to resent pressure on grandmothers to provide childcare?

[ReluctantGM]

I feel like there’s a real pressure placed on grandmothers that just isn’t there for grandfathers.

I work and I want to keep working. Partly because I need the income, but also because it gives me structure and some space. But because I’m the grandmother, there’s a clear pressure on me to step in and provide regular childcare so my daughter and daughter-in-law can return to work. I’m often told I could be spending more time with the grandchildren and building a bond with them.

I do understand that childcare is expensive and that life is more expensive these days. I’m not dismissing that at all. But I’ve said more than once that I can’t do it. I don’t have the energy or capacity for it, and I don’t want to take on that level of responsibility.

My DD and DS keep bringing it up and have even suggested that I go part time or rearrange my hours to make it work. It feels like pressure rather than a genuine choice.

I was exhausted by parenting the first time round. My DS had mental health problems and needed a lot of care and support well into his early twenties. I gave everything to that stage of my life. Yes I love my grandchildren, but that doesn’t mean I want to be responsible for them day to day.

I also find it really hard to tolerate crying babies and young children now and I don’t want to keep getting ill from all the bugs they inevitably bring home.

Yesterday I was out shopping and saw a toddler having a full tantrum and felt relieved that I don’t have to deal with that anymore. I walked away to get away from the noise.

What I find particularly frustrating is that there is absolutely no expectation on my husband. No one is asking him to change his work or take this on. It’s just assumed I should be the one to step in.

I’ve spoken to other friends and they feel the same pressure. Their husbands get no pressure and there are no expectations of them to adjust their work hours or give up work to look after children.

Why do adult children/DIL/SIL feel they can pressure grandmothers into providing childcare, while grandfathers are left alone or not even asked, especially if they’re working?

I think this idea that grand-parents need to “build a bond” with their grandchildren is a relatively new concept.

OP I hear you. I am in my 60s, and increasingly see the sacrafices that grandmothers are making to look after their grandchildren.

My DD's MIL looks after DD's nephews on her days off.

At one point my SIL was driving 300 miles every month to provide some childcare to her daughter (my brother's step daughter). Both DB and SIL have moved closer to their kids and now provide more regular childcare to several grandchildren. For a period it put a huge strain on their marriage as their 'retirement' days were being chewed up by childminding duties.

A woman I work with compresses her hours to childmind her toddler granddaughter. Another woman uses all her annual leave to look after grandkids.

DD doesnt have kids but I will still have to continue working post retirement age, so that limits me.

This!!!

Couldn’t believe it when I heard group of young men at work - all dads of young kids - discuss grandparent ( in reality grandmother) support. The entitlement and selfishness was off the scale. The belief that their mums and MILs were only there to be of service.

One was complaining about her not wanting to make 200 mile round trip weekly to help
out and another was moaning that his
MIL was going for surgery at the most inconvenient time. Another mum going on a long planned holiday was selfish for going when they had a kid with chicken pox.

And you’ll see from another thread on here that some women are just as unreasonable in their expectations. Any wish by a woman to have some time to herself in her older years is treated as selfish and she’s warned that she will be neglected in her older age. There seems to be no happy medium of help in emergencies and lovely family get togethers without the expectation of being babysitters at any time the parents like whatever else the grandparents have on - even to attend to their own work or health!!

If I’m ever lucky enough to be a grandma, I will bend over backwards to help my kids but that would stop immediately if they exhibited the kind of entitlement I often see here. I will work, go on lovely holidays very often and continue to see my friends as long as I’m able to- I’m not selfish for wanting a life of my own !!

If you can’t do it, you can’t do it! Tell them.
My parents (both mum and dad) have provided childcare a couple of days for my DC. I’m eternally grateful otherwise life would have been a lot harder. If they couldn’t do it though, that would have been on me and DH to figure out alternatives and make do! would have been no hard feelings.
My dad is enjoying the opportunity to be present in a way he never got to be/was expected to be with me and my sibling. I would never have approached my mum without also approaching my dad, as both have lives to live. We make sure we book off days where possible as well to ensure they have a break from DC and can go off doing their own thing. We very rarely ask for babysitting in evenings either as I recognise they do so much for us already. We know that if we have another child it’ll be a much different picture and my parents are unlikely to be able to do the same again. Due to a 5 year age gap and them being older/my sibling also now having a child. That being said - my parents were very much keen on us having children and excited to be grandparents and see my children a lot. My mum and dad often randomly turn up to see them.

