I got married at 20 and had my first child at 22. I'll likely be a grandparent in my 40s.
From a selfish perspective, I was too young to really understand what I was taking on, and it's been difficult at times. I missed out on many things. Not much of my adult life has been focused solely on my needs.
However from a family perspective, it has worked out quite well. I worked some difficult jobs at first but eventually got my degree, started a career, left to cofound a startup, bought a house. Kids are doing well.
People think you have to do all that before you have kids, but that's not true. When you're already young, kinda dumb and kinda poor then you can make it work.
I'm now 37 and my youngest is 10, so I'm not running around chasing kids anymore. I've got enough energy to help them with school. I like being a young dad now.
I'm 41 and my boys are 4 and 8. It's wild to even consider I could have been a grandfather by now if my life choices had been different. Wouldn't be such a bad thing though, at 40 you're still pretty young so I could've had my freedom back by now. As it is I'll be 55 by the time they're out of the house and probably won't be able to pick mountain biking back up...
And then if they wait a while I could be pushing 70 before my grandkids arrive. Great-grandkids might be a relic of a time gone by...
I find it surprising that this is something that has to be imagined. I run into real world examples of this all the time. It isn't the norm, but it sure isn't something that requires imagination to see all around us.
I can imagine (and know many people like this). It's pretty common in non-Western or poorer countries where people had kids earlier due mainly to economic reasons (and also lack of availability of birth control).
Yeah, it'd be fuckin' great because the grandparents could help out a lot more, get active quality time with their grandkids when they're old enough to remember it instead of being that furniture-like senile person stuck in a chair of whom they have few fond memories, and so on.
I broke this trend in my family. When I met my then-partner's parents in undergrad, they were of similar age to my grandparents. Didn't bother us, but I think they were surprised.
This was very common in my extended family in rural North Carolina. Most of my cousins didn't attend college, partnered up quickly, and started families. Not always in that precise order . . .
Honestly, I think for them it just wasn't that odd in their community. I grew up in a more suburban area and the baby boom was definitely a few years later comparatively speaking.
I have several aunts and uncles who are great-grandparents and in the 60-70 year old range.
