Entitled attitude: grandparents must provide childcare

So what? They existed when i went without them. Im only 37. People cant complain their mum isnt looking after their kids for them if they spent their 20s having the life of riley

It makes me laugh when people are all ‘oh my parents didn’t splash out money on iPhones/gym memberships back in their day’

no because they didn’t fucking exist 😂 they weren’t valiantly going without.

I admit we had to move out of London (away from family) to buy, but that was a sacrifice we thought was worth making for me to be able to stay off work. And yes, house prices are mental, no doubt. It still doesnt change the fact that people are often unwilling to go without to save up.

Which considering how poorly paid a career it is says a lot.

I think people need to get real. In my parents 20s they didnt have their own cars, they didnt move out of the family home until they got married, they didnt have gym memberships, they didnt go abroad on holidays once a year etc. Nowdays, all my friends except me spent their 20s living it up and doing what they wanted, travelling the world etc.

All the anecdotes in the world don't change the fact that housing costs are on another planet now compared to what they were 40-50 years ago. Coupled with over a decade of wage stagnation and the most expensive childcare in Europe and new parents have a really shitty time of it, I'm sure most would agree.

All 20+ pages of this thread boils down to one inescapable problem : professional childcare is too expensive.

I think people need to get real. In my parents 20s they didnt have their own cars, they didnt move out of the family home until they got married, they didnt have gym memberships, they didnt go abroad on holidays once a year etc. Nowdays, all my friends except me spent their 20s living it up and doing what they wanted, travelling the world etc.

I spent my very early 20s pregnant and saving every single penny so thay we could put down a near enough 50% deposit on our first home. This meant i could give up my job when we had our first child.

If ny kids wait until theyre 30 odd to have kids, thats fine. But if they dont have money behind them to do so, thats on them. I intend to spend my 40s and 50s doing all the things i didnt when i was bringing my children up.

Agree with @ancientgran . I don’t think you can bundle everyone in the previous generations together and say that because some things were better (eg salary vs house prices - for 1-2 generations), everything was better. Less technology, greater discrimination for women probably had big impacts too - not allowed to study some subjects, less pay for same work, shut out of jobs.

I didn’t say that anyone was obliged to provide elderly care. They’re not.

and no, I don’t think anyone said that grandparents should give up work. My point was that many are still working and therefore don’t have the time to provide childcare.

You can think your expectation are reasonable of course, but the point is that you can expect all you like, if someone is not willing to provide then that’s that. They don’t have to. It’s better to take what they do as the kindness it is, rather than something you’re owed.

ultimately, no. There is no obligation on the parts of grandparents. Rather than there being a need for people to accept their obligations, you instead need to accept that they do not in fact have these.

Sure. But by the same token there is no obligation an adult children to look after their elderly parents.

You are giving extreme examples here of people expecting grandparents ro give up work to look after gc but I honestly have never personally come across that in RL, nor have i even met anyone who expects their parents to look after GC 5 days a week. I 'expect' meaning I would be surprised and very disappointed if we weren't helped out with childcare in an emergency, ie 1 child needs a and e, GPs come and pick up the other so they're not obliged to sit in the waitng room with me and the other child, at least until my DP can get back from work, and an evening every couple of months so we can have a night out. That is all I 'expect' and I honestly think that is reasonable (luckily so does my DF (dm sadly passed away before DC were born)
My own GP though until they died aged 96, refused any outside help at all, and relied on myself and my DF for absolutely everything. Shopping, cleaning, personal care, home and garden maintenance.
My DF is 72 years old himself. So Granny had a lovely retirement, travelling the world, until health declined in the last few years the ENTITLEMENT in our family at least was most definitely from the elder, rather than the younger generation.

You're only interested in statistics and not the lived reality anyway, it seems.

She’s not even interested in those. Poopooing an unemployment rate of 12 to 20% because it apparently affected only a minority is proof of someone who lives in cloud cuckoo land. No clue about the knock on effect of mass unemployment on the whole of society.

