Oh Crap: We Start Turning Into Our Mothers When We're 31

A new poll finds that women start behaving like their mothers—adopting the same attitudes, sensibilities, and tastes—around the birth of their first child, or about the age of 31. That’s either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the parties involved.

For the poll—commissioned by the company DottyBingo.com to understand how behavior (like a bingo hobby) gets passed from generation to generation—1000 women were surveyed, with more than a third of them answering that giving birth was the catalyst for their transformations into their mothers. More than half of the women polled said they turned into their mothers between the ages of 30 – 35, with 27 percent of them pinpointing that age at 31.

According to the survey, this change is presented in liking the same TV shows as your mom, taking up the same hobbies, using the same sayings, and liking the same kind of men (ew). As someone who got pregnant at 31, I’d say the results of this survey are pretty accurate, because while I’ve yet to walk around the house bottomless, wearing just a turtleneck and clutching a crossword puzzle or hide my box of Franzia under the kitchen sink, I have caught myself saying things like, “Well, Italians mature physically at a much younger age than the Irish.”

Interestingly, 51 percent of the women polled weren’t bothered by turning into their mothers, because they consider her the most inspirational woman in their lives. Which is way more of an indication that they’ve turned into their mothers than anything else—my mom would totally consider herself the most inspirational woman in my life.