Entitled attitude: grandparents must provide childcare

[Hope54321]

I’m seeing a lot more of this attitude quite recently. Why do people have children if they can’t look after them or pay for their childcare? Why is it that grandparents are expected to do the childcare so the parents can work? I think it’s acceptable if the grandparents are offering to help out, but to feel like grandparents should be obliged to offer childcare is simply taking the biscuit.

It’s their job to sort their care later in life but the ‘elderly parents’ board will tell you otherwise.

😮

Why would “they” (the authors of three separate studies from separate institutions) want that answer? And how would studies that have cherry picked facts get through peer review and be published in academic journals, and then published again by respected media outlets?

Have you published yourself or seen other economists or scientists publish rebuttals to these studies? If not then what are you basing your assertion that the studies are full of cherry picked data and have predrawn biased conclusions on?

The studies may not echo your personal experience, but that’s the case for plenty of studies. They look at the totality of peoples experiences and draw conclusions based on the majority or those experiences, not the minority. There will be plenty of boomers whose kids are better off than them, but these studies show that’s not the case for the majority.

BadNomad agree

This is outrageous. My children are grown up and l do not have grandchildren yet but, when they were little, I stayed at home with them, teaching one afternoon a week after school while my parents looked after them. They volunteered for this and l certainly would not have expected any more. Many, if not most of my contemporaries did the same thing (nineties). There were times when we were extremely short of money and did not have the material goods that are taken for granted today. It was a sacrifice we wanted in order to bring up our children. I feel we have played our part. If l am ever lucky enough to have to have grandchildren, l will want to spend time with them and look after them from time to time. I will not want to look after them full time. I will be in my sixties by then and will simply not have the energy l had when I was younger. I have also worked hard all my life including, yes, bringing up my children and l think l deserve to have time as l get older to pick and choose what I do with that time.

We were very lucky in the first three years of my LO’s life in that we had two granny’s willing to help out as much as they could. Unfortunately they both passed when LO was 3, and although she has two grandads still neither are able to provide any childcare.

It was a big change and it’s a bit of a logistical nightmare in terms of work as LOs dad works full time. Thankfully I have found very flexible work where I’m able to be available as and when I can, but am aware how lucky I am in that aspect too.

Whilst I don’t think anyone should be expected to do anything they don’t want I am aware more than ever that the ‘it takes a village’ attitude is not only true but also missing hugely in our society in general. And that is down to a myriad of things which would really need resolving from the bottom up.

Yes, I don't want to live in a flat thanks very much. I want a lovely big family home and so to pay for that we need to wages.

Wtaf????

I don't know about entitled but my gps helped my parents & they now help me. I'm not English but it's normal in our culture for families to help each other out.

I Work full time and will be doing so for another 14 years, assuming state pension age is still 67 by then. I pay tax and national insurance for services many of which I don't use, and claim nothing, so arguably, if you have a young family, I am currently subsidising you. Which is as it should be.
I commute by train at my own expense and will recieve the same help with fuel as anybody else. If I require nursing care then any assets I have will go towards funding it. As they should.
Oh, and i also look after my grandchildren whenever I am able to, including using AL for the purpose, but because I want to, not because I should.

So, I ask again, what do you think I should be giving?

My point is - I often read that families need two wages - but is that due to a rising expectation of how we live?

nope

This is a completely different time that young couples are living in. When I was newly married my mortgage was 12 - 15 percent. Mortgages now are a much lower rate of interest.
Not many young couples had one car never mind two. Very few people went abroad for holidays when not long married
Often, we started in very small flats.
Years later I became a grandparent.
It seemed that the mothers worked, and the fathers rarely did if ever.
It seems strange but I was required to babysit to accommodate the working mother. Apparently male partners were not to be expected to mind children.
I also did school runs, housework while babysitting. I also was a source of money.
One day I was told that DGC would be dropped off but I would not be spoken to! This made me think. I realised that I had not had a proper conversation with any of the parents of DGC for years. It was all about times of drop off or pick ups. I was just useful
I am a real person, not just their servant. I would happy have carried on babysitting day and night if I had been shown a little adult interaction.

I dont babysit now and in return I do not get to see DGC which confirms that I was not really a proper person to the DGC parents.
It was just use and abuse.

