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?

I love this and it’s exactly the sort of grandparent I aspire to be should I be lucky enough to have grandchildren in the future.

It’s just so different now. My grandma became a grandparent in her late 40s, worked PT, and we lived a few doors away until secondary school age. I could wander round there after school from about the age of 5, and yes, it was lovely. She was young, full of energy, and got me to help her in the garden and around the house, or chucked me out with a pack up, to come
back when it was dark. It was the 70s/80s and the pressure in terms of how to look after a child was less, for grandparents as well as parents. My mum was nearly 70 and living more than an hour way when she became a grandma, having worked FT for most of her adult life. If my daughter is the same sort of age I was when she has children, I will be pushing 80! My grandparents were able to buy their house without a mortgage, my mum is in a council flat, and I will be paying a mortgage till I’m 75. The generational differences are HUGE. If we were all still having our children in our early 20s, living a few minutes away from our own parents and grandparents, in families where women only needed to work part time, there was a large extended family nearby to help, and anyone helping did it their own way and largely by providing food and drinks and benign neglect, then yeah, I imagine more grandmothers would be helping with childcare…

Well I don't have grandchildren, so maybe I'll feel differently when I do, but at the moment I can't imagine volunteering for regular childcare. I'll be working till 68 as things currently stand, then dh and I plan to do a self build and I dont know what comes next but I really hope I'll have better things to do with my time. I'm totally up for babysitting, occasional days out and maybe even a week or two childcare in the summer holidays. In an emergency Id do everything I could to help but regular childcare - just no. I'll have worked, brought up my family, cared for my parents and in-laws in their old age and I think I'll be ready for some me time.

You answered yourself in the OP '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.'

I'm about to retire, so I can therefore do my own thing, take up a new hobby, travel etc. If I had grandchildren, would I want to be stuck at home caring for them? It's a privilege to have on tap childcare, not a right. You chose to have dc, not your mum.

Strange thread…
OP, I don’t have grandkids kids but when I do I know ill
love them to bits but I’d still not want to do childcare. I’d babysit and offer to help out if needed in an emergency but no way would I want to do day to day childcare.
I had the same set up with my kids and my Mum.

Me and my kid are all extremely close to her.
Expecting someone else to look after your kids is entitled.

I have raised 2 children, one of which has been challenging and exhausting - I am knackered and really don’t want to do that again with my Grandchildren- I will support with a bit of babysitting but as my MiL said to me ‘I want to be excited to see my GC, not think oh no here we go again!’

I want to live, I want to be anxiety free (for the most part!) I don’t want to be relied on and be at the school gate every day. I don’t want to take holidays in school holiday time because I am tied to my GC. I want to go when and how often I want to.

I had no day to day help from my parents or my in laws - I had occasional babysitting offers which were lovely, and as the kids got older they would occasionally ask to stay at their nans, she always said yes and she always welcomed them. Importantly as neither set of GPs had them regularly they totally cleared their weekends when they did and everything was focussed on the kids. I intend to do the same!!!

This.

@oldFoolMe

You do know that for generations grandchildren have loved their grandparents without them doing full time childcare don't you? This idea that grandparents have to virtually bring up their grandchildren in order to be loved or visited by them is a fairly modern phenomenon and a pretty obnoxious one too. I had enormous fondness for my surviving grandparents and was very happy to visit them when they were older. We'd visit them for Sunday tea once a month when we were children and always enjoyed it, but they never did childcare. Basically love should be a trade off in your world? Especially for the elderly - right?

Reading this thread I actually see how insidious the hatred of children is in our society. My daughter is the absolute joy of my life and I can imagine ever viewing her children as a chore and an inconvenience. In all the talk about choice, that is a choice.

Jesus i am in ireland too and that so is not the case, Majority pay for childcare be is nursery, au pair, nanny etc. there are the odd few like a friend of mine who cant do anything without her mother, her mother has them more than they with their own parents in fact, she wont even allow her own mother to go on holiday either she must come with the kids holiday 😐which every other of our friends thinks quiet selfish, some have told her too but she doesn't see any issue. There is a cousin of my husbands married with three kids, she lives 2 hours away from her own mother, made her own mother give up her job and she drove every day up and down the country minding those kids, sometimes very very late at night, going on holidays to ensure babysitter there, now the poor women is riddled with cancer, daughter has no time to bring her to appointments etc. I say she be lucky to see in 2027. I think its so selfish of both women
My pwn parents are not physically able to do regular childcare and so not expected, plus until this year were both still working full time so wouldnt have been able
The thinking if majority of friends and people i work with is you pay for childcare, don't rely on grandparents for everyday childcare, ask for adhoc in advance like a wedding or emergency but not for every day. Its not fair on them

Id take either but only if she actually wanted to do it. I wouldn’t want to force anyone to do something they didn’t want to do and i think that would reflect on the relationship with the child when forced to do it.

For me there’s different level of grandparent involvement.

1. you get the grandparents who maybe want to retire early, who want to be involved and may do 1-2 days a week childcare. I know a few like this and they absolutely love it.
2. you get no regular childcare but willing to do a weekend or occasional after school maybe once a month.
3. grandparents happy to help less regularly than number 2, maybe once every 3 months. Still call and ask for updates.
4. the emergency only grandparents who would help if there was a broken leg / mobility issues / parent was sick in hospital
5. the grandparents who have done their time and believe the parents have made their bed and should get on with it abs either provide no help or very little.

My parents fall into number 5 and honestly it hurt a little. I can’t wait to be a number 1-2 grandparent providing on finances and health.

i once asked my parents if they could help when my little boy had chicken pox couldn’t quite go back to nursery but was back to his normal self and they said no. I stopped asked them for any help, they now see my kids 2-4 times a year. They have however looked after my sisters children more. I don’t have a great relationship with them anymore and in no way would I drop everything to help them.

