to question expecting mums and MILs, not husbands, to help?

[haleey]

Every week I read posts from women upset that their mum or MIL will not help with childcare. There is often a lot of disappointment, resentment and criticism aimed at the older woman as if she is somehow letting the family down. This is even more the case if she had help herself. It is another stick to beat her with.

But what really stands out is how little the husband gets mentioned. He is either barely there in the story or it is quickly brushed off that he has a big job and cannot change anything.

Since when did that become a free pass? Why is it accepted that he cannot adapt at all, but completely reasonable to expect an older woman, who has already raised her children, to step in and take on regular childcare?

It feels like the expectation defaults to women helping other women, while the man’s role stays exactly as it is without being questioned.

I am not saying grandparents should not help if they want to. It is lovely when they do. But the entitlement towards older women, alongside the lack of expectation on husbands is not on.

I am not saying this is true in every single scenario and if you find these types of posts boring, move on.

Plenty of Granddads collecting at my grandson's school. However, men are much more likely than women to work in their sixties and seventies. Women 'retire' much earlier. A lot of posters are quiet on here about the Government's attempts to keep women in work longer.
Nearly one in three British women expect to stop working before retirement age, with 25.7% of women aged 16–64 economically inactive
compared to compared to 7.1% of men

So @haleey
Do you want to start a campaign to discourage women from giving up work so early?

🤣🤣🤣🤣

I imagine millennial grandads will get asked just as much as grandmothers. A lot of parents never experienced a hands on dad and therefore don’t trust him to change a nappy or know what to do.

That said, I see so many grandads at the school run so how true it is I’m not sure!

So recent spikes of new posts are not allowed but the usual existing ones repeated are fine?

How is this any different from the endless threads about parking disputes, noisy neighbours, lazy husbands, or refusing to give a colleague a lift?

Yes because that is the only solution unless they push the childcare onto another woman.

Grandmas need to suffer to look after their grandchildren:

https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/gender-pension-gap-means-retired-women-effectively-stop-receiving-pension-today

Unpaid caring responsibilities: women are five times more likely than men to be out of paid work to look after children, elderly or disabled family members – missing out on workplace pension contributions as a result. BME and disabled women are among the worst impacted – respectively at seven and nine times more likely than White and non-disabled men to be out of work due to caring responsibilities.

My Dad looked after DS one day a week from when he was 6 months to 1 year until he went to nursery. I didn't even have to ask him, he offered. It was a 50 mile round trip as well, bless him.

Because we don't see those 26 times a day and 182 times per week. It is BORING. It has been resolved and discussed so many times that the grandmothers involved have now retired or died.

You might need to learn to count.

No. Recent spikes in things that have been in the news are to be expected. A sudden increase in one type of post, not prompted by something happening in the news, is suspicious. Repeated posts about parking or useless husbands are all different - the husband is useless in different ways, rather than why are grandmothers expected to do childcare.

You can obviously post it. You can make the same post again and again. But people are allowed to be fed up with it and point out that there’s a lot of activity recently about this topic and so you might not be posting in good faith. If you are posting in good faith, you don’t need to keep coming back to people who are pointing out this is a theme, you can just leave our comments alone. You don’t need to get defensive about it.

If you are posting in good faith, you’re not going to get a very engaged and active thread because this has been done to death over the past few weeks.

Ok, thanks for that enlightening retort. Glad all is right now with the world. I'm off to www.math.com and all thanks to you!

This is about the 3rd or 4th thread in the last week making exactly the same point.

If those weren’t started by you, suggest a search and you’ll fund plenty of responses.

If they were, please stop.

I am not getting defensive just pointing out the difference.

Someone mentioned on another post that they reported all the grandparent posts. MNHQ confirmed they are posted by different users with a posting history so are happy for them to stay.

Plenty of the regular posts such as parking disputes, noisy neighbours, lazy husbands, or refusing to give a colleague a lift have been done to death but plenty of people still engage.

If you don't like it, then leave the posts alone. Don't engage. I scroll past on the things I am not interested in, not jump on the posts to say it has been done to death each time.

Are you MNHQ?

Yes! Long threads of women criticising other women for not doing childcare while staying mostly silent on the men.

Then we have posts from women saying stop these posts because they are boring 🙄

Well if possible people are bored by posts there's no need to read or respond to them

My Dad does loads of childcare for me and my sibling despite still running his own business.

I admit I do judge MIL a bit that she’s retired with plenty of free time but has refused to help out whilst I’m on crutches post surgery and DH still has to go into the office but I also know that it’s not her responsibility to provide childcare but some short term help would be nice. Equally DH and I will be mindful if this when she needs help post surgery- goes both ways.

Why do you judge her?

Is there a FIL?

Would you judge a man not helping in the same way?

Equally DH and I will be mindful if this when she needs help post surgery- goes both ways.

There we go - payback time!

No need to be rude.

I've always assumed it's because both parents have made all the changes they can to their schedule and are now looking for childcare to fill in the gaps rather than looking for grandma to look after kids because dad won't. I do agree that it's nonsense the assumption that any grandparent involvement will always be a woman though.

No FIL he’s dead. I judge her because I would help out my siblings or another friend/family member who was on crutches and needed help with the school run for a couple of weeks and certainly wouldn’t call up and complain about how bored I was to the person on crutches.

I would judge a man in the same situation- the situation being a healthy adult who can drive, isn’t working and says they have plenty of free time and are bored.

FWIW I’ve taken my lunch breaks at odd times to take in laws and my own aunt to hospital appointments so I do what I can when I can.