Short OP:
How old were your parents when you were born? (The age difference can be picked up from their ages, obviously. ;))
Long OP (or, why I’m interested):
Whenever I’m helping people do genealogy or when I’m trying to track my own I usually guesstimate 30 years as a generation, slightly more (33 or so) if it’s for a male-male-male direct line. It’s usually right as an average, because most of your ancestors gave birth to or fathered your other ancestors in their 20s or 30s, with women who gave birth in their teens (or before) being offset by women who gave birth at 45 (or after) and men who had kids in their 50s and later usually having most of their kids in their 20s and 30s, so normally if you’re trying to think of how many generations are between you and, say, 1776, you can figure 234/30= 7generations.
I was surprised that the average age difference in my own family works out to about 5 years. This surprises me because 8-9 years was the norm for all my married relatives when I was a kid and there were some May-December marriages when you go back some generations, but then you find a lot more same-age people and the occasional cougar who was 12 years older than her husband or whatever who collectively greatly reduce the gap (and in the May-Decembers usually December had a May-June in his past).
But out curiosity: how old were your parents when you were born? Since we’re a reasonably diverse group here where some had teen mother and some had elderly fathers I was curious if the ‘30’ average holds true. I thought of setting it ups as a poll, but unless I wanted to do it like 4 year inclements (25-29) it would be really long.
My father was 39 and my mother was 31 when I was born.
You don’t have to give superflous info but feel free if you like. I’ll add that my grandparents were 35 & 28 (paternal) and 42 & 33 (maternal) respectively when my parents were born.
My mom was 19, my dad 21. With my sister my and brother my mom was 28/29 and their dad was 30/31. (My siblings were born a year apart.) With my youngest sister, my mom was 41, and her dad was 43. My mom’s doc called my youngest sibling a miracle baby, since my mom had already been through menopause the previous year.
My parents were both 27 when I was born (1947). All four of my grandparents were born in the early 1890s and any of them would have been between 25 and 28 when my parents were born (don’t have exact dates at my figertips).
My mother was 30 and my father was 38 when I was born. They both had kids from previous marriages. My mother had her first kid at 17 (married at 16, that didn’t turn out to well). My father was married at 19 and that was also when his first kid (my sister) was born). He also had another son 4 years later.
My parents were both 24 when I was born (but Dad turned 25 four days later). They are five months apart in age. My brother is a little less than a year younger than I am.
My mom was 37 (about to turn 38) when I was born, and my dad, nine years older, was just a month shy of 47. Seems I always win the old-dad contest. I’m hoping someone here will be able to beat that.
ETA: And no, I’m not the youngest of 7 or anything. One sibling, two years older. They just met and married late in life.