AIBU to wonder why some grandparents avoid helping with childcare?

[oldFoolMe]

Genuinely curious why as a grandparent, you wouldn’t want to help if you could.
Firstly i am not a grandparent and can only speak of my own experience.
My father got made redundant at 60 so took an early retirement.
He adored my children, said it was an absolute blessing that he had a chance to spend time with them. He worked and commuted his whole life so he said he was making up for lost time as he wasn’t able to spend that time with us as children. He was so helpful and my children had an amazing bond with him until he died.
My mother however explained that she had given up her life to bring us up (didn’t gave us until she was late thirties), and now she wanted to do what she wanted to do and that did not involve small children. Her mother helped with childcare and she was able to work and again we had a real special bond with our grandmother. We used to pop round regularly to see her long after the childcare stopped. My grandmother was great and had excellent stories and we learnt so much from her. She taught us how to cook, and helped my mum with housework.
Now my mum is approaching 80, she’s lonely and surprised that my own children don’t pop round, but they don’t have the same bond.
She expects the same help that she gave her mother, but working full time the weekend is the only chance I have to catch up on housework and quite honestly I’m burnt out.
Secondly with so many horror stories of children being abused in a nursery, if you were able to why wouldn’t you want to look after a child you love rather than strangers?

Transactional relationships are never a good idea.

Rubbish and women need to stop using this threat. I only saw my gran once or twice a year, and I absolutely adored her because she always ensured we had a great time when we saw her. You get out what you put into a relationship, its not based on how much free labour you provide for someones parents.

Nonsense. I only saw my grandparents 3 or 4 times a year as a child in the 70s and 80s as we lived aboard and then they didn’t have cars and lived a fair bit away. I adored them.

But you don't have to commit to providing unpaid regular childcare in order to see your grandchildren (and hopefully children too) for a few hours once or twice a week.

You are conflating grandparents who don't want to commit to being regular, unpaid childcare with grandparents who don't want to spend time with their grandchildren.

Most grandparents who don't want to or don't feel able to offer childcare do still want to spend time with their families, and are good loving grandparents.

Some grandparents are shit, but that doesn't correlate to their desire or their ability to be unpaid childcare.

I am guessing your grandparents were very engaged and interested in you when they saw you? If so the relationship will be good.

I am not conflating anything. If a grandparent commits to spending quality time with a child they will have a good relationship generally with that child. That positive time doesn't need to be as the person providing childcare. It can literally be sat down playing them, chatting to them,days out etc with them. It doesnt need to be daily but positive and enjoyable for both.

Well, I agree with you. It has nothing to do with helping with childcare, which is literally the point of this thread.

Many, many, loving, engaged, decent grandparents are unable or unwilling to provide childcare. And that is perfectly fine.

Whether or not a grandparent is willing or able to provide childcare should not be used as a proxy measure for whether or not they are good grandparents as the two are not the same thing, nor as a measure of what kind of long term relationship they will have with their grandchildren.

Can't be bothered to read as there are many threads on the subject.
But... grandparents often want to live their own lives and not go through the child rearing thing again, health problems as you get older, we aren't all sky driiving and running marathons into our 60's and the universally hated reason - kids have parents to look after them, don't have kids if you have to constantly rely on family to look after them.
The 'don't be available for them when they get older doesn't wash either with me.
I'm not expecting my kids to look after me when I'm old and half dead because I've told them I'm topping myself when my chronic condition starts to become a problemfor me. They don't like it but know that's my choice.

Christ another one! WTF is going on here? MN seems to be full of threads about grandmothers providing childcare or not and if not why not. Or about men who are generally selfish lazy pricks!!

anyway to answer the question I found raising young children and teens quite hard and I’m not out of the woods yet.
At granny stage I’d love to do occasional babysitting and take them for a w/e if parents went away and generally enjoy them as much as possible BUT I do not want to be regular weekly childcare - that will scupper the other plans I have when the time comes! Lovely retirement plans with DH!! But can’t we be doting grandparents too without the childcare element??

You’re not a grandparent, so you’re not talking from experience.

I have my own life, times have changed, many of us were still working, and many of us don’t want to do child rearing again.

If people want children, then they need to work it all out first. 🤷‍♀️

As I pointed out in an earlier post, however, grandparents providing regular childcare is no guarantee that their adult grandchildren will give a shit about them. I described how, despite having minded their grandchildren on a weekly basis (and whole weekends), two of them as adults didn't bother with their grandparents for years, despite living in the same village. Not even when their grandparents were dying.

Some kids turn out to be as selfish as their parents.

I am early 50's and am structuring my next 5-10 years around being able to reduce hours so i can offer childcare for my (fingers crossed) multiple grandchildren. I definitely agree that there is a difference in the relationships my own children have had with two separate sets of GP's and how it affects their future relationships.

Despite all that i still think you are being unreasonable to expect anything and try to guilt trip anyone into free childcare. Any parent who decides to have a child should not expect anything in this regard.