Speak for yourself. I'm more than happy to have higher taxation if it facilitates better conditions for families. I'd much rather do that than feel my adult children's lifestyle depended on my ability to provide childcare.
For a start it perpetuates inequalities as even if every GP felt the obligation it will only ever be possible for those who are fit enough, solvent enough and geographically close enough to help.
What about those with parents who genuinely can't? The gap between them and those with parents who can just widens.
Personally I'd be more than happy if everyone was taxed in accordance with their means so that help from GPs could be an a bonus rather than seen as an essential.

Well yes, life has indeed changed and the situation today isn’t comparable to the situation 50 years ago. As the one 50 years ago isn’t comparable to the one 50 years before that, and so on. Is it ‘fair’?, well no, depending on perspective some things work in our favorite, others in the favor of past generations. That’s life. You have to work with what is actually available to you, not what you think should be.

it also isn’t ‘fair’ to think grandparents have an obligation to make up for this perceived unfairness and give up their own plans so as to best service you. A lot of grandparents today are still working full time themselves, and even if they’re not, it’s quite reasonable to want to spend your remaining healthy years doing those things you couldn’t when you were working and raising children.

ultimately, no. There is no obligation on the parts of grandparents. Rather than there being a need for people to accept their obligations, you instead need to accept that they do not in fact have these.

It should be recognised though that often entitlement comes from your upbringing.

If you grew up with your parents expecting, and taking, lots of help from your grandparents and that’s commonly how things work in your family then imo it’s not outrageous to be surprised when that is very different when there’s another generation. Especially if it’s choice, rather than the case that circumstances are different (GP’s still working for example).

I know one in my family who was very vocal about it taking a village to raise a child. She expected, and received, help from her parents. She also expected her children to have close relationships with their cousins and she herself took part in creating that.
However, despite being fit healthy and retired young, she does nothing with her grandchildren. Not even just no childcare, but makes zero effort to have any kind of relationship with them. It’s not entitled of her children to be surprised and upset by that.

many people won’t accept they have any obligation towards even people they love the most

For me the whole point of this thread is about entitlement. Your use of the word ‘obligation’ is very telling.

I disagree that people don’t have any other options. You work out your options according to your situation. The majority of people do not have grandparents nearby so have options of part-time working, paid childcare, reducing their standard of living until things get easier, saving up before having kids etc. People just do this automatically all the time.

If you have willing grandparents then lovely and great but all of this stuff about society and generational privilege is just a mask for those with a (very strong) sense of entitlement.

Alot of the problems with the very old not wanting to go into a care home is because they have some level of dementia and don't understand that they need care. I have personal experience as I have LPA for an elderly relative who thought she had eaten, thought she had shopped but the evidence was there was no food in the house and she was starving to death. She hated me when she went into the home, she has no children and I was the closest to her so that was why I had the LPA, it was awful to know how much she hated what I did but I couldn't leave her at home to starve.

I've told my kids to ignore anything I say if the time comes when I need care but don't think I do. They have had absolution in advance. I've been working for the last 54 years and have a state pension and a private one, if my husband goes before me I will also have 50% of his pension and a house to sell. There will be enough money for me to go into a nice home. I've worked, brought up 4 children and been my DHs carer for 30 years so I think I am entitled to a decent level of care. I've done childcare for GC for years, am currently bringing up a teenage GC whose home life has broken down.

I don't get any benefits, I don't get subsidised travel as I use my car, I do get free prescriptions but due to a medical condition I have had free prescriptions since my 40s so I got that regardless of age. I pay for private dentistry as there are no NHS dentists available where I live. I pay my taxes.

If I resist care it won't be because I haven't planned ahead, it will be because I've become very vulnerable and need someone else to make the decisions.

