to think some women feel entitled to free childcare from their DM/MILs just because they had help themselves?

Old thread I know. But what about the men expecting free childcare?

I would never in a million years have expected regular childcare from my mum. But she has been fantastic on an adhoc and emergency basis.
Then again, my mum looked after us herself, my grandmothers weren’t involved beyond the annual visit and lots of nice letters, birthday/xmas/easter etc.

I think the der generation had it much harder, here in Ireland anyway.
They had bigger families, maybe no phone, very isolated.
I would nothave liked to be rearing kids 40 or 50 years ago

So glad im child free by choice if thats the attitude.

I don’t think that’s a punishment, just a realistic description of busy weekends. I don’t think they’re spending weekends with the grandparents who are doing childcare either!
We’ve got swimming lessons, birthday parties, we need to go and buy new school shoes or whatever, plus DH and I need to do the housework, and get some downtime. We don’t have endless weekend time for any grandparent, childcare or otherwise.

I must have missed those posters.

What I have seen is people saying when there are only 8 weekend days per month and families have clubs, want family time, another set of in-laws and friends to see, you can’t complain that you only see the grandparents once a month or not as much as Brenda sees hers when Brenda is picking the kids up every week from school.

I was responsible for taking my little brother to school, right from his first day. He was barely five, and I was nine. It was a 25 minute walk, and he was a terror and kept running off. And I was a latchkey kid at the same time (I think one of my mum's friends picked him up with hers).

Ha. In our family Nana B, who they visit once a month or so for fun trips and chocolate is greeted with delight. I get the grunts at school pick up and told "I don't like you nanny" when I say its nearly dinner time, so you're not having chocolate.
But I'm not bitter....😂

Posters on this thread have said that very thing. Or at least 'if they don't do childcare, they can't expect us to give up weekend time for them to see them instead'

I was fortunate enough to have help from DM with childcare. However, she was a SAHM from when my elder sibling was born. She'd had a few decades entirely free of any responsibilities before helping out a couple of days a week, all in the enviromnent of secure financial comfort due to final salary pensions and buying properties for peanuts.

I've been working since 16, and will need to continue working full time til 67. I won't really have the financial buffer to stop work before then. And I think that maybe after 51 years working, I might need a break, rather than stepping straight into providing childcare. That said, I'm sure I'll want to help out where I can with babysitting etc.

Basically, the demands on my time have been many, many times more than they were on my DM, and I simply won't have the priviledge of financial capacity and the free time that she had available to her.

How young do people round you have kids? Is everyone teen parents?!
You mentioned a 40 year old being a grandparent on an earlier post and now you think boomers are too old to be grandparents?
I'm presuming the majority of people needing childcare help are late 30 to 50. Their parents could be 55 to 80?
So boomers sit nicely in the middle of this

Realistically it probably is a more important relationship to a young child though.
My in laws kindly have DD2 two days a week, often with an overnight stay between the two days. That regular, consistent, day to day contact has built a really lovely close relationship. It’s the same for my eldest who my in laws looked after for 1 day a week before she started school.
My parents live further away and probably see my DC every 6 weeks-ish. My DC love seeing them, they have a great time. But it’s just not the same relationship. It’s a totally different dynamic, and to a 3 yr old, the people she sees every week are the more important relationship.

That doesn’t mean I think grandparents should be pressured or guilted or blackmailed (“you won’t see your grandchildren if you don’t do it”) into doing childcare. I do think that grandparents should be realistic about the relationships, particularly if they don’t do childcare and the other grandparents do. This is the issue I have with my mother - her frequently expressed annoyance that she doesn’t have the same relationship with DC that my in-laws do.

The question was about women, not men.

I have the opposite problem in my family. My parents farmed me out to relatives ages 2-7 and now expect me to hand over my toddler because they didn't get to experience it. Yeah, jog on.

Basically people are people, and can be very unreasonable. And because having a baby is such a hard, hard, and transformative time in life, it brings out all kinds of issues.

Well I guess it stands to reason that if a GP does childcare they see the child more often. I do regular childcare and see my GC most days. I also live very close. Their other GPs don't see them as often and have never babysat or done childcare. However their parents have always made a big effort to ensure the children see them as much as possible because they feel its important to the DC to have relationships with them.
Theres all sorts of ways to be a GP, and while providing childcare makes you a more useful one to their parents, it doesn't make your relationship with your GC any more valid or important than GPs who don't.

Maybe these men aren’t complaining because they just think the childcare fairy sorts it all out, not because they are any less entitled than the women who have these unreasonable expectations of their parents/in-laws.

I commented on the other similar thread, that I found it hypocritical of my dad (it was, incidentally, my dad for me) to announce upon my siblings' pregnancies that he had no intention of being "burdened" by childcare.

Completely his decision, of course, but I also have the right to consider it hypocritical given the vast amount of childcare my parents received from grandparents when I was a child (multiple full days/week, holiday help, multiple 1 week+ holidays over the years).

It isn't even entitlement for me - I had moved away so it wouldn't have been practical for help with my children in any case.

And regarding the men v woman part, of course I completely agree the onus of childcare falls disproportionately on women. But this is the same across ages groups, grandparents are not being singled out for it. And as with the last thread, I find it disingenuous that the sexism point is being made now, by women who took on the bulk of childcare. Of course I see the point that you feel you've done your share, that is perfectly valid and you can say no, no one will force you. But when you've spent their childhood modelling that childcare is women's work, surely it's hardly a surprise you're approached now rather than the granddad.

What’s it’s like in your family OP? How does childcare work?

what entitlement have you experienced with your own children?

is your position about entitlement to childcare or is it more that you’re annoyed men aren’t discussing this in the same way.

maybe they are but there are less men on MN??!

you and reluctantGM need to get together and have a good old natter (or maybe you’re the same person?)

I am not talking about families choosing to be involved in peoples lives.

I am talking about a sense of entitlement.

Sure, but those grandparents don’t get to complain that their grandchildren are closer to their other set of grandparents, or that their friends see their grandchildren way more often than they do 🤷🏼‍♀️

Well they don’t, because their wives do it. But that doesn’t change the fact that you yourself are focusing on women in your own thread title..