I dont have to be a grand-nanny.

[WaryBlueFish]

I dont feel obligated to provide full time childcare to grandchildren and here is why. I am a 110% mother. I devoted my life to my kids. I worked full time but still managed to run a clean, happy organized home with family dinners every night despite the multitude of activities my kids were in. I did it all and I completely lost myself in the process. I have zero regrets, but that doesnt mean I am now willing to sign the rest of my life over to the next generation. I am happy to be the back up, to show up for their sports and events, to cover emergencies like snow days and holidays. I may even consider being "summer camp". But no, I am not doing a FT care job. I did my time. I am tired. I deserve to look forward to an actual retirement in 7 years.

Are you telling your children this via mumsnet or will you be letting them know directly too?

That's up to you but be prepared for when your older and your children and grandchildren might not want to help you. My granny helped out a lot when we were younger as my mum worked and there isn't that many jobs that work around school times and holidays so my mum needed her help. When my granny was old and needed help we obviously helped her a lot as we had that close bond. My mil isn't like that. She is always too tired even though she's still in her 50s and retired. Hopefully she doesn't need help when she's older as I won't be helping out.

OP is not ‘disinterested’ though. She’s saying she wants to go to sports days / events etc but doesn’t want to do regular childcare.
FairPlay OP.

Grandads don't have any of this pressure, it wouldn't even occur with them and families would never even ask.

Lots of cheeky posters being disrespectful to older women, as if the only women that are worthy are the younger ones who are working and need support? (Free childcare/babysitting)

And the basis seems to be did mum help me when I was younger,?Well I wont be helping her when she is older then? My mum is only young so I don't know how I will feel but I don't know if I would feel good about living like that? What values are be living by, modelling to our children?

The entitlement of mother's is astounding, you had the kids, look after them!

There are a fuck ton of them over the past week or so though aren't there?? Things are getting spooky on here......or it is a rising up on collective Grans.

Still tedious like all the others.

Yes!!! Ffs. The three word username. It’s so obvious.

Does someone want to post on Site Stuff and request a couple of new boards - ‘Mothers who are bitter that their mothers won’t look after their children for 60 hours a week and therefore have decided not to help their aging parents ever’ and ‘Grandmothers who want a life outside child rearing but have been threatened with withdrawal of the grandchildren’?

Quite.

OP, Gransnet is over there >>>>>>>

Lots of people on there to applaud your announcement.

Where's that bridge?

Weirdly there was something like it on X as well. I think our robot overlords are trying to understand mothers-in-law. When they crack it, perhaps they could let us know…

And those cultures probably don’t have mothers refusing to let anyone see their children for the first 10 years of their lives, while moaning they don’t have the village 🤣

Well said!!

Has it occurred to you that your salary and exhilarating career has meant that motherhood was not as exhausting and self-immolating as it might be for other women? That you had an outlet for your non-mothering needs that many other women haven't had?

That the luck of the draw means that some children need much, much more support than others, and that their mothers might use up every internal resource they have because they can't throw money at the problem with private therapy or even getting a diagnosis in the first place?

That many, many women can't buy their way out of the fact that almost all men, despite their nominal 'feminism', refuse to shoulder anything like their half share of the parenting and domestic shitwork?

Has it occurred to you that those other women's adult children won't have the advantages that yours have? That it might, for those adult children, be very very hard to fund the basics of living independently and having a family of their own? And that those adult children might be looking for much more serious support from grandparents, because <shock> they can't afford decent childcare?

In other words, do you understand that class and money exist?

Honestly, even if this is a cheeky post because of others along the same lines, I actually agree with OP.

There is too much of an expectation on grandparents to help out nowadays. People having children that they can't afford to get care for etc.

My parents are loving grandparents but I have to admit, I roll my eyes a bit at the posters who are so tired from having one toddler and bemoan the fact that their parents aren't begging to "help".

I love my children, I'm sure I'll love their children should they ever have them. But I have absolutely no intention of helping to raise them. I've done my bit.

There is always someone who posts this. How transactional.

Someone’s defensive…

You don’t honestly think this is a real person writing this OP?

Totally up to the grandparent but I do always find the phrasing a bit depressing. Always we've done our time as if raising the kids you chose to have is a prison sentence. I do hope I'll never refer to my child's childhood as having done my time.

Who asks for full time care from grandparents. 1 day a week maybe but do people ask/expect full time?

Actually it’s fair that we have a glut of threads from grandparents given how many threads we have from entitled mothers who expect free childcare

Given that the majority grandparents in the UK do not provide any chilcare, and that the majority of children in the UK attend nursery, or some kind of formal childcare, I would imagine the answer is no.

I certainly don’t know anyone who has their parents providing childcare.

🤣🤣🤣

Yawn......