To not understand attitude on here to grandparents helping with childcare

Should have read accrued, tried to update it but it wouldn't post. Oh well, typos😅

I think this comes down to what you think of as an emergency. My mum would absolutely help out in an emergency even though she lives more than 300miles from us. But an emergency is someone being seriously ill and in hospital. She wouldn’t come because I was a bit ill and needed a break. And I would never expect her to. When you have children you expect to have to look after them when you are unwell. If my or my husband were too ill to look after the children then the other one would have had to take the day off work. Otherwise you just get on with it.

The posters who get upset when their mums won’t drop everything because they are ill and don’t want to look after their children are very unreasonable.

I completely agree that family who refuse to help to help in a genuine crisis are strange. I would drop everything to help for anyone in my family or friends in an emergency. But I mean an actual emergency, not a slight inconvenience!

"I think women are resources to be used up like a worn out dishrag and I'm pretending not to understand the problem with demanding their free labour till they drop dead" - just reminding you that I fixed your title for you.

So anyway, look after your own kids, it's your reponsibility. Never expect any childcare from anyone and especially stop demanding your mothers drudgery. They already raised you, job done.

For the excessively transactional amongst you - you have put yourself in an impossible bind. You think life is a transaction and your mother's resources, time and free labour can be owed out, in a transactional way.

Unfortunately for you, this means you owe your mother - forever. You can never, ever repay the massive debt you have incrued to her by raising you. That's how it works in transactional world. This also means you do, in fact, owe your parents aged care. No matter what you do, you can never repay the enormous debt you have to them.

Fortunately, life is not transactional, and I'm not a nutty self entitled twit - so I understand that no, you don't owe your elderly parents care. Although certainly any care you give them is simply a repayment of their endless time, money and attention to you, the fact that you are still alive is testament to their parenting. But still, it's not owed.

Your mother, of course, is not your servant, so stop trying to force her to do even more work. She's done her bit, say thanks and behave better.

Oh, and let's not pretend your mother was abusive to you, because if that was the case and you wanted her to do your parenting job that would make you a monster.

Think that about covers it. Look after your own kids, and stop demanding your mother's free labour.

If she offers, be very very grateful indeed.

When you stop making ridiculous demands on your mother (and it's not your dad you're asking, we all know that) and accept that she's not your resource to be redistributed, you'll turn into a much more pleasant person. So everyone will win. You're welcome.

We had no help from our parents raising the children. We have both worked full time all our lives, and paid for childcare as we needed it. I also spent several years looking after my mother who had Alzheimer’s. I’m still working full time, and will continue to do so for several years. When I finally retire, I don’t intend to be tied to looking after anyone else. I’ve done my share.

I agree with all of this.

Sorry, no, cross purposes. My parents helped me with school, clothed and fed me, tried their best for me when I was in their home. Then I left, built up my own life and when they became old, I looked after them, because I owed them, it was my duty. But it was also my privilege and pleasure, but it was my duty too. I owed them.

My kids are 20 plus and I won’t be doing regular childcare for them when grandkids come. I have three children and I will be very happy to take any grandkids for weekends/holidays/help out in emergencies and just see ad hoc . What I don’t want is to be tied down to (eg) every Monday and Tuesday. I plan lots of things in my retirement and don’t want to be tied down. We would help financially if we needed to but a definite NO to regular help. My step mum does it and it’s a real tie for them. I think that’s fair enough.

Which is...exactly what I said? But it's a two-way street when your children are adults. Everything you do for your children when they are children and young adults is your duty, your obligation, and they are entitled to everything you have to give them. Your children will never owe you or feel like they are beholden to sacrifice their time in adulthood to support you in your old age. They will almost certainly want to help you, to, in those same crude terms, sacrifice their time when the have no obligation to do so if you have also done the same for them. Again, not when they were children, as you had children due to your own desire to be a parent, which they fulfilled.

Sorry, in real families it is a two-way street. We are not an animal kingdom.

The thing is, you will never be entitled to support from your children in old age. You chose to bring them into the world, and they were entitled to all that you had to successfully launch them into the world. You owed them the best of yourself, your resources, your time. That is what you signed up for, and by giving them that, you gave them what they deserved, and what you owed them.

And in having children, you also signed up to the creation of a family, who should continue to support and care for each other throughout life to the best of their capacity. That absolutely does not mean at all that grandparents have an obligation to act as unpaid childminders for their grandchildren. That is a wild exaggeration of what most people are mourning the lack of - which is real, intergenerational support that some people are very reluctant to give, and not at all shy about expecting from other people. I'm sorry, but being an involved grandparent, taking your grandchildren out, having them to stay for the weekend sometimes, being able to be relied on in an emergency, investing in your family when you have the capacity to, is not an unreasonable expectation. And it absolutely is unreasonable if you decide to not invest in your family during those years, caring only about what you are obliged to do and what others are entitled to from you, for you to turn around and expect your children, who owe you nothing, to invest into you when you need it.

I’m not bitter. We had very little help. Childcare cost us a fortune, as it should. Now our parents’ care and help will cost them the same fortune but it leaves us free of elder responsibility to live our lives as they lived theirs, and that’s priceless!

