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.

Surely these are just typos? The ; key is right next to the ' key on my keyboard so when typing fast, it's easy to hit the wrong key. The post is still perfectly clear and readable.

Possibly the most ridiculous response i've had on here. Can you only respond to posts you can relate to?

The OP has raised a subject for opinions and mine is that this isn't my experience. I don't really know anyone who has pressured their parents either. Some people actually enjoy it?

I've seen it framed that way by grandmothers I know in real life when it's a massive distortion of the truth.

The reality being something like:

GP - we want to see our grandkids every few days
Parents - that doesn't work for us, we have lots of commitments, once every few weeks is better

Later

Parents - could you please do one day a week of childcare?
GP - we don't want to do that
Parents - ok, we'll continue as we were (but because the mum is off mat leave now, they have more time pressures and the visits are less frequent)

GP - We can't do childcare and our child REFUSES TO LET US SEE THE GRANDKIDS

But this is MN, and the lines between parents and grandparents are pretty entrenched.

In some families it has happened for generations. My granny played a big part in my life as her mother did with my mother. I just see it as passing it on so nothing to do with today's young adults.

What is the purpose of responding to posts that you can't relate to? It is like going to the large families thread and saying I can't relate because I am childless.

Ridiculous 🙄

I've got 8 GC with a 20 age gap between oldest and youngest. I don't think I've sacrificed my physical or mental health by providing care for them over the years. Quite the opposite in fact. Recently had a medical and everything was above average for a woman in her 70s, all bloods normal, blood pressure great etc. Only issue is osteopaenia which I think would be worse if I hadn't walked all those miles with prams and buggies.

Mentally they've definitely kept me younger, all that homework all those discussions with bright teenagers.

I suppose the only negative would be I'd be richer if I hadn't spent so much on them over the years but that was my choice.

Part 2 is here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5331422-to-think-many-grandmothers-actually-do-not-want-to-do-childcare-part-2

It's always the woman the unpaid work falls to, and where the expectations lay. So much disdain for and dehumanising of older women on this thread, so much, therefore, misogyny.

Agree 100% - women want to keep putting the unpaid work onto other older women while the men stay mostly uninvolved and free of expectations.

So much for feminism.

I love this and your attitude.

My grandfather was similar, so I don’t recognise a lot of these comments about labour divisions. He and I did the dishes together when I was young, because he didn’t believe in dishwashers and thought many hands made light work.

My husband did the dishes last night while I put our youngest to bed.

Older people should be cherished and celebrated and men expected to do their share.

Can I just ask about how all the inter-generational skills and knowledge is going to get passed down if grandparents aren’t involved in the raising of their grandchildren?

This discussion has raised a lot of memories, good and not so great, but all my grandparents taught me a huge amount about the soft skills, things my parents were too tired or overworked to think about because they could just manage the basics because they were working full time.

And that is lovely for you because you obviously love caring for young children, and I’m assuming you don’t work full time, etc.

I don’t have an issue at all with GMs helping with childcare. My issue is that it is seen as expected, or a responsibility, not that they’re doing a very big favour. Grandmothers shouldn’t be forced to provide care, and if they do, it should be appreciated.

I’ll be honest, I found raising very young children to be mind-numbingly boring, and I couldn’t wait to get back to work once mine were old enough (though I loved the 6+ age). Maybe I’ll feel differently if I eventually have grandchildren. We give our adult DCs loads of support in other areas, and we’re very close. But if they ever said “I’m having a baby and you WILL look after it because you’re my mother and it’s your duty” they’d be in for a very big shock.

Completely agree with this. In my family we are one unit and we take care of each other - everyone cares for everyone else. No-one exists in a vacuum and I hope to always be part of my children’s village as my parents, grandparents and in-laws are mine.

When my eldest was born my mum gave up work. When my youngest was born my Dad took early retirement. I didn’t ask them to, but I knew they would because I know how they think.

I would say there are as many grandfathers as grandmothers on the school run here. And several uncles and aunts too.

It works both ways, I live in a crappy town and I hate it. I would never move because of my parents/in-laws. I fully intend to give up work to care for them in their old age, if necessary.

I find it strange that parents have to ask the grandparents if they will help out with their grandchildren, or that the grandparents tell the parents one thing and the strangers at baby group another. Surely the parents should know the grandparents well enough to just know if it’s something they would want to do or not?!

Maybe if these grandparents are feeling pressured it’s because they didn’t build enough of a relationship with their own children when they were younger so they could be honest with them now. And if they feel the parents will stop them seeing the grandchildren, why is that? Maybe because they didn’t bring them up to see wider family/grandparents as something to be valued?!

Ok, so what have Men done to upset you so much? It seems more and more likely that your issue is not with other peoples childcare arrangements, but with Men in general

Really? Have you seen this happen or have first hand experience in this? I might be living in a bubble but honestly I have never come across this. My friends all respect their parents wishes, if their parents say they cannot babysit a certain time my friends say “ok no problem” and work out other arrangements. We are all very cautious of how much we expect, we turn down nights out through fear of expecting or asking too much.

