Wild expectations of grandparents

[Morningtee]

Just reading an article from the I paper called ‘the do’s and don’ts of grand parenting as children go back to school’ I’m sure the article was written with well meaning intent but as a Gen X I’m just increasingly shocked at some of today’s young parents expectations of grandparent role. Even a paid childminder wouldn’t put up with some of the advice in the article. I had a great relationship with my grandparents but they didn’t play the role that seems to be expected of modern grandparents which seems more about serving the needs of entitled millennial/Gen Z parents than the grandchildren. Indeed a number are quite happy to destroy the entire relationship between grandchild and grandparent if their wild expectations are not met

I’m in my 40s and I remember all those things in the 80s too. My mother still works as a HCP in contact with parents of young children and she says that things were easier in some ways then and harder in others. We can all be understanding without trying to pit against each other

Friends complaining about how little their parents do for them, see their grandchildren etc how unfair it is they are providing more help to another grandchild, older friends who are having to adapt their entire lives and working patterns to provide care and a lack of appreciation from their adult children for what they are doing. Parents saying they shouldn’t be the ones to maintain a relationship between their parents and grandchildren. Yes I do know lots of people who are not like this at all too but a significant minority who are to think it is becoming more of a trend

I'm a late-end Boomer.(Gen Jones.)

I by no means see myself as deprived - I was able to get a mortgage in 1986 - but I remember that I couldn't afford to pay the mortgage and buy a washing machine. (Yes, I do have one now.)

Until I was 12, my parents and I lived in a coldwater flat with an inside toilet but no bathroom. (We did get a water heater for the one sink installed at some point.)

The point I'm making is that being able to buy a house with a bath and above the bath shower was an improvement in living standards for me. We didn't all have the luxurious lifestyle that some people imagine.

So far as expectations of grandparents are concerned, I do see grandparents round my way being expected to do more and more - to the extent that grandparents are cancelling their own social interaction in order to care for the grandchildren and keep the parents happy.

How do you know this wasn’t happening in the past?

I'm very much the age of parent that's usually being thought of with these ideas. There were definitely always grandparents doing lots and plenty of parents who don't have grandparent support now.

I expected absolutely no childcare from my mum while she was alive (dad died when I was young). I wouldn't have allowed it in any case. She expected childcare from her parents to the extent they brought me up from age 6. This was best though as she was an absolute maniac; I am extremely grateful to my grandparents!

I find that often parents with lots of happy memories of their own grandparents spending loads of time with them expect the same for their own children. But it also means that their parents avoided looking after their own kids and had the grandparents do it lots, which means their still not very likely to want to spend lots of leisure time with little kids really, when they become the grandparents! I don't know that the conflict between these expectations is a modern thing, just the complaining about it all on the internet.

Yes but OP:
The kids didn't ask to be born!
The battle cry of every entitled person. ( I won't say which generation).

If the reason for this thread is really how much easier parenting is now, many parents this decade have had to raise children through a pandemic which closed a lot of the country down - not easy!

Parenting is hard in different ways these days. But I do think younger people have rose tinted glasses about parenting in the past.

@ChristophersRobins true. If your grandparents practically brought you up, there is a reason for that.

My aunt practically brought up her nieces and nephews, otherwise I am sure they would have been in care for neglect.

My youngest is only 3 so I’ve got the benefit of the lived experience of being a parent through all those decades and true some things overall easier and some things more difficult, but overall it’s easier. I’ve worked with families for the last 30 years too and their has been a huge increase in parents and teenagers with mental health issues, particularly anxiety, especially over the last 10-15 years and I think this plus the lack of true social connections and people feeling they have to live up to ridiculous expectations of themselves in terms of achievement, accumulation, parenting etc isn’t helping. However I look at my own children and their friends and see how wonderful, kind and hardworking they are and definitely have hope for the next generation

Of course. There is plenty I am glad that I don’t have to deal with that my parents did. But I bet there were a few “entitled” parents back in the 80s too, but fewer people happened to be exposed to it, or their complaining parents, at the time

Most parents do whatever they can to continue to love and support their children and for some, this means providing lots of childcare. When I became a single parent my mum and dad stepped in and helped so much to support me working without a second thought. I like to think I would do the same for my girls.

