Grandparents

[PinkPonyClubb]

Am I being entitled?

One set of grandparents “We’ve raised children don’t expect our help.” Fair enough. We know where we stand.

The other set, prior to birth, wanted to be very hands on.

We now have two children.

”The hands on” grandparents are well, not hands on. Haven’t been since DD1.

We pay for all childcare as we wanted hands on grandparents to enjoy special time with their grandchildren and help when necessary. However, if we ask for help it all seems too much. An example - picking up from after school club once a week. PIL won’t, they don’t like the hassle of picking up but are happy to spend time with DC if hubby drops them off. We don’t get time together as a couple as we can’t always guarantee PIL will have the children. I get envious of friends who PIL will help with childcare so they can go the gym.

I know they are our children, I wouldn’t expect anyone else to have them. I just wish it was made clear that it’s always a no rather than saying they would love to help, make out to family and friends they are helping when they don’t. Am I entitled for feeling envious of others and expecting a little help? I feel the grandparents want childcare on their terms and never want to help? Is the normal? Am I just spoilt?

I am the GP. I think people forget how tiring children are when you’re nearly 70.

We do babysitting and have the children in the holidays but it is exhausting (all under 6) and, although I love them, it is hard work. When you’re in the final period of your life, you should be able to choose what you do surely? So don’t judge and it’s easy to say when you’re in your 30s you’ll be hands on - wait until you’re in your 60s or 70s. Maybe be a bit kinder and see it from their pov?

My parents lived 75 miles away and would do occasional sleepovers and my PIL made it quite clear they would never have the children and never did. Ever. But both my DC had really good relationships with their GPs and always enjoyed seeing them. You don’t need to do childcare to have a close relationship - both sets were fun, loving and interested when we were together as a family. My DC never took them for granted and were very sad when they passed one by one.

This is why people are simply choosing not to have kids. Because what historically biologically was a community effort now falls on the shoulders of two or often just one person.

I understand the envy. If you have friends that have grandparents that help out that puts you at an economic and psychological disadvantage. Childcare is both difficult to find and horrendously expensive. Not to mention unreliable in my experience.

But when I think forward, I can imagine being delighted to spend time with grandchildren, if they’re easy!!, and helping out, but I’m not sure I would want the tie and commitment of something like two days a week of child care. realistically I’ll probably be in my mid to late 60s before any of us have children and frankly dealing with teenagers is exhausting enough.

Combine that with the fact that quite often parents these days seem inclined to give people a long laundry list of dos and donts rather than let their parents do what they see fit. An older lady who did a lot of babysitting for me said some of the parents were nightmarish in their expectations as to what should happen and when

Oh no I found my small children exhausting when I was in my 30s! I fully understand that energy levels dissipate. It’s simply hard if you’ve got no-one you can call on for a break or in bad patches. But you do have to get passed things that won’t change.

yes i remember the railing about kids being fed upfs, junk food, sweeties etc on here by gp whilst my p and pil would talk about anything other than the kids and ignore them on the times they saw them!

Combine that with the fact that quite often parents these days seem inclined to give people a long laundry list of dos and don'ts rather than let their parents do what they see fit
Oh yes. You have to bite your tongue all the time. Modern parents seem to think that they are the first generation to have had children.

We also get absolutely no help from DP or PIL despite them all living nearby.

The reason they give is that they’re elderly. That’s true although it doesn’t make it much easier to accept when I look at what they did for their other now much older DGC.

Logistically DH and I sort it all out ourselves and use paid services where needed. I don’t let it bother me too much although when I added up our total nursery bill for DS and realised we’d spend more than 50k before he started Reception it is hard not to feel a little frustrated when our siblings and most of our friends never had to pay for that. An effective additional loss of 100k pre tax income when you have a baby/toddler is a big hit.

I think your own parents flat out saying they will do nothing is a bit mean of them isnt it?

I went into it with my eyes open, knowing DM wouldn't help anyone, ever (despite having never worked - she whinged about being expected to visit DF every day when he was in ICU & unsure he's survive), and MIL was too unwell.

It was still hard seeing my SAHM friend just message her MIL that she was tired & MIL (who owned a business) would pick kids up from school, take to activities & keep overnight, most weekends, even weeks at a time so friend & DH could go abroad on holidays, or friend taking solo holidays, etc. (Her DH worked away a lot.) Add in the money, free rent / power (PIL owned the house). It was the same when going to visit her family. It skews your view, and I struggled, and admit I wanted to scream at her a few times to shut up when I said I needed a break & she said... 'yeah, me too...'

yeah thats a bit shit, picking up kids from down the street and giving them there tea 1 night a week is hardly a mega chore, especially if the kids really enjoyed it and then they pulled the plug.

@senua you chose to ignore the OP working until 6 on the GP's promise of doing school pick up that day. It's fine to say childcare is too much for you, but to make promises you don't keep, is completely out of order, especially when it's just one day and there are two GPs.
I do think if possible it's best to use wrap around care and save any babysitting for hobbies/nights out.

Oh, I totally agree that to renege on a promise is totally unacceptable.
But I still think that life is easier these days e.g. a PP moaning about the cost of nursery when they get a government subsidy. We never got that!
I had very little help from DGP so I created my own support network with other working parents (I said 'parents' to be PC but it was mums, of course). I often wonder why so many posters on MN don't seem to do this. There are lots of stories of CF trying to take advantage but not many of mutually-beneficial agreements.