I feel very lucky.

The ‘similar threads’ beneath this post are all by women complaining that their mothers and mothers in law don’t provide them with childcare (or, in one case, what they deem to be a sufficient amount of childcare). And commenters agreeing with them and saying things like ‘now you know where you stand, you don’t have to care for them when they’re older’ and ‘well, then they won’t have a relationship with DGC, and that serves them right’.

Really illustrates your point. People really feel entitled to older women’s labour, don’t they? And resent when they don’t get it.

To all the people going ‘well, I don’t do that’, please appreciate that what’s being discussed is a societal trend. It’s excellent that you don’t do it, continue not doing it, but perhaps attempt to understand that it’s a widespread issue.

There was a thread yesterday about this and I was shocked at many of the replies, trying to encourage/guilt the grandmother into childcare. Most of the replies were like this, up to the point where I stopped reading. I take that as a sign that it is, more often than not, expected that grandparents will take over parenting responsibilities.

I’d encourage you to reply ask.your.father every single blessed time they ask.

life isn’t fair and they really are not helping.

I wouldn’t mind doing the odd childcare to babysit so my kids can go out /away but I wouldn’t be providing midweek childcare . I’ll have done my time with small kids!

You're not unreasonable in that you should not be expected or pressured into proving care.

YNBU. We’ve recently had my DSD expecting us to use our annual leave so she can go to work.

yes, I think there is more pressure on grandmothers but my overall feeling is that it’s great if you can/want to help out but it should absolutely not be expected.

i feel like you @ReluctantGM - we’ve already brought our own kids up, work full time and also enjoying living our lives because we can now we don’t have dependent children. It isn’t our responsibility to provide childcare for our grandchildren and I too am cross at the expectation on us. I feel you.

I'm in my sixties and see the pressure friends my age are under to provide childcare. One has 8 grandchildren and seldom seems to have a moment to herself. No weekend or evening is her own. She is working into her late sixties because it is the only thing that stops her doing 24/7 childcare. Even when she has said no there is always some crisis, some weekend away that means a child or two are dropped off at hers.

People used to say to me that I would regret not having children when I was older but I've never been more glad that I chose to be childfree.

Dear DD and DS

Stop emotionally blackmailing me into childcare. I am disappointed in your lack of respect and sexism on this matter.

My job is important to me both in terms of my life satisfaction, financial security and independence. Asking me to rearrange my hours or go part time is unacceptable and manipulative. I note you have not even considered asking your Dad to do the same.

I want you to take a long hard look at your attitudes here.

Being a parent is hard. I know I've done it. I don't think I can go back to it. It was hard enough the first time round. I don't feel able to do it all again, especially since it wouldn't be on my terms it would be dictated to me by you two who are already treating me as some kind of dogs body who exists merely to serve you in your request that I give up the life I have worked hard to establish for myself. I no longer have the energy, mental energy nor fitness to do that all over again. I have no wish to deal with the exposure to illnesses.

I love my grandchildren but I want to be their grandparent not one of their primary carers.

I feel angry and frustrated that you have so little thought and respect for me as an individual and only see me in the role of 'mother'. I am a grown adult with her own needs and I have already put half my life aside for you two. I'm not prepared to sacrifice anymore - I don't feel able to provide what I feel you are demanding from me. This is not ok. You are overstepping and you have upset me.

Being a parent is tough. It is difficult. It is expensive. It is hard. This is an adult choice you made when you had children. If you made that choice based on the assumption that I would help with childcare, you were very misguided and you were very entitled. At no point prior to having children did you consult me on this. You have merely presumed I would. I feel so taken for granted and seen as nothing more than someone who you can take from. You do not see me as an individual with my own life. You only see me as an extension of yourself who should do what you ask on demand. It's about time that changed.