Really strange question. The thread is about grandparents doing regular childcare during the day rather than for special occasions. Grandparents who only babysit occasionally or see the children on visits are still able to transmit knowledge. I've also got a wealth of stories from my grandparents, mainly from visits to them, both with and without my parents.

This is my real life experience too. I do think there has been some talking at cross-purposes in this thread because it took me a while to realise that some people were using 'grandmothers caring while parents work' to mean 'grandmother doing 5 days a week 8-6', which didn't really occur to me as a possibility except in very extreme circumstances. The only family I know of with anything like this is where the grandparents have essentially become the child's actual carers due to issues with the parents, which is a very sad but very unusual situation. I would say about half of parents I know have some regular childcare from grandparents but that is at most two days a week, usually less (our own pattern is once a fortnight). While obviously grandparents aren't obliged to do even a day a year, I do think if one person's assuming we're talking about full-time care and the other is thinking about a day a week they're maybe going to misunderstand each other a bit.

The one area where I always feel very out of step with these threads is that there's always a lot of people saying that grandparents should never be asked to do any kind of regular commitment but just to ad hoc, including 'sick days'. I never, ever send my kids to either set of grandparents with any sort of sickness that would keep them out of school/nursery. I don't really like them going even with a cold unless it's very tail-end. 'Mild' illnesses can hit older people much worse, so a grandparent would be at the bottom of my list to look after a kid with a stomach upset, not the top! I also would never ask either set at short notice except in a genuine emergency, as they are happy to plan around doing some childcare (which I'm really grateful for) but if I asked them on a random day they would almost certainly have plans they'd have to cancel. That seems like a much bigger ask to me personally!

I grew up with no grandparental involvement, simply because they had all died by the time I was 3.
3 of 4 of my own DC grandparents had died before my youngest had finished primary school.
I'm not an older parent but by DH is (ironically the youngest GP - my mum- died first, she was 64) and I think as the average age of parents rises, it won't be that unusual not to have Grandparents involved in childcare.

My children's grandparents lived two and a half hours away, so they couldn't do regular childcare. Yet they had a wonderful relationship with their grandchildren and managed to pass all kinds of family history, skills and interests (as well as a huge amount of love) to my children.

Guilting grandparents into childcare by telling them that their DGCs will otherwise somehow miss out on this stuff, would be ridiculous.

Do you seriously think the reason for this thread is because men have upset me?

not with other peoples childcare arrangements

You really don't get it? You didn't see the research I posted?

What intergenerational skills and knowledge? I only had the one grandmother who lived 2 hours away and died when I was 10 so she wasn't around to help with childcare. I'm at a loss to think what sort of skills and knowledge I'm have supposed to have missed out on. I'm certainly not disadvantaged or had any impact on my development because I didn't have an active grandparent figure in my life.

I work full time as does my husband but we do more than the "basics" and are not too exhausted to parent or engage with our child as seems to have been implied about working parents. And anyway, knowledge and skills to teach a child are not just solely for parents and grandparents. My son has a variety of people involved in his care, family friends, nursery workers and other children that he learns from.

What a bizarre thing to ask.

My sil’s dad never changed a nappy or wiped a bum for his own children and grandchildren. That’s what they were like then, and some still are, but the attitude is changing, albeit too slowly.

I just don’t understand what the point of this thread is, what would you like to see happening? Yes I did, but what though? Are women supposed to stop raising their children are we supposed to stop providing love care and compassion and tell the men to do it instead?

Have you not seen the posts by older women pressurised into childcare? How exhausted some of them are?

Does highlighting an issue make it incumbent on the person to provide the solutions?

Of course women are not supposed to stop raising their children and stop providing love, care and compassion and tell men to do it instead 🙄Why does it have to be one or the other? Either women do it or tell the men to do it.

What a lot of mostly women are doing is outsourcing it to another woman.

I worked till I was 70 but threw the towel in then. When my first GC was born I was working 3 days a week, I'd reduced my hours as I was my husband's carer so I was available 4 days a week.

Yes I love having them and not everyone one does but my point was about it ruining your health, my experience is that it has been good for my health.

I think family experience also comes into it, as I've said my great grandmother helped her daughter, my grandmother helped my mother, my mother helped me and I help my children. To me that is just how families work. I've never thought of it as me doing them a favour, I get as much out of it as they do.

As to grandfathers well my granddad was born in 1906 and he and my grandmother had an interesting relationship but one thing she always gave him credit for was how good he was with babies, changing nappies was no issue for him, walking with a crying baby or even pushing a pram. Everyone and every family is different.

I don't know anyone who has been told they must provide childcare, if anything it is the opposite with grandparents not wanting their grandchild to be in nursery but it seems to be resolved with a mix of nursery and grandparents. Of course it isn't just little ones, I've also been on the contact list at school so I've picked up sick GC and had children in school holidays. One of them lived with my fulltime for several years.