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.

A slim majority yes. I can’t even imagine a world in which almost half of women can afford not to work. Most women I know can’t even afford to work part time. Nursery full time from 6 months is the norm, paid with a loan if need be. Meanwhile DP’s GM bought a semi and raised 4 kids in the 1970s on a single factory worker’s income. We can can’t afford two children as a civil servant and scientist.

Amen

You can ask, but shouldn't expect. It's one thing to see your grandkids for a couple of hours on a Saturday and play with them, it's quite another to be tied however many days for however many hours every week.

People do need to think about these things before they have kids though.

Someone giving up their job to provide care usually means they end up in poverty.

Why would gparents not want to be involved?

Neither side of my DS are and it cuts deep. We both work for obvious financial reasons. We hire a sitter now and then but it's hard going with zero family help with infants.

It is, imo, also v difficult to fill the role of gparents. I had a good relationship with my own and they gave me love, security and a view of the world that was different to my parent's.

Society has changed and I will be there for my DS if he has kids, as I know how bloody hard it is without

Please can you explain how you think is the case.
My DM had 3 part time jobs &DD work full time if they were still alive now and retired how is them saying they ddo not want to look after my DCs which I have chosen to have with , have anything to do with the world my m&d created .
Its me and my H that createt the DC,s not my parents.
They have done their bit by bringing me and my siblings up , they did not sign on for more work in their 60 /70s

in no way do i expect regular childcare, but I do resent that my parents won’t help at all with one off childcare. For example, I went into hospital alone to have my second baby while my husband looked after the eldest. Neither of my parents work, they just don’t want to. I do resent that I had to give birth alone because they don’t want to help me

Can't tell you how lucky you are. Count your blessings ! Xx

Yes, but 52% this will not be anywhere near a true reflection as a huge number of women in 1971 were not paid through PAYE.

@Cheeselog It was not necessarily about having money. Childcare then rarely existed because there was no childcare tax credit. So if you had no family to get free care, then many could not afford to work. My parents were really poor but my mum did not work until we all went to school because any care would have been as much or more than her wages. That was common. And forget about any childcare for disabled children, if you had disabled children you were providing all the care yourself.
Even playgroups would not accept children not toilet trained. So if you wanted to work even very part-time, your child had to be toilet trained.

Well part of the increase in women working is because we can't retire as early, those 7 years make a difference.

Your DP's GM was an exception or she lived somewhere with cheap housing as every couple I knew in the 70s who had mortgages had two parents working. I knew one mum who didn't work and she lived in a council house with a very low rent.

We couldn't afford two kids and a mortgage in the 70s without me working and my husband was in a managerial post. Even with me working it was tight, like the year I sold my engagement ring to buy sports kits for my sport mad sons.

And childcare tax credits were very much about getting mothers to work who were poor and could not afford to work.

Just took it from a PP on page 1 where someone said a grandparent had been pressured to give up their part time job to provide childcare. I’m assuming they were retired and thus taking a pension so not ‘ending up in poverty’

my point was the grandparents that don’t wish to provide childcare do seem to be the ones that aren’t particularly involved.

im only in my 30s now but knowing how I struggled I wouldn’t want to put my kids through that, so would absolutely help out with childcare if able. But choice and all that.

I'll be in this position. Sending u hugs. A lot of this is unseen/unspoken!!!
Xxx

The thing is though, everyone saying why did you have children if you can't afford it or need help...and it seems like there's Alot...if those children weren't born the country would be fucked. No one to work, no tax being raised.
Yes looking after children is hardwork for grandparents but it is short term in the grand scheme of things.
State pension age 67? No, you'd be working until you were dead cause no one else is around to do it.

I feel this too! Ours aren’t arsed either, yet expect the kids to be ferried to them in their front rooms so they can see them whilst they watch tv :/

My parents had a lot of support with me and my siblings from their parents, my grandparents. Whole weeks of the holidays spent with them, weekend upon weekend spent with them. We loved it, and I guess it allowed my parents to both work.

I in turn have little to no support from my parents. They feel they worked all their lives and now they are enjoying retirement. They are also highly critical that we don't save more which is hilarious when we spend £1.2k per month on childcare. I do feel a bit cross about it as they were able to save, pay more of their mortgage etc in part because of my grandparents!

Yes. Amen.

When my brother and his wife had kids, he didn't ask our parents if they'd look after them, he told them exactly which days they'd be doing the babysitting! I couldn't believe it. 😮

That is very sad and so different from people wanting fulltime childcare. I hope everything went OK.

Tougher now?! What are you basing this on, house prices? Each generation has their own struggles, but over all people are far more privileged than they used to be. I mean for a start, the idea of teenagers is relatively new, its a luxury that previous generations weren’t granted.

blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2020/03/30/birth-of-the-teenager/

Tougher now?! What are you basing this on, house prices? Each generation has their own struggles, but over all people are far more privileged than they used to be. I mean for a start, the idea of teenagers is new, its a luxury that previous generations weren’t granted.

blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2020/03/30/birth-of-the-teenager/

I know a few people who had to give up their jobs to look after elderly parents too - it goes both ways.

Grandparents have had jobs in a profitable economic era when decent secure jobs were available and zero hour contracts hadn’t been invented yet. Many of them have been able to buy houses at an age their children can only dream about, and retire at an age their children can only dream about.

So when faced with their children struggling to pay a mortgage on a stupidly expensive house and working two jobs whilst raising children, it’s not surprising that grandparents offer to help. Especially maternal grandparents, who see their beloved daughter’s job prospects and pension being destroyed by a lack of affordable childcare. If I was in a position to help my daughter I would too.

Having said that, I don’t think people can expect grandparents to help. They need and wants that help, and not having that help is disastrous for many families - especially mums who end up being unable to work. But it shouldn’t be an expectation.

However isn't it a very sad situation that we now have 2 parents working because the cost of living is so high, and they still need to rely on grandparents because childcare is so expensive! How have we come from 1 parent providing for the entire family, to 2 parents working to provide and still barely getting by / not getting by? It's wrong!!
Dreadful isn’t it. Especially when so many mums find themselves unable to work because they can’t afford childcare. But childcare isn’t too expensive - salaries are too low.

my parents live locally and I try not to take the piss. They babysit on the rare occasion that we go out socially (only a few times
a year) and do the odd day during the holidays. Actually my parents asked if they could look after the kids a bit during the holidays. They basically don’t do any regular child care for us which means when they do it’s a bit more of an occasion and they plan something fun to do.