Stop being grabby and entitled and using false arguments to try to turn your mother into your servants

[Youlittlenightmare]

Posting in AIBU for traction, not because I think I'm wrong - I know I'm right in fact :) But this is where many of the grabby, problematic mumsnetters turn up to have a whinge and make false arguments. So this is for all of you.

And let’s be clear, if you're a grandmother who genuinely loves caring for your grandchildren, good for you. This thread is not for or about you. If your own mother happily provides childcare and truly enjoys it, lovely. This thread is not or or about you either.

This is about dismantling a stubborn and deeply illogical belief that if a grandmother declines the burden of childcare, she somehow forfeits the right to see her grandchildren.

No one is owed childcare from their mother. End.

It does not matter whether she had help when raising you, other people’s sacrifices are not items on a balance sheet for you to cash in later. Older women are not public utilities, nor are their remaining years a communal resource to be allocated by their adult children. They are human beings with dignity, autonomy, and the absolute right to say no for any reason whatsoever.

They have already done the work. They raised their children. Their duty is complete.

But what is especially irritating is how often two completely separate things are deliberately conflated with the dreary refrain of “Well then she can’t expect visits from the grandchildren.”

This is a logical failure.

Childcare is work. It is labour intensive, draining, time consuming, and often physically demanding.

A family visit is not work. Bringing your children to see their grandmother, spending time together, sharing conversation and affection, that is family life. It is a relationship, not a work shift.

To collapse those into the same category is a false equivalence.

If you dislike your mother so much that visiting her feels like a burden, like work, then of course you definitely do NOT want her to shoulder the burden of your job of parenting. That would be quite mad, imagine wanting your children under the care of a woman you would prefer never to spend time with.

If seeing her is a chore and you consider it a job then asking her to work for you (generally for free) is absurd.

If she wants to see you more often than you can manage that is QUITE another matter, just see her when you can, like normal people do.

But if you love your mother, you will want to see her because she is family, because you enjoy her company, because relationships exist for their own sake.

That bond is not, and should never be, contingent on whether she performs even more physical labour after decades of already doing exactly that.

These are the three coherent possibilities - you visit your mother with the children because you love her and enjoy being together. Otherwise known as normal family life.

The second possiblity is that you do not want a relationship with your mother, in which case you would neither visit nor expect free labour from her.

The third possiblitiy is that your mother freely chooses to provide childcare, which is her decision alone and not something anyone is entitled to demand nor contingent upon anything else.

What is not logically defensible is weaponising access to grandchildren as punishment because she refused unpaid work. That's coercion dressed up badly in sentiment.

It's not complicated - family connection and visits are a relationship. Childcare is labour. These two concepts are not interchangeable, and one should never be made conditional on the other or compared to the other.

And finally those of you who claim the relationship with her grandchildren will be stronger if an exhausted older women is forced to do your job of parenting - maybe. Maybe not. Nobody has the slightest idea of how kids will feel about their grandparents or parents as they grow up and a lot of grandmothers would gladly relinquish a "closer" relationship with their grandchildren if it meant they could put their exhausted feet up after a lifetime of labour, or go out when they want as they want doing what they want, without first running it past their dictator daughters.

So, all of you who keep trying to confuse what is actually a very simple concept with this nonsense - just stop now.

If you are demanding child care from your mother and trying to couch it in any way as anything she "should" do because "reasons", trying to conflate famly visit with her doing unpaid work that she did for decades already - you're an awful person, and are perpetuating the misogyny of treating women like commodities to be shared.

Stop throwing a tantrum, get on with parenting your own kids and visit your mother, or don't. For many of you, not visiting would be doing her a favour.

I am an older woman who is happy to agree to the intensive labour of free childcare a couple of times a week because I choose to. An older woman who would instantly tell you exactly where to go if you ever asserted your entitlement or attempted to tell me what I "should" do with my own precious, irreplaceable and limited time on this earth. An older woman who will decline childcare if I want to, when I want to and be treated respectfully regardless.

Signed - an older woman who is sick of your entitled bullshit. We see you.

Stop it.

Totally agree OP.
Had grandparents who travelled from their home early doors to pick DGC up and take them to school.

Go back home, then go and pick them up from school and take them to the playground or library till 5pm.

Drop them off at home for 6pm and go back to their own home. Every single school day!

Dad had a big job in the city, mum wfh and didn't want the kids back until after she'd finished work, not even for the DGP to babysit them indoors.

Found out when chatting to the granddad after grandma hadn't turned up for a while.
Turns out she was ill, but instead of the mum arranging something else so granddad could spend more time with his wife, he continued as she didn't want to unsettle them.

