If your DC’s GPs didn’t help with childcare…were you inclined to help with elderly care…?

I feel the same @Scammersarescum
Also not a grandparent, and expected nothing of my own parents when my children were young. And yet still managed to help care for them in their final months. And so glad I did.

And to add, I was brought up in ways that my own children would probably find horrifying - seen and not heard etc. And yet I have managed not to cast blame. We are all products of our lives and times and own upbringings.

Horrific ageism these days.

Grandparents should be expected to be little more than servants to their offspring whom they've already raised.

Otherwise the should be cut off and left to face their vulnerable years alone.

And no I'm not a grandparent.

I think the OP put the info about the children as well because for some they see it as a bit of an opportunity for a second chance for the GP if they get involved.

I have said earlier how poor i feel my parents were to me but if they had shown a glimpse of interest in being proper GP with my children i would have forgiven them in a heartbeat and welcomed their involvement.

I think parents that lovingly raised their children rightly get payback when they are elderly, irrespective of childcare provided.
But if a loving childhood didn't figure then they cannot expect it.

I don’t think a lack of childcare = not providing your parents with support!

HOWEVER the sheer lack of love & care they’ve shown your family as a whole would probably have most people going low or no contact!!

Actually, no, I'm not!

You are not being unreasonable.
Your parents seem to have always chosen to put themselves first and now they are reaping what they have sown.
I suspect you don't like them very much and don't really want to spend much time with them but you feel somehow guilty - just as they intend you to.
Don't feel guilty, get on with your life as they have got on with theirs.

Was he interested in your DC though? Did he have a relationship with them? The OP's parents haven't got any relationship with her children and have made no effort to a part of their lives. They also put OP in foster care and then sent her to boarding school so even if she didn't have children, I don't see why she would be offering them any support or care now when they didn't care for her. You get out what you put in

Sorry you don't know me or my family and no one was taken advantage of by any husbands. I've been glad to been brought up surrounded by woman who have gone out to work.

Each to their own, but it's insulting to suggest woman should seek out men who want them to stay at home in order so they can be of service to their family.

I disagree

I do not see how they are connected. My widowed DF always made it clear he was not helping with out DCs but that not stop us from nursing him in our house for a year or so before he died.

The two things are not connected in my view. It's not some game of "tit-for-tat".

If you and your female relatives did any more than 50% of the childcare, home tasks and life admin for your family in the time you were not working, you were taken advatage of by said husbands. Considering that even in 2024 working women do more childcare than their male partners, it seems likely. It's not rubbish to not want to do the majority of the work of a full time homemaker while also having to earn a wage.

You're quite right. If you, as parents, raised your kids, looked after them, gave them a reasonable quality of life and nurtured them and enabled them to become good adults, then they will obviously be good enough adults to help you in your time of need. If, however, they tried their best but raised adults who judge their own parents on whether or not they babysat enough for their grandchildren, then perhaps they DID fail a little as parents.

And yes, both of mine died before the grandchildren came along, and the other GPs lived hundreds of miles away so never really had any GP support. We did, however, move hundreds of miles to help look after elderly FiL when he needed us, because, well, he needed us.

I certainly won't be doing any elderly care, and I don't even have children.

What rubbish. You don't need to be a homemaker to be family orientated. I come from a long line of woman who worked. All of us worked and all of us helped our families out and all of us have been valued by our husbands and extended families.

This. Its all about the relationship.

Ah. OK. Everything you say now makes sense. I guess I am not very family oriented, I don't want to be of service to anyone any more, and I like working outside the home, though I have been an SAHM in the past and it drove me mad.

I personally made the decision to marry a man who was happy for me to stay at home before we even started thinking about having children, which enables me to be of better service to my family and his, and will continue to do so when we have children and God willing, grandchildren in the future. I would recommend all women who are family- oriented to seek a husband who values the contributions of a homemaker to the culture of their family, it truly is an inter-generational blessing as I and my husband have observed with his mother.

Ah. So caring for your grandchildren doesn't mean your children will appreciate your sacrifice. You then have to rely on your grandchildren to reap what you sow. You will forgive me if I prefer assisted living.

You are planning to have your own children and take in your grandmother at the same time @batt3nb3rg plus hold down a job? . Sounds a bit idealistic, if you don't mind me saying. But good luck with it.

I may not have children, but I have an amazing grandmother who luckily did feel an obligation towards me, and cared for my brother and I by herself from when I was 11 years old. Unfortunately she has extremely nasty children who don't feel like her years of sacrifice to help them with their kids entitles her to support and kindness, but she does have two grandchildren who she sees or speaks to almost every day, and who she will be coming to live with if and when she needs extra support. I have had an excellent model of the way you care for your family in bad circumstances, and I will be applying that example in the hopefully more conventional in my own family in the future.

@batt3nb3rg
Please don't - you aren't funny

Sorry @batt3nb3rg I am just reluctant to take parenting and grandparenting advice from people who have not even had DC yet. It's like all those people who say " Oh, I would never let my DC watch TV or eat junk or do this or that" before they have kids. When the kids come along, they have to eat their words, and they are happy if "everyone fed no one dead"!Really, these things are far less black and white than you think.

Except in OPs case where she is justified in going fully NC. Sending a toddler to foster care is abusive, unless a back story.

The level of selfishness displayed by elderly parents toward their middle-aged children who have just got done with the hardest years of raising their kids without help and don't want to drop everything to care for them is appaling. Don't they know that only their parents are entitled to have no family obligations post-50? What do you mean they would rather spend time fostering great relationships with their own grandchildren instead of caring for their parents who never bothered to engage in their family??? How could they be so selfish!!!

The same can be said in reverse. You can get a perfectly to get a good education without being packed off to boarding at 6 years old. If my parents had done that and been absent for vast periods of my childhood, you can be absolute certain I wouldn't be helping them out.