Child care and grandparents

[Mischance]

www.telegraph.co.uk/family/grandparents/sick-of-looking-after-my-grandchild/

This popped up on my phone today. I was able to read it on there but not on my laptop so don't know if people will be able to access it.

In the Telegraph piece, what was outrageous was the messaging from DIL demanding that MIL conform to her food, screen, and activity demands with grandchild. She was not an employee. It was unpleasant.

Totally agree. We have a grandchild 2 days per week. We love him to pieces and want to be part of his life. But it's exhausting and I definitely feel taken for granted at times. My daughter, the mother of said child, is a completely different character to me. I hardly left my children with anyone, didn't work when they were young and lived extremely frugally. My daughter is more than happy to leave him and enjoys a very extravagant ( in my eyes) lifestyle.
I sometimes wonder what I did wrong.

I know exactly what you mean.

Grandparents are entitled to enjoy their retirement, they’ve looked forward to pleasing themselves, hobbies etc. They’ve done their bit. If expected to care full time it’s no surprise that they feel put on, unless it’s their wish to do so, but for most it’s exhausting and expensive . A plan is needed at the outset, how many hours, rules, who pays for expensive days out etc, to avoid resentment.

I don’t have DC so no skin in the game, but however frugally you live, it’s often impossible (even in ‘cheap’ areas) to get a mortgage and/or live on one wage. My DPs did it but, TBH, as a kid it was pretty miserable having a lower standard of living than friends who either had DFs who were pretty high earners, or two parents that worked.

My DF was made redundant when I was 11/12, my DM hadn’t worked since having me. They were only able to keep the house as my DGF died and DM was his only child so used the proceeds from his house sale to pay off the mortgage. DM then managed to get a PT job while my DF looked for another.

Being completely fair, there was only 1 DGP both sides and both were disabled, so not in a position to provide childcare for more than a couple of hours at the most.

If you ask my DM, she’d say I was ‘extravagant’, by doing pretty normal things like going on holiday, buying new clothes and makeup and getting my nails done. She and my dad “saved and only ate egg and chips”. What she always fails to mention is that her MIL gave her and my DF 50% in cash of the cost of their first house. Yes, it was a long time ago (early ‘70s) and houses were a LOT cheaper but it’s like she can’t recognise how extremely lucky and unusual that is. It’s the equivalent of me being given over £100k today to buy a similar house in the same area!

You only have to walk past any primary school gate at the end of school, to see how many grandparents are doing childcare.
When my kids were at primary school you never saw a grandparent pickup up. Now they're are loads who do.

When I had my kids in the late 80s I didn't know a single mum friend who had grandparent help with childcare. And here I am doing it fairly often (and loving it to be fair, but I'm glad it's never been more than a day a week). When I take my DGD to the library or the park there's always another grandparent there with their charge/s.

I can completely understand grandparents not wanting to do this. It's nice if they can occasionally offer to babysit say for a night out, in an emergency, maybe even a night away, but routine childcare shouldn't be down to them unless they really want to do it. I think some dc make them feel guilty for not offering though which is unfair.

Noticed they want to try for a second child. Linda must be dreading it

Nothing worse than ACs who think that your 'free' time is theirs to dictate!! We look after 5 GCs over four days with very limited holiday child care! (our one stipulation!) Just because it's the holidays doesn't mean we should fill the gap.
In general, our childcare is geared up around early mornings for breakfast then school/nursery and pickups. But it makes them long days (for us) especially with tired and cranky kids who could really do with staying in bed for at least another hour and then trying to keep them awake until Mum or Dad collects them is another difficulty. Doing the holidays for these GCs would be near enough 12 hour days - not even going there!! That side of it is no fun at all and there are three of them for DH to deal with there.
I'm busy with DD's kids two days a week, generally pickups and then swimming for one of them and tea, bath and bed for the other but then mega early start for DD's early shift next day but once GCs are in school/nursery for 9am - my day is my own. We do some holiday cover but there is are plenty of GPs and GGPs who willingly take a turn to look after them on sonILs side of the family.
Cheeky of Linda's AC to insist that she books her holiday at the same time so they don't lose out on childcare. One of the benefits to being retired is booking lots of holidays when they are cheaper on the wallet!!

