To expect the same childcare as your SIL is receiving

[Notyourproblem]

AIBU to expect to get the same support from the grandparents as given to their own daughter?
I am married to their son. I am talking about child care time and effort (not talking about money)

YABU - no, it's common for parents to favour and support own daughter more.

YANBU - yes, same treatment for grandchildren support.

For context - we live closer that SIL and my husband is very close to his parents so no issues with relationships.

That’s exactly what we’ve done. It will be up to our siblings to manage any care requirements they may have.

I’m not surprised you are resentful that your DH persuaded you to move next door and he assured you their would be the benefit of help from the in-laws.

I would be asking to move away before they expect you to care for them as you’re ‘next door’.

On a tangental note - I used to believe one of my sisters benefitted hugely from "help" from my parents, to the point of being pretty incompetent or not doing much parenting.

Turned out I was being somewhat cognitively dissonant believing that information directly from my mother, given the fact that the one and only time she came to stay with me to "help" just after I'd had a baby (I live hundreds of miles from my parents) she drove me utterly insane making unreasonable demands, trying to boss me around, interfering without being any help and criticising anything I wasn't doing the way she would have done it, that I refused to let her stay after the next baby came along and insisted on putting her up in a hotel and treating her as a visitor.

I've no idea why I believed my mother's accounts on the telephone of gow much she helped my sister - she wasn't lying but definitely viewed interfering, sitting about being waited on while cuddling a child, and ignoring crying babies while watching TV and eating takeaway in the same house as said baby, as helping. She and my father expected quite a lot in terms of heavy garden work, DIY and pet care in return too.

Sometimes being helped requires the patience of a saint AND comes with strings as well. I wasn't in much direct contact with the sister who seemed quite dependent at the time (we'd drifted apart and I have several other siblings, some of whom I have more in common with) but circumstances meant we started visiting one another and being in touch more and I kicked myself when I realised thatof course my mother's version of reality and my sister's didn't tie up.

Your SIL might be doing more for your pil emotionally and in terms of generally hosting and hanging out with them than you and your husband would want to, in return for the childcare (which they might not be doing as much of solo as you think).

I think it does matter for the question of fairness though. My parents did holiday childcare for my sister and didn’t for mine. Her kids were 10 years older and my parents just couldn’t do it again physically. That may be not be fair but is totally reasonable.

I think it would be unfair if grandparents were doing 3 days of childcare for one 3 year old and doing 0 for an 2 year old. I don’t think it would necessarily be unfair if grandparents were doing childcare for school age kids (generally easier) but saying they couldn’t manage a day of a toddler. Number and ages of kids do really matter in judging fairness because capability can change (both for the grandparents themselves) but also in terms of what age of child they can manage safely.

Exact same situation here. Her DC and my first are weeks apart in age so not a case of ‘who got in first’.
SIL is divorced and has 50/50 with her ex - of the 3.5 days per week SIL has her child my MIL has him for one sleepover and does all nursery drop off/pick ups, even covers the Saturdays I’d say twice a month.
In school holidays MIL has him 3 days a week.
Meanwhile my kids see MIL perhaps once a fortnight for an hour or so. Last sleepover was 2 years ago for my eldest and never for youngest (although she’s only 2 and still breastfed so don’t expect her to have her overnight yet).
We live a 10 minute drive from MIL for context, she retired about 3 years ago ‘to help with childcare’, no grandparents on my side.
It’s crap but I’m learning that this is MIL choice and I need to accept that.

Yes that would probably break me too. I would not have agreed to do it if it meant that I couldn’t offer to help another child too.

OP, my husbands parents gave loads of childcare to his brothers' children. We had our kids later in life and, quite frankly, they would have found it exhausting. My dad and his wife had no interest in helping us with childcare although they did a lot for my step-siblings' children. Perhaps things would've been different if my mother was alive.

I totally understand why you feel put out but it could quite simply be that they committed to helping out your SIL's family first and don't have the time and energy to give more childcare. Perhaps they feel unable to cut the hours they do for her if they have already agreed to it. It does feel rubbish but try not to take it personally.

So how many days a week would you side aside for potentially unborn grandchildren, who may or may not require childcare, at some undetermined point in the future?

Possibly, just possibly, the GP didn't think the arrangement would last this long and don't feel able to change it without damaging their relationship with their DD.