Asked why they didn't just say no and he said that's the only way they get to see the kids.

Shocking behaviour. Elderly abuse is rife, and it's always those closest to them.

Well, I don’t expect free childcare from anyone. We didn’t have help from my mum or MIL (our dads died long before we had dc). Have never asked for it. Never been offered. Even though our grandparents provided full time childcare for us for years.

But hosting people is hard work when you have small children. I don’t have time and energy to have my MIL over for the weekend or for Sunday lunch more than a few times a year. We haven’t been invited to her house in more than a decade (probably since eldest was 2 and she’s a teenager now!). So all the work is on us for hosting.

I can’t do it more than a few times a year. But if MIL wanted to take our dc out for the day to do something with them, she’d get a lot more time with them.

Neither my mum or MIL has ever taken dc out to do anything with them independent of us ever. It’s not childcare, it’s just spending time with your grandchildren. They will only come to our house with us there, MIL brings her dog (more work for us cleaning up after it), will sit in the kitchen, then go home. I don’t need or expect childcare and never have, but both would have had a lot more time with their (only) grandchildren if they’d actually made an effort to do things with them that I didn’t have to organise and chaperone. You can’t have it both ways.

I watched my MIL provide years of unpaid childcare to my DNieces. While FIL often volunteered her “we’d be happy to help” Well he wasn’t doing the helping.
We moved far away (another country) when DC were small so childcare wasn’t an option anyway.
But I also think they were my and DHs DC and so our responsibility to bring up.
My Dparents and DIL provided occasional (eg 1-2 times a year) help for a weekend or when visiting.
What I see now is that my DILs have a more parental relationship w my DNieces than a grandparent one.
Whereas DS 1 & 2 definitely have a GP relationship with both sets of Gp.
As I come out of the other side of parenting DC are late teens/early 20s I am enjoying the freedom that brings.
I have 0 intention of providing anything other that occasional fun help as and when DGC arrive. I will 100% not be thier childcare. DH can provide if if he wants. I will be doing other things.
But I also think it’s about how expensive life is currently and the pressure on both parents to work so then childcare is needed and free GP childcare saves parents a lot of money.

Yes - I see that clearly in my extended family. Grandparents who criticise adult DGC for never popping over and mowing the lawn etc when they do that and more for the other DGPs who actually picked them up from school once a week, listened to them, knew what they liked to eat and the names of their friends.

At some point I might explain it to them clearly, but their response will not be good.

You’ve made this into a polarised argument citing women who are doing ALL the childcare for their adult children. But there is a middle ground where you help in emergencies or to give the parents the odd evening/day off. I would argue that’s perfectly reasonable and not sacrificing your life or turning you into a burden animal.

If you can’t manage that - illness or disability aside - then you’re not a great family support. If you sit at home waiting for the young family to travel miles to see you, then that might be a you problem. If you do this when YOU had lots of support yourself that DOES say more about you than your children.

Of course there are loads of layers of nuance between these extremes and I can’t rehearse all the scenarios. But the basic principle for me is that you help out your family if you can. You don’t take over parenting. You don’t sacrifice your life. But you do offer support and a helping hand from time to time. Otherwise that just sums up our me, me, me, entitled society where it’s all about the individual and not about our friends, families, communities and society. We have moved in that direction but I don’t believe it’s for the good of us all.

My friends are grandparents and they manage to have very active social lives, plenty of me time, loads of holidays. They don’t take over parenting. They’re not burdened. They also occasionally look after their grandchildren. It’s really not so hard and they all have excellent relationships with their children and grandchildren.

The difficulty I have is a MIL who had a real disconnect between the type of granny she thought she wanted to be/others to perceive her as, and what she actually wanted to do.

we put plans in place for full time nursery and she asked to have her granddaughter a day a week. I explained that would be every week, and from 8:15-5pm and that it would be difficult for us to cover more than a few holidays and she admitted that she wasn’t up to it (which I’m pleased about). And then every 6 months we would have the same conversation and again and again. It’s like she wanted to be like her friends who did weekly care but then couldn’t quite do it. Which is fine but it was always made to feel my fault that the nursery couldn’t have a more flexible arrangement for her to simply decide one Monday that she did want to care for granddaughter but not the following Monday. I explained if she didn’t feel she wanted the responsibility of her all day, I could put her in nursery for a half day, she could bring her home to nap and then see her for 1-2 hours before I finished work but that didn’t work for her either. But then she would call adhoc to come do just that but I’ve already paid for her nursery and that’s £40 for that afternoon.

and then there was/is the difficulty of fitting in all the grandparents (including my divorced parents) for visits in 8 weekend days a month as we work full time as well as doing cleaning and parties and errands and all the rest of it and them wanting us there to parent them rather than. Them coming over and taking sole care for a couple of hours while I hoovered and mopped the house.
and then complaining that we didn’t take them round to their house often but any attempt for me to make things easier like leaving a sippy cup, some wipes and some nappies, or even a travel cot was met with rejection that visiting them felt like we had to pack everything.