The only thing I am surprised about is when somebody asks their mum to help in an emergency and the parent won’t cancel a cancellable golf game or a gym session to help their child out. I find that quite strange and uncaring. I would do that to help a friend, never mind my child who I love.

Oh for goodness sake, I didn't attend appoinntments like that with my babes/DC, I paid somebody to mond them, or DH arranged to go in a bit late.

The posters being rabid over this and coming across as vulgar need to shape up.

I never got help from grandparents with childcare and I'm not remotely bitter. We love 100s of miles away from grandparents and that was our choice. Similarly my parents never got help from their parents. I do see a lot of entitlement on here from people expecting their mothers and mils (never the men) to care for their kids and feeling aggrieved if they don't. They've done their childrearing and are under no obligation to do any more.

@thepariscrimefiles Similar situation here as my Mum died before my children were born. Knowing what it was like without her support (and very little from my Dad and in-laws), has made me want to help out my children if they decide to have families.

I'm not prepared to martyr myself to help them, but I'll offer to do something!

No I won’t fuck off actually. It’s a vagina and a cervix ffs, you need to get a grip if you need help with shit like that. Your mother likely gave birth to you unmedicated but you’re mad she wouldn’t watch your kids while you accessed healthcare.

My dad helped as much as he could

Oh fuck off my daughter didn't need to be with me to have a smear test she was cranky as hell teething and not napping my mom could have met me there watched her for ten minutes and driven off leaving me to walk home she didn't need to agree to help then ditch me the day before the appointment if she needed to go to the drs when my sister and I were young she would have dropped us off for hours she sent us to our nans for most the day every Saturday so she could do the shopping shevwas spoiled it was a smear test I wasnt going to be long

Fucking "resilience" bullshit like my mothers generation ever had anything not handed to her on a plate by her in-laws her parents her friends her family 🙄

JFC you have the thick skin, sensitivity and empathy of a rhino.

Why the hell do you keep telling me that it was never acceptable for me to demand free labour from my mum when I've just old you that she died when my first baby was three months old. Therefore I have never had any free labour from my mum. I hope that's clear now.

It absolutely is my choice to provide free childcare for my grandchildren. It was very hard for me without a mum and I want it to be easier for my adult children than it was for me.

Well I see totally the opposite response on here! That grandparents have their own lives, that taking care of youngsters is a lot, that people take advantage etc etc.
However I do not like your assumptions (and yours @TheBlueKoala) that a grandparent (particularly grandmother) is happy to help because ‘she loves me and her grandchildren’ as if those that don’t help don’t love their children/grandkids?
There are many reasons why some one doesn’t want to or can’t take care of their grandchildren, and it often has nothing to do with ‘love’.
In fact your post reads that you believe that parents are ‘entitled’ to the help, and if not on offer then the relationship is flawed.
I found it hard to spend the whole day looking after my own kids, let alone doing it 30 years later! I’m not naturally maternal. I find babies boring and small children exhausting.
Im likely to be into my 70s when my children have kids (I had them in my 40s), and if fit enough will certainly be on hand (though my son lives some distance away). But I don’t foresee having them regularly for full days while my children are at work. Collecting them from school and keeping them for the afternoon is more likely; going out as an extra pair of hands sure. Having them over as well. But give meaning to my life? My life has meaning.
And I have an excellent relationship with my children (one still at home when not at uni), in fact a friend said I was too close to my daughter!
My mother lived in a different country to her mother and as she had 7 siblings there was no question (nor was it the norm) to help out. I lived in a different country from my mother the majority of the time. My in laws would not help even if I was desperate (that actually was a flawed relationship with all their children and grandkids).
I thinks it’s wonderful for kids to have a relationship with their grandparents- sadly my parents passed away while my children were quite young. I’m happy to be on hand and indulge them, but I’m not daycare.

My mum was in her 40s when I had my children and needed to work herself . By the time she retired at 59 my children were old enough to take care of themselves while I worked.
However I was a nurse who cared for my mum while she was dying of cancer .
My MIL was also in her 40s and working full time when we had our children . She had been widowed in her mid-thirties and had to support her own children . I also helped care for her when she was dying of cancer .
I believe in helping those that need my help .
Both these lovely ladies did a lot for me and my family just not child minding .

It's fine to be grateful for support. It isn't fine to feel entitled to childcare support, you chose to have kids - it's your job to figure it out.

My mum and I are extremely close but she made it clear that she wouldn't be providing any sort of regular childcare (she still works FT to be fair) she would happily do occasional evening babysitting but only if DD was already in bed and she just had to listen out.

She has however provided loads of emotional and financial support, and has a fabulous relationship with my DD.

Why on earth would I be so entitled as to demand she look after my child? That's mine and her dad's job surely 🤷‍♀️

Funny how this does not apply to the same extent to grandfathers.

"Parents" or "mothers"?

It seems to me that fathers can bugger off but if the mother then neglects the child it's all her fault.

I realise I am digressing from the thread here.

But it's also the mothers should want to be grandmothers but nobody really cares if grandfathers step up beyond a game of football once in a while.

So what? Your choice is your choice.

It's still never acceptable to demand free labour from your mother.