Under 30 Parents Round-up: Being different

After last month’s Round-up, Beyond the Stereotype, many of you got in touch with posts on how being a younger parent seems to not only allow but in some cases even encourage people to treat you differently. 

From snooty mums at coffee mornings to overbearing doctors assuming you’re not up to the job, younger parents seem to have it tough. 

On my maternity leave, I was just 25. As my NCT group began to drift apart over the summer holidays, I plucked up the courage to attend a coffee morning. No one spoke to me. I tried to strike up conversation with various women around the room, but they were quite clearly uninterested.

As the hour progressed, I could feel myself becoming shier and more embarrassed by the whole affair. I was just about to pick up my daughter and leave when a French lady asked how old she was (our daughters had been playing together for a few minutes). She asked what I did and when I replied that I worked in marketing for a large UK brand, suddenly another two faces turned towards me. I had their attention. I wasn’t who they had assumed. And suddenly I was worth their time. (This experience actually really knocked my confidence and caused me to be a total Speed Mumming failure going forward.)

Of course, I’m not the only parent under 30 who’s experienced such blatant prejudice based on my age. Hannah of Hi Baby Blog wrote a post last month about the highs and lows of being a younger parent. She writes, 

In my experience I was too old to be cut a break or given the benefit of the doubt but too young to be taken seriously by or ‘fit in’ with the other mums to be I encountered.

Maddy from The Speed Bump also writes about how she’s ‘forever a statistic‘ and how stigma is very much alive and well;

…[they] looked at my profile, saw that I was 19 and a mum, and saw their opportunity.
– “You’re 19 and a mum, so your IQ must be south of 80”
– “I just don’t think someone who has a baby at such a young in this day and age in the UK can be that intelligent”
– “you’re ignorant and uneducated, hence the baby at 19 etc.”
– “I’m willing to bet that 19 year olds with babies have on average a lower IQ than 19 year olds without babies”

Sadly, the tales depicted above are a common story. There is a general assumption that younger parents are ill-educated and ill-equipped to be parents.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that it’s human nature to seek likeminded people. Whether you’re looking for the fellow parenthood survivor who’ll drink gin with you on a park bench while the kids whizz past on their scooters or who is willing to discuss something – anything – other than the colour of their child’s poo, we look for those parents in the crowd who might just be kindred spirits.  

But as a younger parent, this isn’t so straight forward. Because half the time, there is no one like you in the crowd – you’re the only one.

21 year old Alice’s entire blog, New Young Mum, started because she “spent hours scrolling the internet trying to find stories of people who had been in a similar situation to [her] and didn’t manage to find anything [she] could relate to”.

Lisa of Bad Mammy hits the nail on the head in her post ‘Being a “Younger Mother“:

I can’t exactly keep up with the nightclubbing, heading off on random jaunts across the world, making last minute plans… I have less in common with a lot of people my age now as their sleepless nights are for completely different reasons to mine – not many of them are watching Fireman Sam at 3 in the morning, reassuring a red cheeked miserable child that he’d be okay, that it’s time for Sleepies. 

This is not to belittle non-parent Under 30s’ life experiences. (Far from it! I’m typing this in between pat, pat, shush, shush with my daughter in the room next door and I’ve been living on maximum four hours a night for the past week because of terrible twos / teething / hay fever / insert random reason we haven’t thought of yet… I’d give anything some days to be ‘normal’!) 

But perhaps that’s the problem. If we as younger parents perceive ourselves to be different, do we merely distance ourselves from fellow parents and perpetuate the negativity around being a young parent?

I found my parenting tribe in the end. All in their thirties, though not all of them were planned pregnancies, which helped. But while I still get excited about the prospect of meeting a fellow younger parent – that shared understanding, the feeling of belonging, as though we’re not the only ones! – I learned it was more about finding the parents you click with than the parents who are your age. 

After all, if we want our fellow non-under-30-parents to have an open mind, shouldn’t we?

Are you going to BML16? Amie is hosting a Table Talk for Under 30 Parents. So come mingle and meet likeminded bloggers with a shared younger parent experience, discuss your trials and triumphs and let Amie know what topics are close to your heart that you’d like future Round-ups to feature. 

Thank you to everyone who submitted posts this month. Whether you’re a veteran blogger or new to the scene, please send your posts through to Amie (@findingourfeet) each month via Twitter and join in the conversation using the hashtag, #ParentsUnder30.

(So far, no blogging under 30 dads have come forward – if you’re out there, give us a shout!)