Without her support I don’t think she could have done it

Realistically, she'd have had to. I had no grandparents, all died before I was born. My parents died when my children were small, 1 and 5.

Would have been nice to have had support, but there you go. Needs must.

How many grandchildren do you have?

I dont think the OP is talking about having the GC to stay or having a lovely relationing with GC - she's talking about GP doing childcare instead of parents having paid childcare.

I am 60 and a step-grandparent now and do NOT want to be doing regular child care for the following honest reasons;

1. I run a business and am not some grey haired pensioner like grandmothers are painted to be.
2. I have only literally just become an empty nester myself with my youngest away at University. This is FINALLY my time. I've waited SOOOO long.
3. Its not my job to do this, I am happy to help out where I can and let them go out for a night out together or a party or a nice evening or day off for respite and I do this all the time. I love a bit of play time ..but Im not a childminder and not booking in for regular days and school pick ups etc. Babysitting YES, childcare NO.
4. I have discovered that I'm just not geared to this now as I was when I had my kids. My house is 100% NON childproof, I get tired. It's hard.
5. I like to travel a lot and can't be relied on every week.

I didn't have any childcare assistance. I'm not saying "I didn't so they cant", I'm just pointing it out. I never ever even considered how to use my parents when I decided to have children (but mine did work FT into their later years).

I can only quote one example so obviously not representative.

We don't have children but when my sibling was expecting their first, Mum and Dad were very excited but Mum always said she was not willing to do regular child care. Babysitting for nights out, cover during sickness once they got to school, school pick ups in an emergency, yes. Certain days every week, no.

Her reasoning was that Dad was just about to retire (she had been made redundant shortly before) and they were now going to be able to go on days out, holiday at short notice, etc., for the first time.

She based this on my own in-laws who had agreed to look after their first grandchild on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays while their parents worked (one parent worked full time, the other on those days) to save on childcare costs. They loved being with grandchild but it meant they could rarely just go away for a few days, or indeed come and stay with us (we lived 4 hours away). They just got to the stage where the child was starting school and another grandchild arrived so they felt they had to do the same. Eventually they started to get resentful that their retirement was disappearing.

Once you get to retirement age you only have so many years between finishing work and being fit and able to do what you want. Luckily, my sibling was fully supportive and agreed that they deserved their retirement after nearly 100 years of work between them!

I am prepared to do ad hoc childcare when it suits me but the expectation that I should be available for childcare for a child/ children that I didn’t give birth to, hell nah. What your grandparents did for your mother is different because it was something that they chose to do.

What I find unfathomable is your difficulty in understanding that some grandparents do not want to be obligated to semi raising someone else’s child.

I don't have grandchildren but even if I had I wouldn't be keen to look after them. I loved my own children, I gave them everything I had. But I wouldn't want to do it again. A lot of it I found boring, I'm a lot older and don't have the same stamina. I find it interesting when on (the many) other threads about this people seem to imply that if you don't look after GC no one will look after you in your old age. I actually don't expect my children to look after me when I'm ancient, I wouldn't burden them with the banality of it (I have elderly parents). I would be v happy to baby sit, do days outs and overnights but regularly daily childcare, nope.

Individual choice.

FWIW, I'm 76 and I'm still working - part-time, admittedly, but it's still time consuming. I have contract work and freelance work - I don't have time.

I have always been there to help in emergencies and for one-offs, and we have lots of family time, but I have never done regular child support.

I have a great relationship with all four of my grandchildren.

The word 'avoid' implies there's some kind of expectation that they will offer childcare to their grandchildren. Like that's the default they're eschewing.

That's ridiculous imo. You can phrase it 'wonder why some grandparents don't choose to offer childcare', it's more balanced and less judgmental.

My parents aren't 'avoiding' anything by not opting into offering childcare.

My grandparents never provided childcare. I was still close to and loved them. My relationship with them wasn’t dependent on them providing childcare, and tbh I wasn’t and am not aware of this being the case with my friends either.

’If you don’t provide childcare then they won’t want to know you when they’re older’ is a threat commonly thrown around, but I haven’t seen this actually happen.

I’m 63. I need to work to pay my bills! I have done masses of childcare at weekends but work longer hours than my kids because their dad fecked off and became a once a fortnight dad, and I never fully recovered financially. By the time I ever retire (if ever) I’ll be on to great grandchildren and their grandparents will have at least 30 more years to work! You’re talking nonsense.

I work full time, have children at home and an elderly mother that I visit every weekend as well as some weekdays as she becomes more frail.

I plan to retire next year and will not be doing regular childcare when I have grandchildren. I have worked hard all my adulthood, including nights and weekends at various points. I have put others first for decades and I I have probably only got another 10-15 years of quality life left. I want to live that time for me. It is not wrong to choose to prioritise myself.

Having children is a choice that no one else is obligated to facilitate.

That’s so sad.