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.

Indeed. I’m 60, my mum was a single parent to two children from the ages of 8 and 10. We were out playing in the street until she got home from work in the school holidays.

I feel the grandmothers though, that's why I have an agreement with my mother that outlines her compensation and specific working hours, overtime holiday etc. We had many discussions before reaching the agreement to make sure we were covering our bases. And i made sure she knew YEARS before I had my ds that I'd need her help. I think it's unreasonable to expect your old lady to do help you with childcare for absolutely nothing, particularly when you don't consult her whilst family planning, and she has to leave her job/career to do the work as well.

Having said that, everyone who asks me about how I'm handling childcare seems to assume that I'm getting childcare completely free of charge because my Mum's doing it, and I think it's because they have just assumed their mothers would just do it for free too (which is unfair imo)

At our primary school a great grandmother had responsibility for two children. The children's mother was a drug addict, granny had zero interest in taking the children in permanently so great grandmother gave them a home. She was on two sticks waiting for the children every day after school. It was so sad

You employ your mother?

I think it’s unusual for grandparents to do regular childminding. Of my friends, their parents live too far away - hundreds of miles or in another country - or are too ill and frail, or work full time. My parents never did childminding for us because they lived too far away.

I would not dream of asking my MIL Or DM to do childcare. Not even for an hour. Grandchildren are to be enjoyed, not a burden. Of course in an absolute emergency we would. But no, our children, our responsibility. I would offer with my DGC though if I was fit and healthy. But a day a week, not full time. It's tiring enough now 🤣

Our house, our rules - same for grandkids as it was for their parents.
Can’t have it all ways.
Happy to follow parents rules while visiting their house on a Sunday afternoon, but if I'm offering up my valuable time off/AL to help out it in my own home will be my way and my way alone.

I’ve already decided it’s no to childcare - maybe once a week in an afternoon and take them to the park - but that’s it. I will hopefully (and have already decided this) pay for a cleaner at least once a week for the entire time their children are under 16. I will also pay to take them (child not grandchildren) away to a spa nice weekend away at least once every six months. If I can afford it I’m happy to help pay for childcare.

My mum was very clear that whilst she didn’t mind doing occasional babysitting and wanted to see the kids a lot she definitely didn’t want to be doing regular planned childcare. Mainly because she wanted the freedom to do whatever she wanted, travel and see friends and didn’t want to be tied to every Tues/Wed/whenever like some of her friends are.

I do it because I want to. But not all week. Because I find it really tiring, especially when they are babies and toddlers.

I had a family friend break down in tears when she told me her DIL was pregnant with a third child. Friend and husband had already sacrificed their first eight years of retirement doing free childcare.

Now their health problems preclude traveling. They basically worked all their lives (nurse, engineer) but never got the fun part.

They did decline to care for that baby (having cared for daughter’s twins and son’s first two) and the son and DIL turned very cold. Arseholes.

Many years ago, because my nephew/godson will be 25 soon, my parents were very bemused at being asked to look after him (not the first grandchild) for 1 day a week when my SIL went back to work.
They did it for a while, but I am not 100% sure they enjoyed it, as thy found it a bit limiting.
I suspect this is a "class" thing - and totally expected to be shot down in flames for this!
My SIL, let's just say, was not educated MC. My parents were both degree-educated top management (and had both retired at that point).
Should add that my sister is more than happy to look after her 4 grandchildren, on an ad hoc basis. Difference being, she retired at 59, is called Nana (our mother was Granny) and is winning on the "race to the bottom".

Yes - but FIL is not moaning about other DGP being busy with GC complaning about the moaning saying they are tried or going on about how much he wanted to have the kids but didn't.

Also one big emergency FIL was the one who dropped everything to see DH in hospital.

I was made redundant in pg and had to find temp work and we'd already made and announced decision that I'd be a SAHM - so MIL going on about not doing any childcare felt unnessary she wasn't asked and there was no expectation.

Now it's all I would have done x or y when she made clear she wouldn't usually to critise other women for finding the care burden hard.

On one hand I can admire that she avoided the women care work aspect - with her parents as well leaving it to her brother - at same time having one child male she seems to see my role - time and energy wise - as at her disposal as they age as I'm feamle family member.

I'm not ciristing her for not doing the care .

I'm cristising her for her bashing other older women who struggle with care with her well be grateful as I'm rewritting history and making out I wanted to do that so you should be happy you can stance she hits them with. Rather than acknowledging childcare is hard at times.

It's also annoying she went on how she worked full time when DH was young ignoring the free childcare she got from his DGP - I wouldn't have minded but she couldn't stop cristiing us for having me at home - criticizing DH cousin for having his child in childcare and yet there was no family help avaliable to us - there only so many options none of which impacted her all of which she felt need to comment on.