They may not wish to repeat the commitment as they are now older but cannot express this as if this gets back to their DD the relationship may be damaged.

On the surface it may look like a close relationship but it may in fact be fragile and highly dependent in them providing levels of childcare.

Perhaps, because they are actually closer or have a healthier relationship with their DS they believe the relationship can tolerate them having a less intense and more typical relationship with their GC from him. He seems to have a healthier understanding from what you had shared.

But you are having a little bit of a tantrum and your words, which you chose and had time to reconsider but didn't, relay that. So there is no need to be cross with responders who literally, took you at your word.

Equal doesn't mean the same.

It’s not about you being an entitled brat. It is about expectation that you had vs reality. Many people simply don’t have those expectation in first place and see that having that expectation is a form of entitlement- ignore that.

It’s about communication between parents and kids wrt to what future holds. And that’s a conversation a lot of people don’t have. so, did you tlak to your ILs , you and dh, long before you planned to have children to understand what ILs position would be? What’d happen if there were other gc in mix?

I was never in any doubt that my parents wouldn’t offer childcare. Even if my mum hadn’t been unwell, and later dying. She’d been pretty upfront from when I started work and got engaged, before she was ever ill. And my dad was simply not cut out for it, he was barely there when we were kids! As for ILs they simply lived too far away, I didn’t take the hump, it was in keeping with what I knew about my mum and dad (and they were both teachers 🤣) , so expectations were always very clear. Sure, I used to be a tadge jealous of seeing other mums parents and ILs helping with childcare, but I knew before I had kids that was never an option for me.

This is about communication. You need to get dh to sit down with parents and ask they’re reasoning behind the lack of childcare….and be able to reset expectation over what they can and can’t help with.

As a grandparent, how comfortable and trusting the parents are about you with their children makes a difference.

If you’re constantly worrying about breaking rules or facing impatient looks because you may do things slightly differently, you may feel less inclined to step in. On the other hand, if your help is received with genuine grateful love and trust, you want to do it more.

How the parents present you to their children makes a massive difference too. Are they taught to value and respect you, that you’re equal to their parents? If you gently tell a child not to do something you find unacceptable, does their mum (your daughter or daughter in law) look to see if the child is obeying or give you the daggers for interfering? Lots of small nuanced things which may or may not be part of an in-laws cultural expectations of family make you more inclined to relax when caring for a set of grandchildren.

Whatever we like to think, it is more likely to be the daughter or daughter in law who is doing the wife work of organising child care and it’s more likely to be the actual daughter who has instinctive trust of her own mum to not need a supervising eye which can feel critical. And when there are differences in expectations, it may be easier to sort that out without awkwardness with a daughter than a daughter in law. Rupture is more likely to lead to repair when you’ve had her own teen years to practice!

There may be more egg shells involved with a DIL.

I think it’s just the luck of the draw really. I’m sorry you don’t feel fairly treated, especially if it affects your children’s experiences of their grandparents. That bit is sad.

Basically what's fair is important to you, as long as you are getting what you want.

I kind of had the same from my parents as I was the last to have children. Although they didn’t do weekly commitment for by DGC they definitely looked after my sister’s kids the most. They were older and more tired by the time mine came along! Pre-school I think they looked after one of my DS twice for a day. My PIL didn’t do any for any of us.

I really don't think YABU. People on here are so weird about grandparents providing any support. My mum was going to offer my sister two full days of childcare when she went back to work but my dad said to just offer one otherwise they'd have to offer me two as well if I had children, and then they'd lose more than half their week. There's no way they'd give my sister more childcare just because she had her kids first, unless there were extenuating circumstances.

It is quite easy. If you think you can do 2 days childcare a week and you have 2 children, you only offer 1 day a week to your first child.

I could have written this, but it's DH's brother, not sister (he has two brothers), so I don't think that makes much difference.

In our case, it was a myriad of reasons:

1. BIL's children came first.
2. BIL is the golden child.
3. He's also a man-child, takes no personal responsibility and is a bit useless.
4. MIL thrives on being needed so panders to BIL as it also suits her.
5. The mother of BIL's DC was very young when she got pregnant and was also a bit useless - they're no longer together and BIL has majority custody.

