AIBU to wonder why some grandparents avoid helping with childcare?

For me there’s different level of grandparent involvement.

1. you get the grandparents who maybe want to retire early, who want to be involved and may do 1-2 days a week childcare. I know a few like this and they absolutely love it.
2. you get no regular childcare but willing to do a weekend or occasional after school maybe once a month.
3. grandparents happy to help less regularly than number 2, maybe once every 3 months. Still call and ask for updates.
4. the emergency only grandparents who would help if there was a broken leg / mobility issues / parent was sick in hospital
5. the grandparents who have done their time and believe the parents have made their bed and should get on with it abs either provide no help or very little.

My parents fall into number 5 and honestly it hurt a little. I can’t wait to be a number 1-2 grandparent providing on finances and health.

i once asked my parents if they could help when my little boy had chicken pox couldn’t quite go back to nursery but was back to his normal self and they said no. I stopped asked them for any help, they now see my kids 2-4 times a year. They have however looked after my sisters children more. I don’t have a great relationship with them anymore and in no way would I drop everything to help them.

Jesus i am in ireland too and that so is not the case, Majority pay for childcare be is nursery, au pair, nanny etc. there are the odd few like a friend of mine who cant do anything without her mother, her mother has them more than they with their own parents in fact, she wont even allow her own mother to go on holiday either she must come with the kids holiday 😐which every other of our friends thinks quiet selfish, some have told her too but she doesn't see any issue. There is a cousin of my husbands married with three kids, she lives 2 hours away from her own mother, made her own mother give up her job and she drove every day up and down the country minding those kids, sometimes very very late at night, going on holidays to ensure babysitter there, now the poor women is riddled with cancer, daughter has no time to bring her to appointments etc. I say she be lucky to see in 2027. I think its so selfish of both women
My pwn parents are not physically able to do regular childcare and so not expected, plus until this year were both still working full time so wouldnt have been able
The thinking if majority of friends and people i work with is you pay for childcare, don't rely on grandparents for everyday childcare, ask for adhoc in advance like a wedding or emergency but not for every day. Its not fair on them

Reading this thread I actually see how insidious the hatred of children is in our society. My daughter is the absolute joy of my life and I can imagine ever viewing her children as a chore and an inconvenience. In all the talk about choice, that is a choice.

@oldFoolMe

You do know that for generations grandchildren have loved their grandparents without them doing full time childcare don't you? This idea that grandparents have to virtually bring up their grandchildren in order to be loved or visited by them is a fairly modern phenomenon and a pretty obnoxious one too. I had enormous fondness for my surviving grandparents and was very happy to visit them when they were older. We'd visit them for Sunday tea once a month when we were children and always enjoyed it, but they never did childcare. Basically love should be a trade off in your world? Especially for the elderly - right?

This.

I have raised 2 children, one of which has been challenging and exhausting - I am knackered and really don’t want to do that again with my Grandchildren- I will support with a bit of babysitting but as my MiL said to me ‘I want to be excited to see my GC, not think oh no here we go again!’

I want to live, I want to be anxiety free (for the most part!) I don’t want to be relied on and be at the school gate every day. I don’t want to take holidays in school holiday time because I am tied to my GC. I want to go when and how often I want to.

I had no day to day help from my parents or my in laws - I had occasional babysitting offers which were lovely, and as the kids got older they would occasionally ask to stay at their nans, she always said yes and she always welcomed them. Importantly as neither set of GPs had them regularly they totally cleared their weekends when they did and everything was focussed on the kids. I intend to do the same!!!

Strange thread…
OP, I don’t have grandkids kids but when I do I know ill
love them to bits but I’d still not want to do childcare. I’d babysit and offer to help out if needed in an emergency but no way would I want to do day to day childcare.
I had the same set up with my kids and my Mum.

Me and my kid are all extremely close to her.
Expecting someone else to look after your kids is entitled.

You answered yourself in the OP 'My mother however explained that she had given up her life to bring us up (didn’t gave us until she was late thirties), and now she wanted to do what she wanted to do and that did not involve small children.'

I'm about to retire, so I can therefore do my own thing, take up a new hobby, travel etc. If I had grandchildren, would I want to be stuck at home caring for them? It's a privilege to have on tap childcare, not a right. You chose to have dc, not your mum.

Well I don't have grandchildren, so maybe I'll feel differently when I do, but at the moment I can't imagine volunteering for regular childcare. I'll be working till 68 as things currently stand, then dh and I plan to do a self build and I dont know what comes next but I really hope I'll have better things to do with my time. I'm totally up for babysitting, occasional days out and maybe even a week or two childcare in the summer holidays. In an emergency Id do everything I could to help but regular childcare - just no. I'll have worked, brought up my family, cared for my parents and in-laws in their old age and I think I'll be ready for some me time.

