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This is a really interesting theory and I agree with everything you said about taking care of your health.

I think that your theory could be very easily tested with simple survey methods. Find grandparents, ask their age, and ask if they regularly care for their grandchildren. It doesn't really matter the age of their own children because we can basically infer it with the grandchildren being under 12.

Such a survey could be improved by asking people their country. My anecdotal observation is that German grandparents provide much more childcare than their American counterparts, despite comparable generational gaps. Another anecdotal observation is the Filipino grandparents also provide more childcare with a smaller generational gap.

A fourth useful question might be to ask why grandparents are raising kids. I speculate that in rich countries, it is because they want to, but in poor countries, it is because the 20/30-somethings are financially providing for both the children and the grandparents.

>The average age of childbirth has gone by ~10 years over the last 50 years.

The tarbaby behind this is there's a direct correlation between women's education and age of childbirth, and inverse with fertility rate. This crosses cultures and isn't Western-exclusive. The fallout is also the impetus for replacement migration policies, lest the debt-entitlement schemes fail.

takes cover

> The fallout is also the impetus for replacement migration policies, lest the debt-entitlement schemes fail.

And every boomer who championed this braindead idea will get EXACTLY what is coming to them. It will be glorious and I will absolutely laugh and mock them.

Could you elaborate on this. I am struggling to follow this conversation.

You won't be laughing at them, you'll be living the consequences.

Many of them already are feeling the effects of it, especially with nurses.

Disagree. Having grandparents who are 65 means they’re close to retirement meaning more free time.

Having grandparents at 45 means they are still at peak earning capacity, and likely earning more than their 22 year old kids, so it wouldn’t make economic sense for 45 year olds to take time off.

> A 65 yr old is a dependent

that may be true for some, but others I have seen are highly capable at that age still. And of course in the US we have two octogenarians running to be presidents.

> Hot take, but 3-generation nuclear families

Nuclear families are, by definition, two-generation; 3-generation families are one of the more common things that nuclear families are defined in opposition to.

> A 45 yr old grandparent is an able-bodied helper. A 65 yr old is a dependent....

What are you even talking about? My mother's parents were 74 and 76 when I was born and they were routinely my caregivers several times a week (while my parents were working) until I was about 6, and occasionally after that. That wouldn't work in every family, but the idea that "a 65 yr old is a dependent" is utterly unfounded as a general rule.

An anecdote doesn't disprove a general rule.

Does the data support the "general rule" then? I think 65 year olds today are much more able than 65 year olds 50 years ago.

Anecdote? Look up employment stats in any relatively old country, you’ll find that a significant portion of 65 year olds are still in the workforce. Calling them dependents is ridiculous. And in Asian American immigrant circles, 60+ yr old grandparents taking care of young children is basically the norm.

> the idea that "a 65 yr old is a dependent" is utterly unfounded as a general rule.

They're either dependent, or able-bodied, or dead. Not sure what the relative percentages are, but I doubt that "able-bodied and healthy enough to provide ongoing childcare for grandkids" is the majority here.

Looking at my area (urban Poland) there's a matter of urbanization as well - plenty of parents in the cities are first-generation city dwellers; their parents live in the countryside. The logistics (and CoL in cities, as GP noted), makes involving grandparents on regular basis prohibitively expensive.

N=1 in my case, we have one grandmother in the city, still professionally active (so limited time), and two grandparents retired and self-supporting, but living far away in the countryside (so unable to help most of the time).

Of my kids’ four grandparents, one recently died, one is massively obese and in a wheelchair, one is lazy, and one is able and willing to help. All are mid sixties to 71.

>This is doubly true once you realize that obesity rates are rising and having grandparents as guests in cities is getting prohibitively expensive.

does this apply in Sweden?

I don't know enough about Sweden to comment authoritatively. I'm guessing urban prices and obesity are not the main factors in Sweden.

Here, my half-baked intuition is the state takes on a paternalistic relationship with the individual. It undermines family & partners as the primary support system.

Sweden has very-high rates of single parenthood [1] and children outside wedlock [2]. If individuals place low importance on the family as a unit, then I do not see why baby-sitting would appeal to Grandparents (to derive joy or as a duty) In a way, being paid to babysit makes a pure relationship seem rather transactional.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/11581511/sha...

[2] https://bigthink.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Comparison-E...

Here’s hoping improvements in healthspan save the day.

People need to want it.

Most people eat worse and exercise less than the previous generation. A small visible minority do a lot more, but that doesn't speak to the health of the average individual.

New GLP-1 agonists might medicate us into good health. But somehow, I am sceptical that it is going to be that simple.

65 yo is not even pension age, what are you talking about? 45yo grandparents would be working full time and only have time on weekends anyway.

I was babysat now and then by a 85 year old great-grandmother.

Rising parental age is a catastrophe, but not for this reason.

Why is it a catastrophe?

Because children are growing up less and less connected to their relatives. Not just grandparents but also cousins too [1]. This is contributing (along with 2-income households) to the decline of local cultures and institutions, and the death of community overall [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39340501

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

Having gone through this recently with grandparents in their late 60s and 70s, it is absolutely a problem for new parents now. Both my dad and I had our first kids in our late 30s, and now he really struggles to do much of anything helpful for child care, despite wanting to. He has no energy, his poor eyesight and attention to detail make him untrustworthy for anything but "keep the kid in the playpen and let us know if anything happens". Similarly, my wife's parents struggled to take care of one relatively easy 1 year old between the two of them.

Meanwhile some of our friends with late 50s/low 60s parents are able to fully entrust their kid to one of the grandparents and go out for date nights/weekends. My wife and I are able to somewhat compensate for the lack of family help by throwing vast sums of money at the problem, but not many parents can do what we do.

Society messed up big time by allowing late parenthood to become the norm. It's really going to hurt future generations, but it's already making my generation shy away from having kids.

> My wife and I are able to somewhat compensate for the lack of family help by throwing vast sums of money at the problem, but not many parents can do what we do.

We also do this, but in our case the reason is further complicated by the fact that both of our mothers passed away some time ago, and so the kid has no grandmother. She just has two grandfathers, one still working and the other retired but incompetent at child rearing (never really did it with his own kids).

I wonder if cases like ours would have been easier (without money) in a tighter community. We live in a large apartment building in a big city. We live super close to our neighbors, and yet people barely even know each other. I imagine if this was a small village, people might know about our situation and be eager to pitch in (and of course we would do the same for others).

I do think a tighter community would be a much better, universal part of a solution to the difficulties of being a parent in the modern day. Maybe another part of the solution is to have some "buffer" of humans in a community instead of economically pressuring everyone to be a part of the economy. Combine those two and you'll have a more fungible pool of labor that is willing to pitch in for whatever the collective needs. And being tightly integrated into your community probably has beneficial effects on mental health, crime, social harmony, etc.