I have really really tried with them. And they look at their siblings and friends who have great relationships with their grandkids and who see them weekly and the commonality is all of those people did regularly weekly childcare and she doesn’t understand how doing that childcare leads to increased familiarity, affection, security from grandchildren.

now my eldest is 5 and we had a bit of a heart to heart she now comes and picks her up from school, takes her to a hobby and then to McDonald’s and she’s finally building a closer relationship.

I don’t blame or resent her for not doing a ton of regular childcare when mine were small. It was not expected even though she had abundant support from her parents and in laws. But when my very limited free time with my kids is expected to belong solely to them or when I’m expected to have my kids on top form for a very formal visit, I started to resent it.

I’ve made it clear that they have to fit in a bit more around existing plans and that’s a work in progress. I’m desperate for them to have good relationships with all their grandparents as I didn’t have any and I’ve seen how amazing it can be but it feels a lot like hardwork sometimes when retired or part time working people won’t see them on weekdays and try and cram it all into weekends

Excellent observation.

It really does say something about a person who refuses to offer any help whatsoever with their DGC when they had help from their own parents 20-30 years before.

OP here has one of the nastiest attitudes I've seen on MN, and that's saying something!

Regardless of my thoughts on her position, reading all of her responses to others, the nasty attitude has really made my skin crawl.

So I should have planned for the eventuality that one of my children will have regular hospital appointments first thing in the morning while the other one needs to get to school? My husband is a primary school teacher and can't regularly take days off. We are blessed to have parents that will put themselves out for us as we would for them.

Expecting full time childcare is too much unless the person wants to do that but picking up the gaps is so needed and appreciated. It makes our lives a million times easier that our parents will do the odd school run and childcare. It's also so nice to know that someone else loves our kids and is happy to see them and we will miss that so much when they are gone. If our parents were just "We've done our time you'll work it out" of course we would feel differently about them. People can't be entirely selfish and expect others (even family) to not notice or be affected by that. You can behave how you want but how you behave affects how others feel about you.

Don’t think the OP was talking about herself.

❤️

Which all sounds very sensible but again- no suggestion of reciprocity. Its just such a uniquely UK thing to want this family set up where all benefit and expectation (reasonable or otherwise) only flows one way.

there’s a lot of rage against women on this thread and a startling absence of men. I know this is MN but all the men are getting a free pass here. I can only speak to my own experience. No childcare from either my family or the In Laws. One brother had 1000s of hours from my parents. My mum also had 1000s of hours from both my grandmothers (before anyone starts both grandfathers were dead before I was born). She told me and the other brother that she had done all the grandchild stuff with the other brothers kids - this was without
either of us asking for help. Interestingly the now grown up GCs who were raised by my parents have fucked off and don’t even send a text on her birthday. Meanwhile my mother whinges about my kids not going to see her enough. Guess who is now expected to look after Mum - that’s right, me with my full time job because I’m female. Not the part time free loading brother. And guess who is being judged for not stepping up to look after my dear old mother - none of my male siblings. So I don’t care if the OP claims there is no nuance here, there is, and most of it is rooted in misogyny.

Nobody has asked her to do “childcare”. Her post is stating that her grandchildren cannot visit her unless their parent is there the entire time to chaperone them and look after them while they are there. So she is saying she does consider her family visiting to be “work”, unless she’s saying that she doesn’t consider her grandchildren to be part of her family.

Hmmmm not convinced. For her to be this bitter and write such spiteful things the reaction is definitely about a personal issue. It’s an irrational, angry rant which is not how people generally approach an issue to which they have no personal connection.

Exactly. Very well put.

I completely agree with you OP. I hate the argument that childcare is the only way they’ll see their grandchildren. It is such a manipulative stance. That’s like me saying I’ll only have a relationship with my mother if she’s prepared to come round and clean my house. Labour should not be transacted for love and affection.

I think a lot of this stems from so many women having useless husbands/partners and rather than tackling that, they rely on their mothers to effectively be the second parent.