You have both really upset me and disappointed me. My grandchildren are wonderful and I love spending time with them and looking after them occasionally. But they are your responsibility and it's for you to work out your own child care arrangements rather than ask me to give up work. Why can't one of you give up work and rearrange your life around that? It is no longer my responsibility to subsidise financially.

Please understand I love you and wish to be in your lives, but I feel like your expectations and behaviour are to treat me like a doormat. This is not ok. You should be modelling better behaviour and attitudes to your own children. If you need some respite once in a while, absolutely I'm there. But on a daily basis? No that's too much.

I love you very much, but this is something you need to work out yourselves.

Mum.

Surely if the grandparents are together they both do it? The situations where my friends had only grandmothers helping were because the grandfather still worked whereas the grandmother didn’t work/was p/t.

I don’t think this is the gotcha you think it is. This is the framing her DS and DD have put forward. So it’s still them with the gendered expectations.

edited to say, I assume you now realise this as you edited it out of your post.

It’s just rude. PP had it right when they said why should you reduce income so they can increase income.

That said, economics have structurally shifted over the last 20 years, getting progressively worse since 2008. For many couples, they need two incomes to stand still but then the cost of childcare is obscene. (I’m just through the nursery years).

Why the expectation on the female grandparent not male? Why are most nursery staff female? Why are most primary teachers female? Try as we might, we can’t escape biology BUT that’s not to say plenty of grandfathers can’t do it.

In your shoes, there’s no way I’d be offering regular childcare. But I probably would offer ad hoc babysitting (if that’s feasible?) however make it very clear they need to buck up their attitudes or I wouldn’t do anything.

I can never fathom why so many people fail to have the conversation with their parents where all this is made perfectly clear, before they conceive. If the wellbeing, finances and quality of life of your family is going to rest to any degree on the willingness of your mother/s to help you raise your children, you need to check they're on board beforehand, and plan your family/make your arrangements accordingly. Because yes, there are a great deal of assumptions that once a mum you're going to happily keep mothering subsequent generations, we'll into your old age. And no, it's not expected of fathers, because they probably never played a lead role with their own children.
I'm an involved grandmother from choice. I work FT but do evenings, over nights, take days off when they're sick etc, because that's what we all discussed beforehand and I freely offered. Which is hugely different from simply being presented with a GC and a bunch of expectations you never agreed to.

My parents and in-laws helped us with regular childcare, 1 day a week each. They offered but it’s normal in our culture and they had lots of help too.

Why the expectation on the female grandparent not male?

For the same reason that more is expected of mothers than of fathers?

There can be rewards. In my 50s I did lots of childcare for GC. I worked but their parents were in the hospitality trade so I'd have them from Friday evening to Sunday evening. Now I'm in my 70s it is like I have two extra children who visit, do some jobs like cutting the grass or keeping grandad occupied to give me a break. I'm not saying anyone has to do it but it doesn't have to be all one way.

Yep, to be fair I re-read it and realised I'd read it wrong.

You need to be blunt with your children, no is a complete sentence. You can be as frustrated as you want but if you haven’t been explicit about your wants, then that’s on you.

When I was picking up DD from primary school, I was shocked to see how many grandparents picking up their grandchildren. DD has known from a very young age that structural childcare was not in my future. Parenting is tough, that’s why I chose to do it once.

@TheignT weren’t you shattered working all week then doing childcare (including overnight) all weekend?

@TheignT yes my eldest will now go & spend time with gps & do things for them and they have a lovely relationship. But again I & DH did similar.

For us, I'd say there is a pressure for grandparents to provide childcare. A cultural expectation. I wouldn't say that it is more on grandmothers, though I'd also say that far more of our grandmothers are single than average so in that sense, it falls on them.

My FIL retired before my MIL, so he stepped up and did more GC care than she did. When she retired, she pitched in. They always had (at least some of) their GC every weekend though and often at least one adult child living in who had a kid stay at least some of the time.

How it generally works in our culture is that your parent(s) decide to have you, they raise you to adulthood and then help you raise your kids and sometimes even your grandkids. You help them navigate the modern world while they are still fully independent, and then you and your children look after them while they are dependent.