No grandparents for childcare!

Don't have jobs with long hours or live far from so you have an excessively long commute
Pay for childcare
Hope you don't have a child that is constantly off nursery with bugs
Adjust work hours (dh took a week day off and worked a day at weekend instead, first year I used accrued annual leave to work 4 days a week for nearly a year)
Flex workhours to reduce childcare needed
Actively work to build relationships with other parents in school and find any opportunities for reciprocal care (once they are a couple of years into primary school)
dh and I mostly used annual leave separately to cover school holidays and we spent time looking after other peoples kids so they would look after ours (sounds awful, but ds loved having friends to play with, and two are easier to entertain than one)

Yes we pay £1200 per child and have 2 in nursery. It’s a lot :( but we saved up prior to them both being there and they’ll only overlap for a year before the eldest goes to school. It’s something we factored in before having our youngest and honestly would not have had a second if we couldn’t afford it. It’s a huge consideration and a crazy amount of money.

What did those of you who didn't have parents/grandparents/family as an option for free childcare do?!

Pay for a childminder/nursery/wraparound care. My DP are local and they work full time, they aren't a source of regular child care.

In many parts of the world children live with grandparents while parents work, often working away from home in a city. And before anyone says ‘but that’s because wages are low, paid childcare isn’t available, family structures there are different’, well affordability and availability of childcare are problems here too. It’s normal for grandparents to spend time with their children and grandchildren here too. The MN grandparent who is celebrated for being far too busy to do anything so dull as childcare for their entitled adult child isn’t what I see in real life.

My parents live abroad. I paid for full time nursery and had an aupair for wrap around

We live abroad, Dd is 4 and we’ve never had proper babysitting. We likely will start next summer and will have to pay a babysitter 🤷🏻‍♀️

childminder

Just redone the maths, actually closer to £1500!

We pay for nursery and are prioritising school applications based on wraparound care. We have one child and likely to stay that way due to the cost of childcare. Both GPs live miles away - my parents offer to look after DD when they're visiting so me and DH can have a night out but that's only once or twice a year. My MIL is housebound and my FIL is her carer so they couldn't help if we lived closer anyway. Sick days from nursery I usually cover (as I can work from home) but DH works close to home so he's always on hand for an emergency pick up if I'm in the office. You find a way through money and being as flexible as you can - if you have an understanding boss then that's a bonus! I've come close to leaving my job a few times but I stay because of the flexibility they offer and the understanding from my boss and colleagues.

We have three children. All adults now. I’m not British, I moved here for my husband. His parents were not so in mined to ever watch the children but also we lived in London and they lived on Kent coast so weekday care was not possible either. When it was just one child, we had childminder. Later, as we added to our brood, we had live in child care (and moved for extra bedrooms/bathrooms too) as it was cheaper than nursery or childminders and more reliable. Both of us have high stress, professional jobs that also required travelling. As the kids reached teens years, we had live in au pairs who could drive and drive them to all their after school activities.

never had family who could watch the kids and we managed.

Looked after them myself.

1. get married before you get pregnant
2. BOTH work PT so need to use less paid childcare
3. use a nursery (with no family close by we needed the reliability of a nursery, childminders and nannies get sick/go on holiday/decide to stop working) and pay an absolute fortune for it (higher than our mortgage)
4. work shifted hours so DH did drop off then went into work late and I started work early and left early to do pick up
5. have no money or social life for a few years but feel very rich once you no longer are paying a small fortune every month on childcare and laugh at those who say teenagers are more expensive than small children.

Full time nursery here costs £1200 a month, even factoring in the Governments tax free 20%. Is everyone on this thread really paying out that amount every month? And if you are does that mean you actually had £1200 just hanging around before you had kids?

OP: DH are I were able to condense our hours at work which has helped. Not sure if that’s an option at all?

I think this may be an income bracket thing. Where our son is at school, every child with both parents working use family- mostly grandparents plus an aunt who is a sahm, or similar. Wages are not much more than minimum for most parents at the school gate, and I can think of several with babies who work nights, whilst the other parent works days to make ends meet bc childcare costs are so high.
where my husband works, both parents working is the norm, as are nannies for those with two or more children under school age. His workplace is in a much more affluent area.
so i think asking if it is a joke might be a little tone deaf - there is a huge variety of experience in this country, and certainly ops forethought is trying to plan for this is acknowledging a problem that, even if you don’t personally encounter it, is definitely a problem that exists for some.

I don’t know anyone who has free childcare through family members. We all pay for it.

I reduced my days to 3, but worked 3.5 (half day from home flexibly with dc there). She went to nursery from 14 months until she started school. You can apply for tax free childcare or if you're on a lower income then you may be eligible for childcare support through universal credit. We didn't have grandparents or any family living near us. I don't know anybody who had grandparent help (in the SE of England).

You shouldn’t plan to have children if you need to rely on grandparents. If you both choose to go back to work, pay for childcare

Yes to this! 2 in childcare is a killer. But worth it in the long term :)

This post is honestly ridiculous. You pay for it like everyone else! Not everyone has parents and even if they did they should not be expected to look after your children. If you can’t afford it then reconsider your work/family options.

Er, even if your parents lived locally you would be totally unreasonable to assume they'd be on tap for free childcare! The grandparent generation do have lives. Everyone I have known has paid, and made their plans accordingly.

I would never use anyone for free childcare, my goodness!!

Do you mean babysitting for the odd night out as opposed to day to day childcare while you're at work? I once heard about an NCT group who set up a system where each mum had a certain number of 'tokens' that she could use to 'buy' evenings from the others. It seemed like a good way to help each other out without anyone taking advantage.

Having said that, my personal experience is that DH and I have only gone out together on the few nights that a family member has offered to come and stay at our house/have the kids at theirs. And as for regular childcare while we're at work, yes of course we pay for it!

At my DGs primary school, where I, GM did most of the school run and childcare for free (I love doing it), many families, and I mean many, took their DC out of the school and moved back to be close to their parents. I suppose for free childcare and family relationships.

I do have grandparents nearby and still don’t reply on them for free childcare.

Unless it was discussed (thus you shouldn’t have moved) as something you all agreed on then I’m afraid paid-for childcare is the way forward

Pay for it. My son (21 months) went to nursery full time once I returned to teaching after maternity leave. He was 11 months old. Currently on maternity leave again with my newborn and Send him one day a week. When I return to work next year with two of them in paid nursery, it will cost my entire wage but it has to be done if I want to stay in the same job/not pay back maternity pay etc. In his 21 months, he has been looked after for the wholes day by a grandparent three times. To be honest, for us, it’s not the working bit that is hard…it’s the fact that there’s no one to have them one evening while we have a date…that’s harder!