It’s just so different now. My grandma became a grandparent in her late 40s, worked PT, and we lived a few doors away until secondary school age. I could wander round there after school from about the age of 5, and yes, it was lovely. She was young, full of energy, and got me to help her in the garden and around the house, or chucked me out with a pack up, to come
back when it was dark. It was the 70s/80s and the pressure in terms of how to look after a child was less, for grandparents as well as parents. My mum was nearly 70 and living more than an hour way when she became a grandma, having worked FT for most of her adult life. If my daughter is the same sort of age I was when she has children, I will be pushing 80! My grandparents were able to buy their house without a mortgage, my mum is in a council flat, and I will be paying a mortgage till I’m 75. The generational differences are HUGE. If we were all still having our children in our early 20s, living a few minutes away from our own parents and grandparents, in families where women only needed to work part time, there was a large extended family nearby to help, and anyone helping did it their own way and largely by providing food and drinks and benign neglect, then yeah, I imagine more grandmothers would be helping with childcare…

I love this and it’s exactly the sort of grandparent I aspire to be should I be lucky enough to have grandchildren in the future.

Given that the retirement age is heading towards 67, so many grandparents are working and bloody tired by that time in life they maybe do not have the energy or the time to offer regular child care. My mum was only late 50's when I had my child and retired at 60 and she was a great help but on her own terms and I respected that. She had worked for decades and brought up 3 kids so she had more than earned her free time. She died while stlll in her 60's so only got a few years to live life on her own terms.

Because they do not want to? They do not enjoy it? They want to do something else? Can you really not imagine any reason at all? Even with all these replies? You may not agree with it but can you really not imagine it?

Why are you blaming your mum for the fact you have to work full-time? Most of us have to work full-time, it's pretty much down to house prices, lack of wage growth and a poor economy. Blaming your mum because she wouldn't give you free childcare is a bit pathetic.

Every family has its own circumstances. I can think of loads of reasons you might not help from your children being very particular about lots of rules and making you feel like they don’t trust you to not wanting to be tied to always having to be around for a specific day. They might just really not enjoy the care of very young kids (which isn’t to say they wouldn’t be awesome with older ones). They might find they get really anxious at idea of something going wrong. There will be dozens of reasons. In your mum’s case it sounds like she spent a good portion of her life carrying the domestic/mental load and she was very happy to let your dad take some of that on and claim a bit of me time. My parents always split things fairly evenly when we were kids and have done the same now they help with grandkids.

I do understand what you mean as knowing the relationship I built spending so much time with my grandparents and the ones my kids now have with my parents I’d want to ensure I found ways to spend regular time with any grandkids I eventually have and feel like doing some childcare, assuming I’m able, is likely the easiest way to manage that. Not everyone has that same experience though and even if they did not everyone will want to replicate it.

As so many people have said on other threads, @oldFoolMe - grandparents have a range of reasons not to want to do childcare.

For a start, there is a massive difference between the energy you have as a young parent and the energy you have as a 60-something. I had no problems chasing round after three energetic kids when I was in my 30s, but it is very different trying to do that when you are in your 60s. I have known people who were doing pretty much full time childcare for their kids, and it was seriously impacting their health and wellbeing.

Many 60+ people are still working - the state pension age has gone up, so they need to work, to keep a roof over their head and food on the table - they probably can’t do childcare in their time off.

Grandparents have done their time raising their kids, and frankly we deserve to be able to take things a bit easier now we are older, instead of working ourselves to a shred looking after the grandchildren.

Also, as many posters have said, the worst judgement falls on the women who aren’t stepping up to do the childcare for their kids - the men pretty much get a pass.

I was a SAHP.
My parents are amazing and have always loved and been involved with all their grandkids but never did any regular childcare.
None of mine went to daycare/nursery as I was at home, and for some of those years we were not in UK. I would never have expected my parents to do it. Either I did it, or they would have gone to nursery.

My kids have a wonderful relationship with grandparents, nothing to do with whether or not they did childcare.

My youngest is now 18 (and is autistic so has needed a lot of support), I am slowly ramping up what I am doing at work so that I can really enjoy the last few years at work. I would be really unwilling to take on any regular childcare once they start having kids.

As well as work, my parents are now mid 80s and needing more and more suppport.

When I was a kid, very few grandparents did the childcare, that was mostly because very few mums worked long hours. It is yet another thing that is dumped on women's plates. Oh you need to be a perfect parent, work full time and now just when you thought you might be able to prioritise yourself, look after grandkids (and don't forget the aged parents) Honestly it isn't hard to understand.
Your kids. Look after them yourself.

A fair old amount of women in their 50s and 60s are still working, sometimes choice, sometimes financial necessity . There are more single /divorced people around in this age group . People often don’t live near family , some simply don’t want that tie week in week out, it’s a very mixed picture

Can you clarify what you mean by caring for grandchildren though? Are you talking about babysitting, having DGC to stay in holidays, staying over so their parents can go out or go away for a weekend, coming round in an emergency, occasional school pick-ups? Or are you talking doing set days a week every week while the parents are at work?

Because I'd be happy to do the former, but not the latter, and I wouldn't ask my mum to do the latter either. I wouldn't want to get into an unpaid childminder/employee situation with close family.

this again.

I have put in the hard yards raising children. I want to enjoy my life. Grandkids are not a chore and i won't ever ever ever agree to restrict the my retirement by agreeing to a childcare schedule.

Surely you’d want to help your own mum?

I’m going to have to work full time until I’m 67 to pay my mortgage so that pretty much counts me out for any childcare. Fortunately DS and his girlfriend seem more interested in travelling and enjoying themselves than they do in having children as, if I’m totally honest, I find kids quite dull and annoying.

When my kids start having kids, I'll still be almost 20 years from retirement age

I wonder why so many parents try to avoid paying for childcare for their own children?