I was originally quite resentful, but thankfully I've got past that now mostly - would recommend looking up the Let them theory, it's very freeing.

Things change over years and the grandparents may quite rightly feel older and less able to have your children as much, or not realise what they were getting into to start with.
You can't ever expect help from anyone I'm afraid, your kids your problem!
I'll only ever ask my mum in extreme cases, she works full time and is on her own. I'm a single parent and know sorting holiday/holiday clubs etc is my responsibility, and mine alone.
I wouldn't begrudge a sibling if they had children later and my mum had retired by that point. She simply wasn't in a position at the time.
Yabu to expect like for like care I'm afraid.

The other thing to consider is age. When my parents started looking after my DNs they were sprightly and in their early 60s - they were off to parks and swimming and all sorts of adventures. When mine came along 6 years later they were approaching 70 and I just don’t think they had the same energy. By that stage my DNs were older and less needy but looking after little ones, even for a few hours, really wore out my mum.

But its an important point.

My MIL has grandchildren from nearly 30 down to 2.

She did loads more in terms of baby sitting for the older ones with over nights etc. Still does alot for the younger ones but its easier with the pre teens and ones closer to 10 than ones who haven't started school.

She's in her 70s! She started helping with grandchildren in her 40s. So it isnt even about time but energy.

I have big age gaps and am in my 40s. I will not be doing regular childcare for my grandkids. We already have adult kids and some grandkids. We work and will be in my 60s. Once I retire I will be wrecked the energy I have I will spread as much as I can but I also plan to travel and enjoy not working.

If they've had years of childcare then the children are fully toilet trained, eating alone and probably even capable of occupying themselves. I couldn't imagine anything worse than raising my children, then having to do grandchildren and then when im even older being expected to do it again.

I absolutly have a fininite amount of time left that I will deal with babies. If 1 of my children use that up then im not going to put myself out and use up my free time to do it again years later.

Depending on circumstances, I personally don't think siblings should expect the same amount of childcare from grandparents.

Out of me and my brother, I was closest to my mum, she loved us equally the same but my brother and his wife were the first to have children.

By the time, I had children, my mum had already made childcare commitments for my brother's children and although she was happy to look after mine, she couldn't commit to the same amount of childcare because it would have just been too exhausting for her.

I would never have tried to guilt my mum into changing her commitments she had made with my brother and his wife and I wouldn't have wanted that for my nephew's either, changing their routine for my own benefit.

It never stopped her loving her grandchildren all the same and she never treat them any differently.

The details are important for context though. My parents helped once a week with childcare, but dd is 13 now so if my sister had a baby they're over a decade older. They're having dd overnight since on so we can go out but obviously she's pretty independent now so just needs some food and company rather than hands on care. A little one is very different. They love spending time and chatting to her because she's great company but I don't think they could cope with broken sleep or running around a toddler.

It's not about entitlement, it's just circumstances change so you're not comparing fairly. Or maybe you are... you won't share enough information to say. But everyone is allowed to have limits and boundaries I'm afraid. You just need to consider the benefits of having a good relationship with grandparents on grandchildren in your calculation l. My in laws make far less effort with my dd than her daughter's children but I try to focus on creating the best relationship I can as it's good for dd. It's not always easy though!

I don’t think you should “expect” anything. When SIL had her DC, your ILs were younger and had less commitments. So your situation isn’t the same. Perhaps their energy levels are less than they were. Perhaps they don’t want to over commit themselves. I’m not in favour of everything having to be the same in order to be “fair”. Things are rarely that black and white. You are BU to expect them to offer childcare which they might not feel able to.

I didn't notice if you mentioned how old your ILs are. As you get older you just cannot cope as well as when you are younger. I'm in my 60s and couldn't do more than a couple of days a week looking after young children, even my own grandchildren.

It sounds like your DH needs to explain to his parents and sister that you would like your DCs to have some childcare too, both to help you and for them to get their grandparents better, and to ask if there is a chance of dividing childcare up a bit more equally.

Grandparental childcare is a wonderful thing, but it should never be relied on, expected or taken for granted, apart from anything else if grandparents become unwell you can be left scrabbling round for alternatives is an emergency.

I wouldn't stay living next to my parents in law under those circumstances. See if you can move to wherever it was you wanted to live before your husband mentioned to potential childcare.