You see me now and think life has been easy for me, well it hasn't. I had to work and the standard working week was longer 50 years ago, I got poorly paid in the early part of my working life as women had to fight for the right to equal pay, you benefit from that don't you. I was late 20s before I could join a pension scheme, lots of employers didn't welcome women into pension schemes hence my husband has a better pension than I do. You don't see the young mum in the 70s working fulltime without the luxuries at home that people often take for granted now, no washing machine, no dishwasher. Housework was harder but it still had to be done. You don't see me embarrassed as I waited for the jewellery shop to be empty before I went in to sell my engagement ring to buy things for my children, you don't see me trying to work out how to pay the fuel bills and feed the children and pay the mortgage. There were no foodbanks but sometimes I would go home from my mum's with a food parcel.

You are having it tough now but you don't know how it will be in 20, 30 or 40 years. You are comparing young parents with mortgages and children with elderly people whose children are grown and mortgages are paid. Not a fair comparison.

I think the biggest difference between you and me is I never resented anything my grandparents or parents got, I recognised that they had gone through hard times and I accepted that when you are bringing up children you have less than others.

I genuinely don't understand the problem here. People have expectations all the time, but just be honest about what you want to, or do not want to provide in the form of childcare? if you have always had poor boundaries, or a poor relationship that is too fragile to cope with honest discussion, then you have bigger problems than babysitting the DGC. Entitlement only becomes a problem when the expectations are met and then resented. Grandparents, on the whole should be old enough to form boundaries without destroying relationships? My kids have wanted all sorts of things throughout their lives that I haven't been able to provide (or fully provide), so what's the difference with this?

@Bumpitybumper you seem to have missed the point that many have made on the thread that the majority of grandparents won't be able to look after their grandkids because they'll still be working. I know you've enjoyed looking at the pre 2000 years with rose tinted specs, where every family had a dad in full time employment for 40 years, while mum baked cookies for the kids 8 hours a day and then they both retired at 55 on a pension of thousands a year, in their 5 bedroomed house which they paid 50p for back in the 70's, but for most that wasn't true. Putting aside that this wasn't a reality for most people, the majority of grandparents these days are going to be working til they're 67 at least.

I'm one of those. I'm nearly 50. I've got two children, one of whom is at university at the moment, on the minimum grant which we'll have to top up. My dd is likely to be the same. So after paying for childcare myself, then putting two kids though university, I'm then expected to give up work in a few years when they have kids so I can look after them? I don't think so. I'm fucking knackered as it is and I've done my time. I'll help out now and then, but I'm not going to be a full time child minder and neither would they expect me to be.

There's a lot more that I could say about this, but this is too long already, so I'll leave it there. You're only interested in statistics and not the lived reality anyway, it seems.

I think you're being unfair.

On the one hand, many on this thread have stated that people choose to have children and essentially shouldn't have children they can't afford to look after (including the cost of childcare). Ostensibly that seems fair enough, however previous generations have presided over decades of political and economic change that has culminated in a situation where very many people technically can't afford to have children. These are people that would make great parents and are in gainful and societally important jobs but the cost of living and raising kids in the current climate has effectively priced them out of children. Is this right or fair? I suspect the majority of people would agree that it isn't.

So what can be done about it? Well the reality is that we can't rely on an underfunded and over burdened state system. Nobody seems to want to pay anymore tax so establishing a system like they have in Scandinavia with affordable heavily subsidised childcare is unrealistic.

We are therefore left with the only really option many people have, which is relying on our nearest and dearest to assist us at a time of need. This is hardly a groundbreaking concept and is much more prevalent in human history than looking for the state to intervene. Yet, many people won't accept they have any obligation to even those they love most. This is disappointing, damaging and hugely selfish and I can understand people that want children assessing the potential involvement of further grandparents before having children with someone as this could be the deciding factor as to whether children are affordable or not.

Still a minority and the generation that experienced this will have also experienced decades of low unemployment too. Their position now will be a culmination of all the decades they have lived through, many being economically prosperous and more favourable to raising a family than current conditions.

Lower priced housing, free university education and more opportunities to get a reasonably paid job without a degree. Many many families were able to survive off one income or at least to have one parent working very PT, negating the need for childcare. There was more council housing available and lots of people in their 60s and 70s benefited from things like 'right to buy' that have left today's low earners in a more difficult situation.

