ILs wanting more GC visits

[Abbey192]

My ILs expect visits from GC but they don’t like to offer practical childcare support. I know they have no obligation to do so, but I find it frustrating that they want to enjoy only playing with GC, with no obligation to help me when I’m struggling. When I’ve suggested I need help in the past, they’ve said that they have other commitments and excuses are made. When I don’t visit enough I hear that they are upset that we’re not coming regularly. Am I being unreasonable to feel annoyed that they want to cherry pick all the good times with no support for these harder times.

They’ll be getting older themselves and I feel really resentful that they get to enjoy this time with no support for us when we really need it, yet I guarantee that if we don’t help them, again that would cause problems. Other family put pressure on us to help them/visit more and I also find that very frustrating.

And school and education are of necessity more competitive harder work and longer hours too! It’s so hard to get good grades, fit in music/ sport/ extension activities to get into desirable uni course and hopefully a job, that older kids just seem to have less leisure time generally. Grandparents in our family understood this and supported the kids, sometimes helping with school projects or even by just dragging them out on a mental health walk.

No, the point is that the grandparents already put in the hard work. Now it’s the next generation’s turn.

In functional families, elders aren’t left to fend for themselves because they “failed” to provide free babysitting and copious financial support to their adult children.

It's very reasonable to let ILs know when it is convenient for you to visit or be visited, but not to make seeing their GC conditional on providing a certain level of help. Apart from anything else, the relationship is just as important for the children as the adults.
The suggestion that helping your parents in their old age should be conditional on a certain level of childcare for their GC, horrifies me. They have already brought you up, if it's about quid pro quo, but being concerned about how they cope with the physical and emotional pain of ageing is surely something that goes with loving your parents, even if in some ways you are disappointed or fed up with them.

My grandparents did both. They helped out a lot and had fun with us.

I definitely wouldn't go out of my way if they only want the fun parts. My parents had too much help to then turn around and deny us the same.

A functional family isn't quid pro quo. It's everyone doing whatever they can to help and support their family, which includes helping out with childcare for the few very stressful years that it's needed.

But if we are looking at it as purely transactional, you don't get care and respect for raising your kids. It's your job which you signed up for. If you don't do your job, you go to prison. There's no gold stars for bringing up your own children, it's the bare minimum.

Your children, that you chose to have and followed through on your legal responsibility to raise, do not owe you anything for that. If you want to be owed something- such as old age care when you need it- you need to be there for them when they need you, not just when you have to because you are legally obliged to.

Pay for membership to a zoo? MN is just batshit crazy sometimes 😂

Raising your children to adulthood is a legal requirement. Failure to do this can result in your children being removed and possible prosecution. There is no legal requirement for adult children to provide care for their elderly parents.

We don't know what sort of childhood OP's DH had with his parents. They might not be worthy of respect.

OP certainly doesn't have any obligation to provide them with any sort of help or care. She might really like them and want to do this, but she owes them nothing.

I don't know what this "significant support" is that you keep mentioning. The consensus on MN from what I've seen is that hardly anyone intends to provide it as they don't owe anyone anything, ever.

This exactly. It's amazing how many grandparents go on about not owing you childcare and having done their bit... conveniently forgetting how much help they took from their kids grandparents!

I know women who sent their kids to granny for actual summers but can act like an afternoon is too much to ask for their own grandkids

It's the next generation's turn to raise their own kids, not to take on the burden of caring for ageing parents. They don't have to do that.

Caring for ageing parents and looking after grandchildren are both voluntary activities. The grandparents are not obliged to provide help with childcare for their grandchildren or any financial help for their adult children (although many do this) but neither are their adult children and their partners/spouses obliged to provide any elderly care.

Mmm, that argument does recur regularly on MN.
Now that I'm approaching old age myself and seeing friends and siblings undergoing some pretty horrible experiences, I'm wondering whether the 'quid pro quo' lobby are really, when the time comes, going to allow their frail parent who they probably love at some level, to be discharged from hospital when clearly unable to look after themselves, or to be repeatedly conned and frightened by opportunistic strangers, or to slide into a bewildered half-life through undiagnosed demential, when the time comes.

Do your ILs like you Op?

Mine would never visit if my husband wasn't there!

I guess it depends.

If you’re complaining that you don’t see your GC enough, then doing a bit of childcare/helping out might be the price you have to pay. Not in a bargaining “I’m being petty so you can’t see my children if you don’t help out more” but because people are busy, and you can’t really expect everyone to visit you, at convenient times for you, for a duration that suits you, as much as you would like, and then complain when that doesn’t happen.

Agreed. It's treating your children like a bargaining chip or a benefit that you can bestow or withhold at will. Unless it puts them at risk, children have an absolute right to know and have contact with their grandparents.

If you watched your children suffer when they needed you, then why would you expect them to be there when you need them?

I'm not in this situation. My parents have been great, they provide lots of childcare, are happy to move plans around if we have a gap in childcare, and as a result they have an incredible relationship with my daughter and she adores them as much as they love her. Our life and our marriage is immeasurably better because of it. We get regular date nights, we both enjoy hobbies, and we enjoy parenting rather than finding it stressful.

When they require care, not only my husband and I but also my DD have been set a wonderful example of how family supports each other.

The grandparents would actually want to have contact with their grandchild first, though.

If the grandparent isn’t making an effort to spend time with their grandchildren, then contact and building a relationship clearly isn’t a priority to them.

Nothing says loving family more than a tally sheet…..

Purely my opinion but the foundation to DGC’s happiness is their parent’s relationship. If it’s under stress, for whatever reason, in your case that you’re struggling, DGPs should help out. You’ve told them and they haven’t stepped up. That’s really poor. They must remember times when they were struggling and needed help.
Some people, including my in-laws, were like this, with all of us. Selfish and superficial of them. Their loss.

My grandparents were hands on.
we loved them immensely.
holidays and baby sitting.
As we grew they were just good company.
Never once did they ‘demand’ we were brought to / visit them.
They lived close so we saw them lots /in our home / their home.

The way I see it is that grandparent love is a great thing for your kids to experience. I'd want to facilitate this the same way I bring my dd to classes, the park, the zoo etc. I don't think there's any need for a quid pro quo.

That’s the ideal @Roselily123 isnt it? Everyone benefits.

I think you're being unreasonable to think that that your PIL can't pick and choose when they see they're GC because they don't provide childcare. Providing childcare isn't an obligation.

But I think your PIL are being unreasonable to pick and choose when they see their GC and then complain that they don't see them enough/you don't bring them around enough.

So it’s only because they’ve been your skivvy in your adulthood that you’ll support them in old age?

The 15-20 years they put into rearing you count for nothing?

Helping your adult children out when they need your help is not being a skivvy. And it doesn't all go one way. My daughter's GPs might not have young children at home but they still need a favour from time to time. Picking something up for them from Costco or looking after their cat for a week doesn't make me feel like skivvy.

I will support them in their old age because we have a supportive, mutual relationship where we all help each other out as much as we are able to.

I don't know how many times I need to repeat it, but no, when you choose to have a baby, you are legally responsible for the next 18 years. You get NO PRIZES. You did the bare minimum that you had to do because YOU wanted to have children. They didn't ask to be born and to be dependent on you. They do not owe you old age care because you did what you signed up for.

Then would not your last paragraph also apply to the parents of today’s children?

They, not the grandparents, signed up for this go-round. They are owed nothing.