to think many grandmothers actually do not want to do childcare?

[onlytwo]

I go to a regular toddler group and there are many older women there with their grandchildren.

Been talking to them and many of them do not want to do childcare but have been pressured into by mostly their daughters but also their sons. Their children often think they are delighted to be looking after their grandchildren but often it is a huge struggle for these women (and it mostly women). They feel like they can't take a break because their children rely on them for childcare because of the cost of nurseries and general cost of living. They no longer have the same energy levels and also often have health issues.

Also grandfathers are usually not pressured into doing childcare and are rarely expected to give up their job when grandchildren come along. Their life mostly remains unchanged,

I feel the expectation of women to keep doing childcare is unfair and is coming from their own daughters. Some of the older women are frail and struggling to keep up with young children.

When talking to the mums, they say their mums love spending time with their grandchildren and looking after them. That is not what they have said to me.

Good god! This sounds awful.

Because the sons can't be bothered or don't consider it their province, it is ok to push the childcare onto older women?

Your situation exemplifies the core subject of this thread. I think! And you say it, you are still parenting.

As I posted earlier my DD and SonIL did try to get me and DH to do the school run for 2nd DGC but we said no and stuck to our guns. They did try to say but you did school run for the 1st. Thankfully they finally backed off and there are no hard feelings. He’s is year 1 now.

It’s hard! Adult DC are not taking into account as in your case, that your parenting journey is not over.

I have a friend, who I have always called Mother Earth, because she has 5 adult DC and 8 DGC.
she has never stopped parenting. She is happily married, her DH is a good man and welcomes them all but she does all of the hard work.

She told me the other day that her teenage DC are asking her why she keeps saying yes when the older ones drop their DC off for the weekend!

And she said she is getting tired but won’t say no.

Completely agree with this, nobody should get pregnant and make the assumption that they will have free, built-in childcare from the grandparents when they go back to work. What happens also if one grandparent develops an illness and the other grandparent has to look after them!

It's not baffling when quite a few grandparents know that if they don't do childcare, they will hardly ever see their very much loved grandchildren. I know of an egregious case of that, and anecdotally, several others.

It's very evident on Mumsnet that many daughters and DILs feel entitled to free childcare from grandparents. Look at all the 'well they can't expect support from me when they get old then' posts.

Well that's utterly shameful on the parents part. I cannot imagine any circumstances where I'd emotionally blackmail my mum or in laws like that.

I know the cost of living and childcare and just about bloody everything has sky rocketed compared to a generation ago, but children are still ultimately their parents' responsibility and nobody else's. No one is owed free childcare.

Is that not just a result of, if both parents work full time and put children in nursery, they want to spend their weekends together with their children vs at the grandparents?

Of course if you don't spend time with them when it's convenient for the parents, you won't see them as much.

Well my Ddad is dead or damn sure he would be doing childcare, as he did for me including balancing work being a student and being the main carer when I was small.
id have loved him to live long enough to meet DD but since he died at 52 it didn’t happen. But keep assuming…

Who is assuming? The stats show more older women do childcare than grandfathers.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/pressure-grows-to-give-women-over-the-age-of-50-granny-leave-8783675.html

Here you go - something to challenge your assumptions.

Where are the stats in that piece? I can't see any.

And given that many grandparents are still in couples, surely when they have their grandchildren they're both caring for them? Maybe there's an element to how outsiders perceive them, dvd that they tend to assume it's the woman doing the caring.

When my in-laws looked after our children back on the late 1980s, my FIL was right in there, and engaged. My late DH would absolutely have played an equal part had he lived long enough to meet and care for his DGDs (as he was a completely involved father and would have doted on his grandkids.

And my friends in couples who do childcare are similar. They work as a team, and tag-team to give each other breaks (which as a single GP, I envy!).
I just think it's likely that it's the female halves that do the initial organising of the care, which gives the perception that the GM is the carer, not both.

I hope your oldest will have time to just be a teenager and not be pressured into childcare for a sibling she didnt choose to have.

Maybe you in laws and your own mother wanted city breaks, yoga and wine too !

Apologies. I posted this already:

https://www.goodto.com/family/family-news/more-than-half-grandparents-look-after-grandchildren-while-parents-at-work-but-whos-more-likely-to-retire-early-to-help
Data from Age UK shows that women are nearly three times more likely to retire from their jobs in order to care for a family member, and that doesn't include the number who have gone part time or reduced their working hours to better fit around their childcare demands.

Even when the grandparents share the childcare, the majority of the time it will be the grandmother cooking, preparing the meals, helping with toilet training etc than the grandfathers.