I also had a baby through the pandemic, plus KS1 aged and year 11 aged children I had to also homeschool, yes it wasn’t easy but people do like to bleat on and on about it

I don’t think there was generally from the impression I got and talking to people of my parents generation, although the theme was certainly not new, as written in the 1988 hit ‘every generation blames the one before, and all of their frustrations come beating on your door’ 🎶

I’m getting so confused about the point of this thrrad

is it that parents these days are feeble and entitled and if they only knew how easy they have it they would shut up

or is it that they are asking too much of grandparents

these are separate things

grandparents helped a lot in the past. We do not know exactly how they might have felt about it because there were fewer moaning outlets

parenting in the past was very hard in some ways. There were fewer moaning outlets

rhe OP has her own experience of parenting children up to the age of ?40 perhaps. This isn’t the same as knowing how all parents felt 40 years ago because there were fewer moaning
outlets back then

really the only thing we know is that parents and grandparents now have more of an outlet for moaning about how difficult it is being a parent/grandparent these days

maybe if grandparents of the 80s were still alive today they would be tutting and saying that grandparents these days don’t know how easy they have it

I don’t think this is at all a generational thing. My mum (a boomer in her mid 70s) expected what you are describing from ‘millennials’ from her own parents back in the 80s.

Meanwhile, Dh and I are Gen X/millennials and we’ve never had any help from any grandparents. At most, they have stayed at our house for a few hours with dc on maybe a handful of occasions in over a decade. Our dc have never had a sleepover with a grandparent or gone for a day out with one. My own grandparents back in the 80s did the school run every day and took me on holiday. My dc’s grandparents couldn’t even find their schools without one of them giving directions. 😂

I would say of my generation of friends in 30s and 40s, I can think of only one or two who have the sort of relationship with grandparents you’re describing. One of those mums is a single mum with a substance abuse problem and her parents help a lot to help protect the kids from what a hot mess she is. The other lives in the same village as grandparents and is a teacher so grandparents do a lot of after school childcare while mum is working still at the school. Of all the rest of my friends and family who are my age, I’d say we see grandparents every other month or so for lunch and there is otherwise very little involvement.

Online, Apple News

Interesting. As a boomer I was working when mat leave came in. Before I think early eighties few rights. Mid eighties all the other Mums had gp help, me none.
Thatcher did not believe in any free child care. It made me help my own daughters, so I covered I day myself and paid for 2 days day care, family had only two days to cover and I helped and still do in school holidays, sickness or some weekends. I feel blessed to have closeness with the dgc and fail to understand why my parents would not help, but their choice, their loss.
Guess who demanded and got help when elderly from me?
washing machine made me laugh, most people had a manual one like a twin tub in the early sixties, usually bought on credit and we were in a very working class nw area.
Just shows some get help some don’t and that will never change

I think assuming at generational level how people felt in the past, just from conversations with individuals, is not
going to give a true impression

the idea that in the past only those grandparents (realistically grandmothers) who wanted to help did so, and they experienced zero expectations from their children, seems simplistic

Yes I can see this potentially being the case in our family, at the moment I’m quite maxed out as it is with young children myself, work etc but it might be by the time my more local or younger DC have children we’ll have much more time and money on our hands and so be wanting to help out more

34% of people didn’t have a washing machine in 1972

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/dos-donts-grandparenting-children-back-to-school-4700424?srsltid=AfmBOopNheDzrMk6i7qlzp3MSCQpU1JwZ5Q6QyyrdjEmKKS56BtIcJQX here is the article

Would you say yourself and none of your friends have any expectations or resentment of their parent’s level of involvement in their child’s lives?

But you seem to be saying the current generation of parents has had it easy and are asking too much of their parents. Yet if we mention a reason it’s not been easy we are told to stop bleating on about it.

One article doesn’t mean there is a trend for grandparents being put under pressure. A lot of parents move away from their home towns for work and so grandparents aren’t close by.

Why is that odd? I would say I have a lovely relationship with my GC