Basic Trope: A character's mother looks as young as they are or slightly older.
- Straight: Adam Smith's mother, Alice, is often mistaken for his older sister.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice looks younger than her own son. She is often mistaken for Adam's younger sister.
- There are several teen or preteen parents on the show. If they are all related, the potential for a Multigenerational Household is high.
- Alice looks so much younger than her son that she's mistaken for Adam's daughter, she was 11 when she had him and looks extremely young for her age.
- Downplayed: Alice is younger than the other main characters' mothers, but is still clearly old enough to be Adam's mother.
- Justified:
- Alice had a Teen Pregnancy, possibly by rape.
- Adam was adopted when he was already at least 20 years old.
- Alice is young because she was in an Arranged Marriage.
- Alice has some form of eternal youth; she's looked 25 for the last century.
- Alice is using time travel to raise Adam before he was born. She isn't sure why on earth she did that but she knows that it already happened.
- Alice looks way younger than she actually is.
- Adam was artificially made when Alice was young.
- Alice was cryogenically frozen after giving birth to infant Adam, and was only reanimated after enough time had passed for Adam to grow up. So biologically she's only 25, but chronologically she's 45; thus she still looks like her mid-20s.
- Alice is a skincare guru.
- Inverted:
- Alice is older than most mothers; she gave birth at 40.
- Alice is mistaken for Adam's grandmother instead of his mother.
- Gender Flipped: a 30-year-old Adam has a 20-year-old daughter by his 40-year-old wife, impossible as that may seem... not to mention illegal.
- Subverted:
- Alice looks like an Absurdly Youthful Mother, and everyone believes she is. Someone eventually asks Alice her age, and it turns out she's at least 20 years older than Adam.
- Alice was Promoted to Parent for some reason. She acts like Adam's mother but is actually his older sister.
- Adam introduces an only-slightly-older girl who bears a resemblance to him as his mother, then admits that she is actually his older sister.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice lied about her age.
- When Adam gets around to introducing his real mother, everyone thinks she could pass for his older sister's twin.
- Parodied:
- Alice claims to be younger than her son; since she indeed looks younger than he does, everyone has to stop to think for a moment before seeing the logical contradiction in her claim.
- Alternatively, she actually IS younger than her son, somehow.
- Nearly everyone initially mistakes Alice for an infant, including her son.
- Zig Zagged:
- Alice is a Sizeshifter who can shift from Adam's mother to his sister to his daughter.
- Alice had her first child at 14 and her last one at 48.
- Averted: Alice is not unusually young and is not perceived as such by the characters.
- Enforced:
- The producers cast an actress only a few years older than Adam's character as his mother so men will watch it.
- Pressured into delivering An Aesop, the unusually young mother Alice is introduced to explain the dangers of child abuse.
- Lampshaded:Claire: I didn't know Adam had a sister.
Alice: Actually, I'm his mother, but everyone makes that mistake. - Invoked:
- Alice decided to have sex at a young age.
- Alice was raped and believes that Good Girls Avoid Abortion.
- Alice finds Adam in the street and decides to adopt him. This is also why Adam doesn't have a father.
- Alice gets plastic surgery to make herself much younger.
- Exploited:
- Alice thought she might have an easier time relating to her children if she were closer to them in age.
- Alice becomes an unusually young mother so the government will actually help her for once.
- Implied: We never see Alice, although a comparison of her tombstone's date of birth and Adam's reveals she must have had him awfully young.
- Defied: Though Happily Married at a young age, Alice waits until she is older to become pregnant.
- Discussed: "What? Of course my mother is at least 20 years older than me. You didn't think she was an Absurdly Youthful Mother, did you?"
- Conversed: "Adam's mother looks young enough to be his sister."
- Deconstructed: Alice struggles with raising Adam as she's still a kid herself and doesn't have the emotional and psychological maturity to handle the demands of parenthood.
- Reconstructed: Adam's father, Bob, helps Alice raise Adam, and Alice and Bob now know not to have another child until they are older.
- Played For Laughs:
- As a Running Gag, people mistakenly believe that Alice is Adam's sister.
- Alice deliberately trolls people by claiming Adam is her son.
- Played For Drama:
- Alice has no parenting skills, so she eventually gives up and kills Adam.
- Alice decides to practice Hands-Off Parenting, and Adam is frequently injured.
- Alice is actually a perfectly normal age for a mother. Adam has a case of progeria (rapid aging), and his story is likely to end with his dying before he reaches his twentieth birthday.
- Alice, sick and tired of being alone, becomes an absurdly youthful mother to finally have someone care about her.
Back to Absurdly Youthful Mother.