Partly, plus rising house prices and mortgages.
But in the seventies take aways were rare, loads of children and teenagers had never eaten out in a restaurant or cafe, people had far fewer clothes and possessions. So a mixture of things.

I am so sorry to hear this.

Grandparents are adults - they can say no.

One set of my Grandparents (Dads parents, in their late 50s) were still working whilst providing childcare for us. My Grandad worked shifts, my Grandma worked from 6am-2pm on her feet. Then she’d get drop my Mum at work at 3pm, collect us from school at 3:30pm, drop us home at 7pm (my Dad worked 12 hour days 6-6), my Mum would get the bus home at 10pm.

Of course she then had to have to my Uncles child - only, she was 70 when he was born, but retired, so she had that grandchild 3 full days a week.

My Mums parents - never worked a day in their lives. Had us overnight twice a month and when my parents buggered off in holiday without us every year.

My Mum is now her Mums carer and works part time, zero interest in any of her grandchildren. My Dad remarried and moved hundreds of miles away, so we rarely see him. Once every other year for a day or two. At best.

It grates considering how hands on my Grandparents were with us. I’m still very close to my Dads parents. I don’t expect the same level of childcare, but I’d like them to have an actual relationship with their Grandchildren, who couldn’t pick them out of a line up.

But in the seventies take aways were rare, loads of children and teenagers had never eaten out in a restaurant or cafe, people had far fewer clothes and possessions. So a mixture of things.

I was born in the 80s & ate out in restaurants & had take sways. Clothes were more expensive before the likes of Primark. I'm pretty sure todays young have less disposable income then some previous generations as housing costs are so high & wages have stagnated.

Why are you subsidising me? I work full time, DH works full time, we claim no benefits or top ups (even child benefit isn’t worth it) and pay the full rate of nursery fees.

In return 50% of women claiming a state pension haven’t worked a full working life - part time, odds and ends here or there, or not at all.

They get free prescriptions, free bus passes, fuel allowance, and are a huge consumer within the NHS.

There is an enormous problem with elderly people squirrelling their money away to avoid paying for their own care, expecting the tax payer to pick up the bill or their adult children to run themselves ragged looking after them. Otherwise they just fall about all over the place and phone ambulances so they’re in and out of hospital like a revolving door.

They’ve ruined the country by voting Tory time and time again to save themselves a few quid, happily watching them slash everyone else to a desperate place.

All the while our economy is utterly fucked and has been since the credit crunch due to people of a certain age taking out mortgages and living the high life which they couldn’t afford to pay back.

What ?

OP has anyone actually put pressure on you to provide more childcare than you are comfortable with, or are you just here to get people rowing on the internet?

Oh that sounds awful. The parents of your DGC should be ashamed of themselves for not facilitating a relationship for their kids with their grandparents, outside of childcare.

The help we get for childcare has been twice this year I think, so I can go out. But our DS grandad sees him every weekend and we all do something. I think it's important he is loved by as many people around him as possible. But no, grandparents should not be guilted into it or it expected.
Although, now with wages low compared to cost of living and in a lot of cases 2 parents needing to work, more people are reliant on external help. So I do know if I could help our DS in the future, I would.

I could never afford to live in the house I grew up in, same for my friends & their family homes, & the vast majority of us had a SAHP, our expectations are much lower! But my parents house was 40k in the 80s & they now sell for 2m.

But a high interest mortgage was still cheaper overall as houses cost so much less. It’s been proven time and time again. Flinging around scary looking interest rate numbers is meaningless unless you compare them to the cost of the house, an average salary and how much the repayments were.

How long did you work full time for?

I don't get any help with fuel, travel or nursing care since I am only 59. You have a strange idea of who these hypothetical grandparent 'boomers' are. My kids are better off than I am.

I have none of these so called benefits as those of us born in the 60s didn't really benefit from fat pensions and are still living in our homes which may have appreciated in value but not in a usable way. I also was not looked after by grandparents as a child. My mother worked from home when I was young as my parents did need two incomes as interest rates were very high.

I never dreamed of asking my own parents for childcare other than emergencies either as they were still working too when my children were young.

Modern parents also benefit from more help as there is before and after school provision which was non existent in my day.

I’m talking about people age 65+.