The economy and society wasn't perfect then and undoubtedly there were people that didn't prosper but to pretend that it was equivalent to what families face now is frankly insulting.

threshold

I think you make a very good point.

Historically, energy tarrifs and expectations have all grown around the fact that two adults work, and also, there is a housing shortage because families don't live together, across the generations. In the sixties, one person' s salary would do cover the bills. The way we've gone has shaped the current situation, for better or worse. But I think grandparents ought to try to help out because it is so hard for the younger generation doing it. I guess the old stars would appreciate the favour being returned when an adult child checks up on them when they are staying in the care home.

Why did the grandparents ever decide to have children ? If they weren't willing to help them out a little bit ? (Assuming they're in the position to do so). I'm not saying full time child care etc. but why wouldn't you want to help your struggling child, if you could ? Most grandparents really want grand children and they massively enrich their lives.

I fully expect to help and support my children throughout their lives. I won't just wash my hands with them, once they turn 18. I put them here.

One hand washes the other, so they say.

I don't think anyone is entitled to anything. But if there's respect on both sides, what's the issue ?

In our case, both sets of grandparents love looking after our children.
They're not able to provide proper childcare because they both work/ live far away. If they did have the time, I wouldn't let them have the children for more than 1-2 days a week. Out of respect for them, because I don't think it's fair. They would have them all week, but I don't think that's fair on them at all. For now, they have them whenever THEY want to. And they really want to.

Unemployment only ever rose to around 10% so this was always something that affected the minority of people

It was 12% at its peak and as high as 20% in N Ireland, Scotland and some parts of the north. It was enough of a problem in London for a running total of the unemployment figures to be displayed on the front of City Hall by the GLC.

I get that it's extremely difficult to manage without two incomes and that childcare is expensive. I'm a young GP, and it was that way for me too.
But, that isn't the fault of women in their 70s and the onus is not on them to solve the problems created by government policies.
Rather than attack them it would do far more good to campaign for better conditions, vote for candidates that prioritise these issues and start fighting for change to the underlying problems that mean you need the help in the first place. Because while an army of elderly women are quietly providing thousands of hours of free childcare, there is never going to be the incentive to make change, and you'll end up feeling obliged to look after toddlers in your 70s too.
Which is absolutely fine if you want to, but there's no way you should have to because your adult children have no other options.

I am currently pregnant with my first child, and we have already picked out the nursery we wish to send him to. This however has not stopped my MIL telling anyone who will listen that she will not be "used" for childcare, as she still has a life to enjoy. We have never once mentioned childcare to her, or asked anything of her.

Fair enough if thats something she doesn't want to do, but it is frustrating listening to her act as though we have just decided to have kids and now expect her help. We expect nothing from her. But the more she goes on, the more rude I think it is. Her grandson hasn't even arrived yet, and she is already talking about him as if he is going to inconvenience her. I am not sure if this is her setting boundaries, in case we were to ever ask her (we wouldn't ever have anyway), but all she has done has annoy us and make us believe she isn't excited to meet him as all she is focusing on is making sure everyone is aware she is "too busy" to be a granny pretty much.

My Mother on the other hand, would love nothing more than to look after him, and has said so on numerous occasions, however not feasible as she lives in a different city. She does however visit regularly and stays for the weekend so I have no doubt she'll be a big help during her visits and enjoy spending time with him.

I don't believe grandparents should be expected to provide childcare. Yes, the economy is absolutely up the left right now. But to some extent, we are all aware of childcare costs before having children and should be able to at least consider how this will impact us financially and plan accordingly. However it would be incredibly naive to disregard just how beneficial it can be to receive help from grandparents. It is a big ask however, and although in my circumstances I feel a little bitter at my MILs attitude, I can fully see why she wouldn't want the commitment. I just wish she would stop acting as though we have asked her!! She must have some friends who complain about having to do it, and so is making sure we're aware of our thoughts... not that we would ever be in any doubt!