But surely that is totally reasonable, that now your parents are older, they have less energy for childcare than they had with the other grandchildren who were born when they were younger .

@senua

you might not have had after school clubs but you did have a lower cost of living which enabled more STAHPs / single income households

my mother was confused when I had my twins and why I hadn’t claimed for “formula” stamps 😳 as apparently in the 80s you got free baby formula

I also walked to/from school from age 7 or 8 in the 80s but now schools don’t allow it until age 10 so you have to find childcare for longer

I didn’t say it wasn’t reasonable but the disparity in support offered to our DS vs all their other DGC is stark even if justified. It has resulted in them having a far more distant relationship with DS than they have with their other DGC.

YANBU. Threads like this make me a bit sad.

2 sets of grandparents here - PIL live 6 hours away and see the grandkids every couple of months. We tend to visit them for a few days due to distance or them us, so they don't do babysitting as such but they'll take the kids to their local park while one adult goes off and does something or do bath-time for them, things like that.

My DM and DF were fairly involved grandparents. They live 3 hours away, so too far to help on a day-to-day basis or with childcare, but they used to come and stay for weekends or overnights whenever there was something I particularly wanted to do so they could both help me out and see the kids. They took the kids out, did stuff with them, we went to farm parks, had days out together.

Then two years ago, my father had a cancer diagnosis, which is now terminal. He's spent two years in and out of hospital, receiving treatment, unwell and unable to see his grandchildren (no kids allowed on cancer wards). My mother is his carer and so can't visit either. We visit them as much as we can, but it's difficult with one child at school and two lively kids to entertain in various hospitals.

It's a shame when people don't make the most of the time they have together. We were apart for months for Covid, and then a year or two or normality, and then this.

There are no guarantees and often so many regrets. We could write a long list of them in our family if anyone had the time (probably a good thing we don't).

Actually though nine times out of ten parents who get lots of help from grandparents pay for it in terms of the amount of interference they have to accept.

I have a couple of friends who get what looks like insane amounts of support, one from PIL and one from her own parents, both including (like your friend) living in property owned by their PIL (in one case) and in the other a confusing arrangement where a house has actually been bought for the young family but her parents retained part ownership of for some reason.

In both cases the relevant grandparents also do huge amounts of childcare. Initially I thought they were lucky, but over the years I have understood that they've paid with their independence and are generally less happy than they would be if they'd been less enmeshed. Applies in both cases, in fact in the case where it's the mum's parents it seems worse, with her parents still expecting to be involved in every decision and overruling her with her own children even at secondary school age.

Ok so while not a chore I can see why the grandparents wouldn't want to commit to it each week. It is a bind being available at 3.30 or whatever time each day. If they wanted to go out for the day they wouldn't be able to, if making appointments they would need to remember not to book during this time, if a friend suddenly invited them out last minute they would need to decline.
Also children that young can be tired and hard work after school, maybe they just don't have the energy to deal with that.
Maybe as someone else has said there would be scrutiny if they fed the kids chips each week and not a proper tea.
They have done their time raising children and now (assuming retired) it's their time to do as they want.
It sounds like you want them to be involved with the grandchildren when it benefits you rather than accepting that they would prefer limited time.

I don’t think you are being entitled, just disappointed and finding the difference between what they say and reality hard to handle. Entitled would be not accepting that, and refusing to see them on any terms except your own.

you might not have had after school clubs but you did have a lower cost of living
No, we had a different cost of living and different stresses. Do you seriously think that everybody in the 1970s or 80s was rolling in money? We still had bills but different things were expensive back then. For example, the average food bill was about 20% of income; currently it's only about 11%.

We are now reaping the benefit of a lifetime of the Micawber principle. Basically: spend less than you earn and you will, in time, end up better off. It's not rocket science!
It does annoy me when thirty-somethings compare their finances to that of sixty-somethings. Everybody struggles in the child-rearing years.

Should we talk about the mental health crisis your generation created…

I love my grandchildren but I'm only i in a position to babysit one of them. DDand DSIL are both in jobs that are 24/7 so when they're both working the same shift we help out.

This has meant that we are very close and he regards me as a second mummy.

I’m about to be a grandparent and at 61 still work full time - in fact I have a second job which means average around 50-55 hours a week - plus do voluntary work
I will reduce my hours at 67 but won’t be able to survive on my meagre private pension plus state pension
I will still do what I can to help but it won’t be regular child care
Never had any help with my DC - one set of GP lived 300 miles away the other set retired and went off to do voluntary work overseas and came back infrequently

It's definitely disappointing, especially when they are so enthusiastic before the event...and the constant pressure to give them grandchildren! Even once you've just popped one out they're still banging on about the next!

Its why we've stuck to two, originally we wanted 3 but the lack of village quickly wiped that away 😂 and lack of sleep TBF.

??

Okay, you are now sounding ridiculous with this.......

Up until then, I had a lot of understanding of your disappointment.

Oh yes. Her life wasn't rosy in other aspects. Her DH was a selfish dick & her MIL, although lovely, actually came into the house & remodelled their closets while they were away - including moving friends underwear!! She interfered a lot to keep them living close by.

It's just so exhausting seeing the help when you have none, it reminds you of what you don't have!