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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

> this source for example claims global life expectancy jumped from around 47 to 72 from 1950 to 2022

I believe this is because of reductions in child mortality more than increases in adult lifespan. So it doesn't affect the number of great grandmothers that much.

Having kids older is definitely a big change for society and individual families, though. Every day as a parent I wish I was 15 years younger and my parents were too. It would be a huge difference in our energy levels and that's so important when you're hanging out with young kids. And it's 15 years less time that we will be able to spend together with our kids.

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Yeah, the thing that kinda annoyed me about the article is that it even acknowledges this fact ("even though life expectancy at birth as I’ve used here isn’t the best proxy for this"), but then for some reason refuses to make the next rational leap that there were plenty of great grandmothers in previous generations, totally invalidating the article's main thesis.

Obviously there have been huge changes in family size, parental age at first birth, etc. over the last few decades. I'd argue the lack of great-grandmothers is going to be the least consequential of these changes.

Good on you for giving us the update that he does acknowledge it. I confess I stopped reading as soon as that stat was given.

Personally when people make mistakes like that I stop reading.

Not even the next word. I'm gone.

That is exactly what I did. I want to read things from people who have thought more about a topic than I have, not less.

Yeah that article was really thin, and at a guess I'd say that the age of great-grandparents has probably been declining since at least around the 50s or 60s and we're certainly not at peak-great-grandparent. This article reads like a young Millennial thinking they're the first one in the world to not know their great grandparents.

I’ve also adopted that policy after getting really annoyed that 90% of the time when someone mentions historical life expectancy, they make that exact same mistake and completely ignore infantile mortality.

My mother died unexpectedly when she was 73, a couple years ago, and it's one of my big regrets that she didn't get more time with my children, which were the great joy of the last few years of her life.

> I believe this is because of reductions in child mortality more than increases in adult lifespan. So it doesn't affect the number of great grandmothers that much.

Accepting that, I'd offer that more is a value somewhere above 50%. That leaves a lot of modern people who aren't dying in their 20s-50s.

I look at a lot of death certs (genealogy) and and realize we've had a lot of advances in treatment (pneumonia), regulation (black lung) and health practices (tuberculosis, dysentery). Many routine killers from 80+ years ago are less common/less deadly now.

Last night I ran across a death from Tuberculous Meningitis and my take was - What even the frak? How did our ancestors survive millennia where life just sprayed death at us?

"Every day as a parent I wish I was 15 years younger and my parents were too."

All people over 30 with they were 15 years younger. Age, miles, diseases and injuries gradually makes the body worser.

Of course everyone wishes they could stay young longer. The point is that some people over 30 already have 10 year old kids, while others are just starting with newborns even at 40.

Yes the average age stat drastically skews our perception of how old people were in prior centuries because it includes infant and childhood deaths. This is valid for an average, but it doesn't relate life expectancy for someone who made it to 18.

Yeah, it seems like great grandmothers at least would have been reasonably common as women had children so much younger than today. If women have children at 18, you could be a great grandmother in your 50s. There would probably have been the odd great-great grandmother as well.

> And it's 15 years less time that we will be able to spend together with our kids.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

When kids die as infants they don't have time to have any meaningful interactions with their great-grand parents so the point of the article still stands somewhat. The age of great-grandmothers is low infant mortality + parents making kids early.

People had more kids (and then some) to compensate for the infant mortality, so I don't think it reduced the number of great grandmothers much.

They very clearly did not put that much thought into it, not sure why you are making this up.

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