Gallery: These 8 Actresses Aren’t Old Enough to Play Their Co-Stars’ Mothers, But They Do Anyway!

We’ve uncovered a weird phenomenon in movies and TV: You cast two actors to play a parent and child, and yet they’re only a few years apart! Jack from Will & Grace (via TV Tropes) sums it up best: “This is just like The OC, except without twenty-five-year-old teenagers and thirty-five-year-old parents.” Since Hollywood values age, there’s a weird suspension of disbelief where we have to go along with the assertion that these actors are totally old enough to be parents.

And for some reason, it’s all mothers — I was hard-pressed to find any male actors playing dads to peers of roughly the same age.