You would be surprised at how many people are exactly like this.
My sister has two kids and expected my mum and dad to pick them up from school every day and look after them most weekends. Her husband sometimes finished work before the kids finished school but refused to pick them up because he said he’d been at work all day and wanted to come home and relax.
My parents were both still working and had to fit their hours round my niece and nephew, they couldn’t ever do anything together on their days off and had to take separate days off to have the kids in the end. They were desperate for a break and to go away on holiday but any suggestions of it and my sister would get hysterical. When they did finally book holidays in the half term my sister insisted she was entitled to a holiday as well and demanded she join them with her husband and kids.
If my parents tried to refuse she would say she would quit her job to look after them and said if she and her husband couldn’t afford their mortgage and living expenses she would have to move in with my parents. This had already happened when they were previously renting a house so my parents knew she was being serious.
My dad died from cancer (whilst he was dying my parents were still looking after my niece and nephew) and after he died and my mum was alone it got so much worse.
My mum had the kids almost every day and overnight over half the week and almost every weekend and was so tied down and could never see her friends and she became isolated. I got sick of never getting any time alone with her and begged her to say no but she was too scared of upsetting my sister.
My sister was also financially supported by my parents right up until they died. She would claim she didn’t have money to survive or feed the kids but then would be buying champagne, going away for mini breaks with her husband, buying clothes, having massages and her nails done and basically living the high life as though she was childfree.
If my mum said no to having the kids my sister would cry and beg or blackmail my mum saying if she didn’t want to look after her grandkids she’d never see them again. I told my mum that would never happen because my sister needed her too much but she was vulnerable and didn’t want to deal with the fallout of saying no.
The most shocking thing was when my mum got diagnosed with terminal cancer and STILL was expected to have the kids. I went round to see her once and she was too ill and weak to get out of bed. My 7 year old nephew was standing on a stool trying to cook beans in a frying pan over a gas cooker with the heat turned up as high as possible.
After my mum died so many of her friends told me how much they had wanted to spend time with my mum, my sister had messaged several of time telling them to back off and stop pressuring my mum to not have her kids. A few friends didn’t even attend the funeral because they didn’t want to deal with my sister.
I could see my sister writing a post that would be far more shocking and entitled to OP’s, there are definitely people like that walking amongst us!
My sister tried the same thing with me after my mum died but I didn’t comply. She even expected me to give up my inheritance “for the kids”
When I said no she suggested putting it in an account for them and she would save and give it back when they were adults. When I refused and said she should just save money from her own inheritance for when they were adults she knew she’d been caught out that it wasn’t for the kids!