None of my grandparents looked after us, aunts/uncles had their own kids to look after. But I was grandchild # 28 on one side, my Nan had had enough with her own 10 children and there was no way she was looking after her grandchildren. She also worked full time well past retirement age. Although her door was always open, when I was old enough I’d go to her house every chance I got. I had cousins living in the surrounding streets, aunts/uncles at work like my parents so I suppose her keeping an eye on us in the streets was one form of childcare, it was mainly my older cousins looking after me though.

Other grandparents were still working full time when I was born, again they had 10 children but I was grandchild #2. We lived in a different city but saw grandparents a lot at weekends, holidays. My aunts & uncles would sometimes come and stay in the school holidays and hang out with us while parents worked, they weren’t much older than us in years youngest was only 7 years older than me.

My parents did and do lots of childcare for my siblings but never me. It used to be to bother me but in the end it made going NC far easier.

I hear what you're saying.
In our case though, we definitely didn't receive any handouts from parents.

When I say we lived frugally, I suppose I mean we had one car (a banger most of the time when kids were young), only had a meal out for anniversary or birthdays, never got a takeaway. But we were as 'happy as larry'! I know it's a different world nowadays, people have more.

But DD has a high value house, 3 foreign holidays a year, eats out every weekend at least once and doesn't appear to be short of money.
I sound bitter. I'm not. I love DD dearly. But I suppose its my fault for enabling her lifestyle. I'm just letting off steam I suppose 🤷‍♀️

In my team at work, the majority have 3 or 4 kids, and they seem very stretched. They're always complaining that they can't afford childcare but the grandparents won't do more (and it seems like they're already doing loads). There's a fair bit of WFH around kids as a result.

One of them had a massive row last year because the grandparents wanted to go on holiday to celebrate a big wedding anniversary, but it was during the school year so would've made them unavailable for childcare. She came into work and asked us all for tips about how we could guilt-trip the grandparents into changing their minds as it was "incredibly unfair" to expect her and DH to suffer the consequences.

I do know a couple of people who get no help but the cost of childcare seems to have tipped many into thinking that grandparents exist to save them money.

You wonder why they have the kids at times

Yes, I think I wish I'd set out rules at the beginning. Just didn't think I'd need to. Heyho!

There is a mum at school, I don’t like her anyway so don’t care if I bad mouth her. I have reason, it’s not just a personality thing. But she’s is absolutely utterly selfish in this area. Her DM and DSF use to help occasionally with childcare, she convinced them to move closer to help with all 3 primary aged dcs and older DSC. After about a year, they moved away. I’m assuming the DSF made it happen as he never looked happy doing school pickup especially after the mother had a heart attack, she’d still struggle to walk to school to do pickups, the woman would attend every assembly, do multiple pickups at various times take the kids to the park. I had 3 children similar ages and a couple in the same classes so knew the kids schedule well and would 99% of the time be there at the same time. The poor women was even involved in a physical altercation with another parent, man who was twice as big as her and a bully.

what did this mother say after her mother didn’t renew her already expensive lease and moved back into her planned little retirement life with her husband… “ “I can’t believe she just upped and left leaving ME with no childcare.” She then proceeded to call into work sick for six months claiming what else is she supposed to do. This is a woman that posts her life on social media, her kids horse riding, she comes from the same rough council estate as me, the only way we got close to horses were when the rag and bone man use to come round, (saying this to show it’s not something she grew up with and part of her normal life) expensive days out and holidays every single school holidays and just splashed all over social media her new “ forever home” yet kicked off that she’d have to pay child care.

It went way beyond school pickups, I’d see them being collected from the grandparents late at night and the parents had lots of “date nights” and weekends away while the DGPs were around.

She absolutely hates people knowing where she’s from, especially the MC parents. I love dropping into conversation the area where we grew up just to piss her off.

My paternal grandmother was elderly when I was born (she was 36 when she had my father, an only child) yet she still had my younger brother and me to stay regularly on the weekends.

My maternal grandmother and my mother both looked after my eldest child so that I could return to work (1 day each)

I have taken school jobs so that I can be available to help my daughter with DTGS, now 10.

I agree that the demographic of older mothers is (over a generation or two) making grandparents older ( so less likely to be able to cope with tiny ones/toddlers) but also there's an expectation of some break between rearing children, working and looking after elderly parents that is disappearing...

I would happily quit work to look after my dgc...but i can't afford to!