When societies fall on hard times, it is usually women who suffer more than men.

This is the result of both parents having to work FT to make ends meet, and sub-par childcare, unfortunately.

In terms of grandfather's not being asked though, I don't think this is especially unfair in most cases, as many of them didn't do the bulk of the child-rearing for their own offspring, and so don't have the necessary skills. What IS unfair, is the situation where grandparents (of either sex), are forced into doing childcare they can't manage.

My in laws (husband has 2 sets of parents) all live in the West Country so we see his dad maybe 5 times a year (he very much just likes to watch the kids from afar rather than get involved!) but his mum tries her hardest to get to us or us to her. If she lived round the corner I don’t think she’d ever leave my house 😂 we have 3 kids now and she would literally move mountains for them. We miss her a lot and wish she never moved away. I know that she’d want to offer childcare if she could but we also know her health isn’t the best and we wouldn’t take the P. It is hard though, we’ve done this alone for almost 6 years now. Our last meal out together was last year sometime and it feels hard on our marriage we get minimal alone time. My mum helps where she can with apts etc but she is in her 4th year of remission from cancer and still suffers with back pain so we never expect her to help. My dad died 7 years ago and my sister moved to Cornwall.

All of this though does make me sure when I’m older, I will do what I can to support my kids and grandkids as we know first hand how hard this all is without that village!

Lost my mum suddenly when heavily pregnant with my first baby who she was so excited to meet have since had 2 more. I am nc with my own father and my in laws are less than useless so I cannot wait to help my children in any way they need as adults so they never feel the struggle like me and my husband are now.

My mum genuinely loves it. She doesn’t have to do any childcare, we could easily afford the extra nursery hours if she didn’t fancy it, but she insists. She doesn’t 3 afternoons a week with one child. I can see how some others might feel that they need to help out, due to the cost of childcare, but might not necessarily enjoy the commitment .

Both sets of grandparents do 1 day a week for us plus ad-hoc babysitting at weekends. My in-laws were doing 2 days at one point but we dropped it down to 1 day and paid for an extra day at nursery as I felt it was too much for them beinf tied to 2 days.

We are immensely grateful and it's not an expectation. We always check in with our parents and at any time it was too much, we would adjust things with our work. It's important to me that both sets of parents don't feel too tired, or it's too much and I want them to enjoy their retirement too.

I see some awful comments on here about grandparents being called "selfish" and "lazy" if they don't help out with childcare or provide a set day number of days a week to help out. That they shouldn't accept support from their own children if they're not able to provide childcare. And grandparents having to go part time in order to provide childcare.

I don't buy this comment that parents in the past had loads of help from grandparents. Maybe some did, but it certainly wasn't the norm in the 90s when I was growing up to have grandparents at toddler groups or picking children up from school.

My teenage years were miserable as my sister dumped her kids on my Mother. She gave up work which meant e.g no school trips or holidays for me etc while my sister was raking it in working fulltime plus tons of overtime at weekends. My nieces were hardly ever at home and they were constantly getting in my bedroom wrecking all my stuff. I got so fed up with it I started randomly breaking stuff in my sisters house as she wouldn't replace my stuff after the kids broke it.

Hmm the playgroups I go to the grandmothers are even more competitive than the actual mums and seem to be want to have control.

Why not if my mum had given up a job to care for my children I'd match the salary.

My mother didn't work but lneedrd money. I'd pay her £40 a week to help me clean on a Thursday. She did downstairs while I did upstairs.

She saved up for holidays, went to Italy, then USA and Canada. Kept her car on the road too.

My MIL would happily provide childcare, but is a bit unrealistic about what it would mean.

They live 40m away in good traffic, over an hour in bad traffic. So she wants to come at 9.30, if she makes it on time (her own job was 9.30-4 and she's never comprehended anyone working longer hours). We WFH and only have one upstairs office. She's also desperate to be the first contact with nursery - she even asked them to call her first instead of us when she did a pick up. But their pick up policy is 30m - we live a 10m walk away!

I much prefer a looser arrangement of seeing family for pleasure rather than convenience anyway.

I always remember seeing a granny of around 75 pushing a pushchair every single day at around 8am. She looked absolutely shattered. (Or possibly she was only in her 60s but looked much older!) I often thought how selfish her daughter/son must have been.

My parents used to help with a pick up from school a couple of times a week which my son loved. They’d go on the tube, to a cafe and back home again and because they’d had the day to themselves, they also really enjoyed it. They’d also babysit on Saturdays occasionally.

I think daily early morning childcare is not on.

We went to my grandparents every day after school in the 80s.

If I had to, I would. Otherwise absolutely not. I’ve had 5 kids. I’m looking down the barrel of the gun that is looking after elderly in-laws. I in no way want to add to that.