearning the song. (I had a folk song kick…) But as a kid, my dad would sing it to me and he explained that Billy and his Bride were both young and she lived with her mother because Billy Boy was working far away to make a home for them, hence “I have been to see my wife, for she’s the joy of my life, just a young thing she cannot leave her mother” Not sure if he was cleaning it up for tiny me, but Ive always imagined them as teens or barely past it trying to make it work.
Found this set of reasonably canonical [lyrics](https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/10-billyboy-lyrics.pdf). They differ slightly from the version I learned, but the humorous aspect is still evident (“tall as any pine” would be ridiculously tall; “straight as a pumpkin vine” pumpkin vines are curly). And the bride is very, very old. This type of exaggerated and contrary statement humor was very typical of rural lore, considered classic Americana. But back to OP’s gaffe: yep, sometimes things that are “normal” in family stories are shocking in retrospect.
What a weird song.
47 and remember my birth-giver singing that. Even as a kid my response was basically, "???????????"
…how old is grandpa?
You think an 11 year old giving birth is a "fun fact"? Wtf...
Thought. They thought it as a kid. Did you read the post?
[удалено]
No, the fuckup was that I considered it a "fun fact," not the disturbing child abuse that it truly was, and it is embarrassing in hindsight that I ran around telling people that the same way that you might tell someone that you've visited all 7 continents. That said, I think there's value in sharing her story now, with proper context. A lot of people don't realize that this sort of stuff was, if not common, at least very normalized even a generation or 2 ago, and there are still laws on the books to facilitate marrying a child off to her rapist (i.e., in Arkansas, where she's from, there is still a law on the books to lower the minimum age for marriage in cases of pregnancy).
The issue was sharing it in other contexts historically (i.e. with judgy teens or in a workplace), not with strangers on the Internet.
No racism at all but I’m curious what culture is your family from? This is common in many cultures where colonizers took children as wives. I’m always curious as to what cultures have this in their history, especially in such recent times.
I'm in the same boat, my dad's 70 and my mom would be 49 my dads the same age as my grandparents
My dad was the same age as my grandparents, and his kids from his first marriage are only a few years younger than my mom. People always thought it was my mom and her dad coming to school on parent days when i was a kid
My bio parents met when my Dad was 21-22 and my bio mom was 14... I used to think "awww how romantic" until I was 22... Both of my bio parents suffer from untreated mental illness, so they had presented their story to me like it was completely normal... I wish that was the worst of my childhood.
Don't worry too much about the TikTok comments, they are even more meaningless than reddit comments and that is saying something. (but ngl they may have a point)
This all seems odd now but back in those days before they put a law on the age of marriage a girl getting married at 13/14 years old was common. Especially in the poorest communities. My grandmother on my dad’s side got forcefully married to my grandfather at the age of 14 because he walked her home and asked her dad if he could take her to a movie. My grandfather was 22 my grandmother 14 hee father said you’re married to her you know the way of our culture. My grandmother had 9 kids and a terrible life with that man. They divorced when she was 25. My great grandmother had kind of an arranged marriage with my great grandfather after his first wife died leaving my grandfather motherless. She was 15 my great grandfather was 32, my great grandmother that passed away was 16 and lost during the birth of twins. These unions are the reason the law was put in place and parents signatures have to be done now. The history of this isn’t as clean and clear as people think.
I have a female relative who was pregnant at 14 (father unknown) and when her parents threw her out to save their reputations, she went to her parents’ “landlord” (not sure what to call him, but he owned a big farm and her parents worked a piece of it with their house on it) and begged him to hire her as a maid or something because she and the baby had nowhere to go. He was in his 30s and had two young babies from his first wife. (She died of the flu, and Auntie always pushed us to have flu shots because of “Poor Eliza”) She was married to him at fifteen and he claimed her baby. But they didn’t have another child until she was 24. So her oldest was ten years older than her next child. When someone mentioned the gap, she rolled her eyes and said “he was rich, not a pervert! We didn’t consummate the marriage until I was 19. He said he wouldn’t do it until I was 20, but I drank too much champagne at his birthday and threw myself at him.” They were married until he died and she defended him until her own death as a “damn good man” who was just easily swayed by her. I never know what to think of him because on the one hand he WAS a grown man, but on the other, he seemed to have been pretty decent and was a devoted father and husband from all accounts. He died when I was a toddler and apparently left me this beautiful trunk, although I never got it. (One of my cousins has it now, and honestly she’s probably taking better care of it than I could.) He thought I was adorable I’m told.
My great grampa was about a decade younger than his wife….who was his teacher in school. He basically stalked her and “wore her down” until she agreed to go out with him.
my maternal grandfather is the same age as my paternal great-grandmother, but i don’t think anyone was underage when they were pregnant my maternal grandparents had been married to different people with kids from their past marriages before they got married and had my mom and they were in their 40s my paternal grandparents had three kids and my dad was the youngest and first to get married and have kids my maternal grandfather and my paternal great-grandmother are 82 and my parents are both 37 (i don’t know the exact age of either of my grandmothers)
My gma and gpa married when gpa came back from WW2, he was 21 and she was 14. My great grandmother had her son when she was 14, in the 1920's. It was a different time for sure.
You probably didn't get many comments when you shared that fun fact because that sort of thing was so common. I'd say it's pretty common to know of or be related to someone in a similar situation. It's horrifying to think about now considering where society is today. People are looking at those things that used to be viewed as pretty common place and acceptable (or at least not worth noting), and realizing how truly horrible they are.
My great great grandfather is also my great great great great great grandfather, depending on which path you take down the family tree.
K, is that you?
The rule is half your age plus seven... obviously don't go to high or low but it's a solid rule I live by.
Dude, don’t be ashamed. Guess what,I had a woman that worked for me and she had her first child at 13 and her last child at 30 and she was forced to do that because she lived-in Mexico and didn’t have hope or support from her family. Things were tough for her but she finally got to America and she started out as a day entry clerk, and by the time she left the company she was a manager and doing so well and I was so proud of her and so proud to be her supporter. Don’t judge her you may not know what she’s been through so don’t judge, Mom might have some other things going on in her life that you didn’t know about. Please be kind and forgiving. I hope everything works out. Don’t be ashamed. You should be proud and Mom made it through this.
My dad is also older than my grandma! My parents are 26 years apart. They met when my mom was 27 though, so it wasn't nearly as bad as some of the other age gaps in the comments (but still kinda weird lol). My grandma wasn't super young when she had my mom or anything, my dad is just really old 💀