And let me guess: you rely on childcare provided by a family member?

Of course it has something to do with this conversation! Nuclear families are becoming more and more isolated, and having fewer children. The birthrate in this country is falling and with an aging population to support, this is a huge concern. State pensions are paid by the current working population - there is no "pot" that you have personally accrued. If we cannot support young families to have more children (both by state apparatus and familial bonds) we - the country - are going to end up in dire straits where we cannot afford to support the elderly.

I find it baffling that anyone would willingly watch a family member suffer, and not do anything to help if you have the ability. Upwards or downwards in terms of generations. Obviously not to the extent it takes over your life, but each case has a happy medium.

I've never relied on free childcare from any family members and I agree with @ProjectHailMary. The OP's post is a very angry rant and she sounds resentful and unhappy. I am sorry that so many older women on here appear to have such transactional relationships with their children. Perhaps they should question how this situation arose. Relationships are about mutual love and effort, even within families.

And parents are not ''entitled' to free childcare.

@Youlittlenightmare is your user name next to arrogant in the dictionary.

I really do feel for your off-spring. You may find yourself a very lonely woman one-day.

But it's a thread about whether Grandparents should offer childcare. If it was a thread about what do you do for your elderly parents I would say my husband pops into his parents most days or if not texts to ensure they are OK. I regularly offer to sit with MIL while FIL goes out (dementia). My husband offers to help with airport runs/grass cutting anything really although my FIL is very difficult to help as too proud.

My own parents live a while away but I'm going to stay with my dad for the weekend in a few weeks so my mum can travel to see relatives. She can't leave him alone due to his health problems.

I suspect a lot of people that would appreciate childcare help also help their parents or will help when their parents need help in future. It's not one way in our house and I doubt it is in many.

Agree but it works both ways, though doesn’t it? I see a lot of grabby demanding threads about GPs wanting access to GKs whether convenient or not, who move 3-5 hours away in retirement, having downsized, spent that equity enjoying that retirement without a thought to the support they will need in their old age then their chickens come home to roost because adult DCs have managed their careers, finances and childcare completely unsupported and are disinclined to help as they had none themselves.

I had little help - no DPs of my own, and we live 3-4hours from DHs family home/his parents. However, they were amazing and wanted to have their DGCs for 2x a year for little holidays and were always on hand if I needed an op. FiL plumbed/first fixed and built our first patio - and converted a shed into a split level play house for the kids so it was not just MiL who pitched in. Both of them were actively involved with my kids and have been through out. They have also financially planned to be able to fund their own care in old age - paid off mortgage, built up savings, understand that they may need to release equity/sell up eventually to do this, but at 85 (and one now with Parkinsons) they are resolute in wanting to remain in their home and drive to see us (something I have vetoed next xmas as I just worry too much, and both Dcs will be at uni, so we will relocate to be with them, rather than uproot the PiLs). Ie, they freely gave what help they could in person and financially and have no expectation of anything back other than our love - which they have in spades. But we will also do as much as we can in terms of financial support to help them remain in their own home for as long as possible and will now be visiting them more.

For my own kids - both on the spectrum and one likely to never be truly independent so DGC are not an issue there - we have said they have a home with us and any partners/kids if they ever need it. I am trying to be as healthy as I can so that I can offer emergency childcare and weekend respite for DS and his partner should they have children, but despite the plan to move so that we are close or easily accessible to both when we retire - to be on hand and maintain a relationship with both kids/partners/DGCs - I have also made clear I do not anticipate being able to take on childcare in lieu of a nanny/nursery etc and, though their dad is willing to help out with basic decorating and plumbing disasters, he’ll be dipping his hand in his pocket to help out rather than in person as he is sick of it after a 20year odyssey on our current home.

I think the issue is that people ‘expect’ but don’t actually have the conversations about it, not even when planning wedding etc. We tell couples to talk about whether they want kids, how that might look for them if they have careers, at the dating stage - but extended families also need to communicate around this issue well in advance of that stage. And yes, familial relationships are transactional whether we like it or it or not. If GPs make themselves unavailable when DGCs are young and young parents are struggling - as is their right - then they can have no expectation of support or a deeper relationship when their needs change in old age. Society has been built on this quid pro quo for millennia.

What you appear to have misunderstood is that the state pension is a welfare benefit, so over 50% of what is listed on your HMRC app as the welfare expense is pensions. It dwarfs the cost of any benefit to working-aged people. It is more than the cost of disability benefits, out of work benefits, childcare funding, child benefit, housing support costs and general living support costs for the low paid from universal credit combined.