I also think it is a form of emotional blackmail to say that grandparents who don’t do childcare for their grandchildren are going to end up not having a relationship with them, @oldFoolMe.

But if people think differently, what do you expect them to do? I am very happy your daughter is the joy of your life. I think all children should be loved and adored.

However some people do not feel that because we are not all the same.

I mean nobody said it had to be full time or that they were supposed to step in for parents in perpetuity.

I don’t know - AI training maybe? I’ve had enough of it though…

Seems that way, doesn't it?! Makes me glad I don't have children/grandchildren, tbh.

My father couldn’t have given less of a shit about his grandchildren - same as his children! He retired on a final salary pension at 55 and went straight onto the golf course. I wouldn’t have wanted him to provide any childcare to my children as he was a terrible parent.

My mother retired just as I was having my first, and she did want to do some childcare. I went back part time and paid her properly to do it 2 days a week. I checked in regularly that she was fit and able and still willing, as I’d have happily moved him into a nursery. It was our choice to have a child, and our responsibility to look after him. Either that was one of us giving up work to care or working and paying for childcare. Otherwise you simply can’t afford to have children. Other people don’t have to fund your life choices, and the thought of then punishing them in old age for it by not visiting them is pretty cold and heartless. If they’ve been a good parent to you, surely you want to see them? If they’ve been a bad parent why would you want them to look after your own kids?

There’s no obligation on grandparents if they don’t want to or can’t. I would love to be an involved grandparent but not all the time and I want to enjoy my retirement after working for 40+ years. And I think that’s fair.

That's not answering my question at all.

What do you view as looking after DGC in terms of why you started this thread? Your opening line was: Genuinely curious why as a grandparent, you wouldn’t want to help if you could – so, what kind of help are you talking about? Because the majority of PP are clearly happy to help, but don't want to commit to set days per week.

If you're saying you'd like set days and don't understand why any grandparent wouldn't agree to that – well, that's not just helping out and it shifts the tone of the thread. Doing set days week in week out is being their childcare provider.

MiL moved around the corner to us when DS was 3. She wasn’t expecting us to have kids and certainly wasn’t expecting to enjoy her grandchild. But it was love at first sight.

We are careful what childcare we ask for and keep an eye on what are becoming quite strong physical disabilities.

But she wants to spend time with him. And he with her.

Kids here finish school at lunchtime. DS (9) walks to his Granny’s flat for lunch once a week, does his homework there and can walk home any time after 2pm. He usually stays longer and they bake or play board games.

I think one reason it works is that there is very little obligation there. She doesn’t have to pick him up or take him anywhere. He had been going twice a week but we noticed she was getting stressed with his picky eating, so I booked him into afterschool club an extra day instead. She can send him home any time after 2pm, which is only 90mins. Sometimes she does. Sometimes with unfinished homework, which he does largely independently. But mostly he’s there until 5pm. We provide anything he needs at hers. We also repeat that if she can’t do the afternoon any longer or needs something to change, tell us.

They have built such a bond and ease with each other that they now choose to spend time with each other. Sometimes she’ll phone and ask him to come round in the near future. She’ll book circus and theatre tickets for them both after checking with us - one of us drives them there and back. If he‘s off school sick she‘ll sometimes offer to take him. But with generous wfh policies and paid child sick days, we‘re not reliant on that. She’ll do any childcare we ask for, but we only ask for what we genuinely need.

We include her in a family day trip 1-2 times a month. I do her banking and technology, DH drives her to some appointments. But she also does what she can alone, and finds clever workarounds for what has become difficult.

Essentially, both sides are respectful of the other‘s time and needs.

i saw my grandmother nearly every day, and have many fond memories of our time together. My mother sees her grandchildren a few times a year, so of course the relationship isn’t the same. It’s not blackmail its a fact.

of course you can be an active part of your grandchild life without looking after them, but having quality time alone with a grandparent builds a different bond to a flying visit.

That being said its quality time that counts not the childcare itself.

Yes, that is your choice. To suggest that grandparents (and presumably you mean women) hate children because they don't want to actually to bring up their grandkids is a pretty vile thing to say.

Most people don't think differently. For most parents, their children are the absolute joys of their lives and they do NOT view grandchildren as chores or inconveniences. But that does not mean they need to offer full time childcare for the myriad of reasons mentioned above. Two very different things. Can you not get that? This insinuation that older women don't love their children or grandchildren enough if they don't mind them full time, or that they owe it to their daughters to do the childcare, or that their daughters won't care for them in older age unless they do so....it's all so vile

There is also this: my mum had me when she was 23. (lived away from grandparents but that is by the by)

I had my DCs when i was 35+. My parents, because we also live away from them) visited, we visited them, and then when dc were older they went to stay with the GPs during summer holidays for a couple of weeks. This was to a) keep up a relationship and have fun together and b) help us out a bit with childcare (but that was never the priority for any of us)

my DC are unlikely to have DCs themselves, but they will be over 30. And i am still working because i have to work until i am at least 67. So - i will be a good chunk older than my own parents, and still working (mine had retired relatively young). So, no, regular "childcare" is not on the table.

This.
I have 45+ years of NI contributions. DH similar. We are mid 60s and still working - me part-time now.

The DC benefitted from us working and had the best educations money could buy. They are independent, partnered and reaching the baby stage which is fabulous.

They have no expectation that their father or I are available for regular, formal childcare. They know we would help and suppprt them in a heartbeat when things go tits up.

Mention had been made on this thread that elderly parents expect the suppprt of their dc when they become frail. I am supporting my mother, DH his. May I gently venture that nursing home fees are knocking £80k per annum. Nursery fees oth are about £25k pa. As a grannie I'd help the dc with the nursery fees.