This is Origin Stories, the Leaky Foundation podcast. I'm Meredith Johnson.

In almost every other species, an animal's lifespan typically ends once they stop being able to have babies.

One thing that's special about humans is that we live on, well past our reproductive years, especially women.

We can live to take on another special role. We can be grandmothers.

Producer Skyler Swenson has our story.

No matter where you're from, at a certain point in one's adult life, the social expectation

to have kids sets in. Traditionally, no one puts on the pressure quite as much as dear old mom.

Sometimes it comes in the form of a subtle gesture or casual offhand remark.

Let's call them motherly micro-suggestions.

My friend Eli, for example, he's in his late 20s,

and his parents recently decided to make a bold move from their home in a Jersey suburb to be closer to him in Brooklyn, where they're restoring an old brownstone.

Here's Eli and his mother, Claudia.

Oh, so I guess it was like the first time I was really looking at the house.

After you bought it, we were, you guys were touring me around,

and we were kind of like upstairs in the big old guest room area.

And there's like that little room off the guest room area.

And it was just like a funny, it's a funny little room.

Like, what do you do with that little room?

A crib?

Yeah, very reasonably.

It would be a good room to have a little person.

I never said anything like that, but I call it the crib room.

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