Entitled attitude: grandparents must provide childcare

Think of all the things your children will recieve that is free or subsidised. The care you received in pregnancy, your maternity pay. Maybe child benefit. Yours and your husband's tax won't touch the sides of that. Your choice to have children is being subsidised by the tax payer. Which as I said, is as it should be.
Meanwhile, I'm at a point in my life where I cost very little. Still healthy and paying into the system. As I have done all my life. I'm perfectly happy with that. I'm a life long socialist who believes from each according to their means.
I don't disagree with you that some elderly people recieve benefits that they don't need and should really be diverted to families. Its a nonsense there isn't more means testing of money handed out on the basis of age. But, that's Tory vote catching for you.
What I do object to is your unpleasant stereotyping of 'grandparents' as avaricious elderly parasites. We're from all walks of life, income brackets and lifestyles. Some of us are barely older than the parents on here, and have faced much the same challenges.

@Lavenderflower I don't expect it & don't pay but try to repay although it's natural as opposed to planned. For example I'm away this weekend with DH so the dc will stay with gps. I will treat them to dinner in a few weeks, DH did some DIY for them last week & on Friday I'm going with my mum to an appointment.

Planning ahead is ensuring there’s money to pay for it. You can plan to the nth degree but it’s all a bit pointless if you lack the capacity to put the plan in action.

I like the one I saw on another thread - 'you utter pilchard.'

Dotty, you are a mad scone.

You have a strange idea of who these hypothetical grandparent 'boomers' are. My kids are better off than I am.

Statistically though that's not representative.

We have a huge demographic shift coming & no planning, look at the state of the NHS & social care now. It's not offensive to say we have an ageing population, that healthy life expectancy hasn't grown like life expectancy & that "free" healthcare isn't sustainable if it's expected to fund decades of life.

It’s called planning ahead, which is what we’re all being encouraged to do when wanting children apparently…

It’s their job to sort their care later in life but the ‘elderly parents’ board will tell you otherwise.

The ravages of old age are insidious, usually people don’t realise they need care until it’s too late to organise it. All I require is to be found a nice care home when the time comes, to be visited every now and then and to have my hand held when it’s time for me to depart this life.

How nice for them…

For those who expect childcare from their parents - Do you actually pay for childcare?

The only way that my parents would be doing full time child care for me if I paid them - I would happily pay the going rate.

Interest rates at 7% today apparently will have the same impact on disposable income that the high double rates of the past did. Hence the stamp duty prop I guess.

subsidised even!

*In return 50% of women claiming a state pension haven’t worked a full working life - part time, odds and ends here or there, or not at all.

They get free prescriptions, free bus passes, fuel allowance, and are a huge consumer within the NHS.*

A lot of those women would have been at home caring for children and if they worked paying a reduced NI contribution and relying on their husbands' NI record for a pension. By 'fuel allowance' I assume you mean heating allowance, and the 'huge consumer withing the NHS' is because they're getting older and older people tend to need more medical care.

You really don't like older women at all, do you?

I Work full time and will be doing so for another 14 years, assuming state pension age is still 67 by then. I pay tax and national insurance for services many of which I don't use, and claim nothing, so arguably, if you have a young family, I am currently subsidising you. Which is as it should be.

How do you know it's not you been subsided?

I’m talking about people age 65+.

I don't get any help with fuel, travel or nursing care since I am only 59. You have a strange idea of who these hypothetical grandparent 'boomers' are. My kids are better off than I am.

I have none of these so called benefits as those of us born in the 60s didn't really benefit from fat pensions and are still living in our homes which may have appreciated in value but not in a usable way. I also was not looked after by grandparents as a child. My mother worked from home when I was young as my parents did need two incomes as interest rates were very high.

I never dreamed of asking my own parents for childcare other than emergencies either as they were still working too when my children were young.

Modern parents also benefit from more help as there is before and after school provision which was non existent in my day.

But a high interest mortgage was still cheaper overall as houses cost so much less. It’s been proven time and time again. Flinging around scary looking interest rate numbers is meaningless unless you compare them to the cost of the house, an average salary and how much the repayments were.

How long did you work full time for?

I could never afford to live in the house I grew up in, same for my friends & their family homes, & the vast majority of us had a SAHP, our expectations are much lower! But my parents house was 40k in the 80s & they now sell for 2m.

Oh that sounds awful. The parents of your DGC should be ashamed of themselves for not facilitating a relationship for their kids with their grandparents, outside of childcare.

The help we get for childcare has been twice this year I think, so I can go out. But our DS grandad sees him every weekend and we all do something. I think it's important he is loved by as many people around him as possible. But no, grandparents should not be guilted into it or it expected.
Although, now with wages low compared to cost of living and in a lot of cases 2 parents needing to work, more people are reliant on external help. So I do know if I could help our DS in the future, I would.

OP has anyone actually put pressure on you to provide more childcare than you are comfortable with, or are you just here to get people rowing on the internet?

What ?

Why are you subsidising me? I work full time, DH works full time, we claim no benefits or top ups (even child benefit isn’t worth it) and pay the full rate of nursery fees.

In return 50% of women claiming a state pension haven’t worked a full working life - part time, odds and ends here or there, or not at all.

They get free prescriptions, free bus passes, fuel allowance, and are a huge consumer within the NHS.

There is an enormous problem with elderly people squirrelling their money away to avoid paying for their own care, expecting the tax payer to pick up the bill or their adult children to run themselves ragged looking after them. Otherwise they just fall about all over the place and phone ambulances so they’re in and out of hospital like a revolving door.

They’ve ruined the country by voting Tory time and time again to save themselves a few quid, happily watching them slash everyone else to a desperate place.

All the while our economy is utterly fucked and has been since the credit crunch due to people of a certain age taking out mortgages and living the high life which they couldn’t afford to pay back.

But in the seventies take aways were rare, loads of children and teenagers had never eaten out in a restaurant or cafe, people had far fewer clothes and possessions. So a mixture of things.

I was born in the 80s & ate out in restaurants & had take sways. Clothes were more expensive before the likes of Primark. I'm pretty sure todays young have less disposable income then some previous generations as housing costs are so high & wages have stagnated.

One set of my Grandparents (Dads parents, in their late 50s) were still working whilst providing childcare for us. My Grandad worked shifts, my Grandma worked from 6am-2pm on her feet. Then she’d get drop my Mum at work at 3pm, collect us from school at 3:30pm, drop us home at 7pm (my Dad worked 12 hour days 6-6), my Mum would get the bus home at 10pm.

Of course she then had to have to my Uncles child - only, she was 70 when he was born, but retired, so she had that grandchild 3 full days a week.

My Mums parents - never worked a day in their lives. Had us overnight twice a month and when my parents buggered off in holiday without us every year.

My Mum is now her Mums carer and works part time, zero interest in any of her grandchildren. My Dad remarried and moved hundreds of miles away, so we rarely see him. Once every other year for a day or two. At best.

It grates considering how hands on my Grandparents were with us. I’m still very close to my Dads parents. I don’t expect the same level of childcare, but I’d like them to have an actual relationship with their Grandchildren, who couldn’t pick them out of a line up.