The fathers and grandfathers get all that without having to be mostly responsible for childcare!

Im the same, have a wonderful father and father in law, both very hands on and both realise i would not be able to raise a family without them. I work 3 days a week and share the load between them. My own mother is dead, but MIL is not very hands on or supportive and both my DC prefer their grandfathers. Admittedly myself and DH never go out much but if we did both grandfathers rush up to look after them together 😂

JenniferBooth, my eldest is a boy! I absolutely wouldn’t expect him to miss out on his teen years to look after siblings. I simply meant perhaps overseeing younger 2 getting out to school. Instead of grandparents doing it. I would continue to ensure they all have ironed clothes, packed bags and food. It would amount to approx 1.5hrs per week.

My mum sees her friends often and goes on trips with them, she also goes to dance class and pottery. My in-laws are different, they love family life. My mil loves to be surrounded by family and invited us on many holidays with them when our kids were younger. Which we all enjoyed. We never asked them to help, they offered. As all kids are at school now, and I work mon-wed. The total time they help each week is 6hrs. We rarely ask either grandparents to look after them so we can socialise. The last time we were out together was 20months ago.

My Dad had already retired when my children were in infant and junior school, my Mum was younger so still worked FT, Dad collected grandchildren from school every day, took them back to his, made them snacks and I picked them up at 6.30. He was a fantastic help to me.

Fair enough. Sorry i jumped the gun but i saw a friend go through this at school She was always caring for younger siblings and couldnt go out with friends and do normal teenage things

My mother once joked that the only reason to have children was to have grandchildren. Having said that, she had the eldest one day a week, which gave my husband who was the carer a day off. and occasional days from when the other two came along.My mother in law was living with us for the first few years and never offered to look after the children so we could have a night out. I have no grandchildren which I do regret but not so much when I see how much my friends are relied upon to pick up children.

Interesting how women often point out when another woman will not do childcare/babysit. It has come up time and time again on this thread. Rarely the case for men.

My father and father in law were both dead before I had any children. I think my father would have rather liked grandchildren, but I will never know. As i said, my husband cared for our children, so I am used to the idea.

In my SIL's case it was absolutely her who did the childcare for her daughters children, her husband had been a loving caring interested Dad, but not hands on!.

She initially was happy when asked to have the first grandchild by her only daughter, but the reality of just how suddenly restrictive it was, took her by surprise.

She went from lunches, exercise classes at the club and golf days out, to her day being completely dictated to by the babys routine.

She did 3 days a week from 8am and was shattered from it.

She gained weight during the first winter from being so tied down and from missing out on so many days out with friends, that happened tues-thursday, the three days she was committed to.

That commitment took 10 years from her, with the 3 children her daughter had, and then her husband died very suddenly.

They are beyond childcare needs now as her daughter is a teacher and she brings them to and from school now with her.

My SIL has health problems as she grieves her husband, and I know she is full of regrets that she missed out on so much with her husband over that 10 years of retirement, the only years they had together as it happens, after both working 40 years full-time.

I feel hugely sorry for her.

I do understand from both sides, kids are exhausting. But I agree with those who have said some grandmothers play the martyr though, I know several, including my own mother who does one day per week school drop off but tells everyone else how awfully inconvenient this is for them, then acts put out if we suggest they bother don’t anymore.

I do find it ironic that lots of the grandparent generation now palmed all of their kids off on their own parents practically every day so they could work/ go out/ away etc. I don’t think it’s the same today - the ‘village’ they heavily relied on is not something they are interested in providing themselves.

I agree with you OP re different expectations of GMs and GFs. Although much has changed over the past 50 yrs+ re gender inequality, I think the problem is that we still have pervasive but subtle cultural ideas that equate a person's worth to nurturing and caring more strongly for women than men. We also still idealise and romanticize motherhood. Therefore many women feel not just guilt about saying 'no' to caring for grandchildren, but also as if that would somehow undermine their identity as a 'good' i.e. nurturing woman. The romanticized expectation that mothers will selflessly always put their children before themselves, even into the children's adulthood, means that young adults actually feel hurt when their mothers don't do this, as if this is a measure of not being loved enough. I suspect this is fuelling some of what you see as the unreasonable expectations of older women, and anger when they don't step up as expected, though there's probably also a large dose of young adult self-interest (or, to be fair, financial desperation) in some cases.

We need to get better at recognizing that women and men all vary in their talents and what they can contribute to the world. I've provided a lot of practical, financial and emotional support to my adult DCs, but I'll probably only be looking after their children occasionally as childcare is not particularly where my abilities or comfort zone lie. If I were a man, that wouldn't be seen as odd.