My Mum doesn't want to help with childcare but makes me feel guilty that she doesn't see her grandson regularly

[BigSister1991]

When I was pregnant with my first child my Mum made it very clear she wouldn't be willing to help us with childcare one day a week. My Mum is single and lives alone, has been retired for 5 years and is in her early 60s. We both work full time and long hours and so our son attends nursery 5 full days a week. Recently my Mum has been complaining that she doesn't get to see her grandson often enough and so we feel pressured to use our limited free time at weekends as a family to visit her or for her to visit us (it's about a 40-60 min drive / 90 min public transport each way). When we do spend time all together my Mum shows little interest in looking after her grandson - whether it be nappy changes, meal times or bath times and just wants to enjoy adult social time. My view is that if she wants to see her grandson regularly, an easy way to do that would be to look after him in the week - it would relieve our work/parenting juggle and give us back more weekend time, whilst also giving her the regular relationship she wants (and I want her to have). Any advice welcome.

She sounds as though she wants to see you as well as him?

What did she say when you said that to her after her moaning about not seeing him?

Why cant she travel to you? And you’re confusing time spent with you all for childcare. Theyre not the same thing.

She should definitely be coming to you. You have a lot on your plate.

We also had no GP childcare. That inevitably means relatively low contact with GP as we both work FT.

Our DS is now 4 and while he knows who is GP are he isn’t really close to them at all.

We don’t worry about it. We lead our own lives which I guess look very different to those who use GP support.

I have to say tough that GP have never commented on how often they see DS as they know it isn’t realistic for us to use a huge proportion of our family time together running around to see them.

We try to visit once a month but sometimes it is less frequent. They live locally.

She lives too far away to do childcare and doesn't want to. That is fine. But if she wants to see you and your family more, she can do her share of the travel.

A lot of older people won’t make the effort. My DS has never had any GP visit us at home.

Stop feeling guilty.
She either visits you when you invite her or she doesn't she the baby.
Her choice.

One day a week childcare is a different thing to offering your child a relationship with their grandparent, and being able to be part of a wider family unit.

You can't bargain one by withholding the other.

Wanting to see you and your child is not the same as childcare. Grandparents shouldn’t feel obliged to be childcare. But she should be travelling to you at least as much as you to her if she wants to see you.

Totally agree - she does - and that's fine - I often WFH in the week so the deal would be (given the travel time) that she stayed in our home 1 or 2 nights and we'd have the evening / dinner together too. That way she'd spend the day with her grandson and we'd all get chance to catch up in the evening.

Agree with @GoldDuster and @HerdMentality

If you’d rather travel less often to visit her, do that.

I think YABU as you are confusing seeing you as a family with childcare as has previously been said. You sound like you are holding her to ransom, if she wants to see you she has to look after your child. You could just explain that it's a lot of travelling if you expected to do it every weekend but will visit once a month and if she wants to travel to see you once a month then great. Maybe she could stay over then, but I think you only want her to stay during the week when she can provide free childcare

Tbh I wouldn't want to do this every week when I'm in my 60s.

I can see its impossible but I expect she would love to have a relationship with her grandson without a regular weekly 2 night slot.

YABU to give up on weekend time to visit her too often.

Fair enough she doesn't want to do childcare, but she cannot expect full-time workers to cancel what little free time they have.
At the very least, she should be the one coming to see you for 2 hours at most.

IF she was your MIL, you would easily tell her to butt out, don't feel guilty because she's your mum, or arrange something longer for a bank holiday = but less often.

Practically speaking in your circs we would visit monthly, we couldn’t fit in more. And that’s when the child is a baby- we have 3, they do a lot of sports and it needs to be the term holiday for us to head somewhere an hour away. We’d have to cancel 2 x swimming, 2 x football, 3 x basketball matches and 2 x training and 1 x cross country to go away for the weekend. So my parents would have to complain away and travel if they wanted more regular contact.

I don't think the op is trying to use them as weapons or blackmail. Its a case of time.

If you work full time and then maybe do 1-2 activities at the weekends (swimming, other sport etc then you are down to a maximum 1 full day of family time. There are usually other jobs that need doing, you want some form of social life yourself so that really limits opportunity to see grandparents. If I could I would see them all the time but its just not practical. So if you aren't choosing to have your grandchild for regular childcare then you need to accept that there isn't enough time to see you as often as you want.

But why should she? Can you honestly say that when you’re 60+ you’ll want to be an unpaid nanny on a weekly basis?

I think it's perfectly reasonable for her not to want to be tied to the commitment of weekly regular childcare. I wouldn't want to be nor do I expect my mum to be (I have a 3 and a 6 year old btw!) Regular childcare is a job in itself.

The discussion you need to have is on you guys always doing the travel to see her rather then taking it in turns.

That sounds horrendous. Luckily I plan to be working well into my 60s so no child will expect this. I would drive to see them at the weekend though.

You are being unreasonable.
There is no obligation on grandparents to provide childcare. Your mum may have found the early years looking after you very difficult. You might not think looking after a baby one day a week is much of a commitment but it is and it's much harder when someone is in their 60s. It sounds as though she doesn't live particularly close anyway.

Perhaps she wants to see you as well as her grandchild.
If you don't want to visit her or you can't go because you are busy don't go but it's very unfair of you to say you aren't going to visit because she won't provide childcare. It sounds as though you are only interested in her if she can be useful to you. Do you ever invite her over to you?

If she wants to see you more often, then she needs to travel to you, at least half the time.
I suggest you invite her for an afternoon and if she says she can't travel to you, it's her decision.

But no, she doesn't owe you regular childcare. Even if she is single and retired.

I think it shouldn’t be presented as weekly childcare or nothing. She could come and stay with you 2 days / month and just keep baby off nursery for those days to spend time with her.

Shes unreasonable to expect you to visit on (every?) weekends when you’re working FT. She needs to make a change if she’s unhappy with less than monthly visits.

my Mum shows little interest in looking after her grandson - whether it be nappy changes, meal times or bath times

These are your jobs as parents! I can’t imagine looking to a relative and seething that they haven’t taken over my responsibilities.

She doesn't have to provide childcare and it's fair enough if she doesn't want to. If she complains about not seeing enough of her grandson, you can explain that as you both work full time and he is in nursery 5 days a week, you time at the weekend is precious and you want to spend time together as a family and see friends and have days out etc. Offer to visit or have her to stay once a month or whatever suits you. Don't let her make you feel guilty.