AIBU- mum refusing to help with childcare when I return to work.

[Essexgurlx]

Hello,
I am in my early 20s and fell pregnant unexpectedly a couple of months after finishing university and starting my professional career.
I have a partner of 5 years.
We decided to continue with the pregnancy despite it not being the best time in my life in respect to me newly graduating and starting my career!
My family were delighted when we told them.
My mum is a healthy fifty year old woman and hasn’t worked outside the home since she was around mid 20s and had me and my sibling and became a SAHM. She has lots of free time now as me and my sibling have both flown the nest and she does not plan to return to any work, does not study and does not volunteer etc.
My sibling is younger at university and will not be having children anytime soon.
I am going to be returning to work early next year and want to return full time. In my area full time nursery places are at least £1000 per month and I (stupidly now I realise) just expected my mum to offer to care for my baby multiple days a week.
My partner works 4 days per week in shift patterns where they would be overlap between our working hours but not to the extent of a full day. So for example I would work 7am-4pm and he would work 2pm-12pm meaning my mum would only need to provide child care 2-4pm not for full days or anything like that. My mum has made it clear she “doesn’t want to be tied down with a child” and is only interested in caring for her grandchild “every now and again”. She has asked me multiple times what my plan is for nursery care.
I am now feeling so stressed at how much nursery fees are going to cost.
My partner’s parents both work full time Monday to Friday similar hours to me so they can’t support but I think they would if they could and my dad is very busy with 2 jobs and not a lot of spare time at all. There is no other family to care for the baby while I am at work so I will have to put her in nursery or to a childminder.
AIBU to feel upset and let down by my mother?
I just expected more support from her- especially as she was so excited to have this first grandchild gloating to all her friends, posts about my baby all over her social media and threw a lavish baby shower inviting everyone she knew for her to now turn around and basically say she isn’t offering any support.
What would you do in this situation?

If that's your attitude - 'I only want to see you when you look after my kid, otherwise I don't want to know'

I'd a) be embarrassed that I'd raised a brat and b) be quite grateful really

@Cherryblossoms85 Good for you!

I've told my DD that under no circumstances is she to give up her job, home and life to look after me. I was responsible for taking care of her when she was a child, she is not responsible for taking care of me.

@Pallisers , I agree, amazing how it is always the women have the expectations of EVERYTHING placed on their shoulders, never the men.

My friends mum insisted on coming to my friends house to collect the children from school, give them dinner one day a week.

She did it at my friends house as she felt it would be best for the children in their own home as they were at a childminder the other days, and her husband found the children an irritation.

Her dad was cranky and spoiled and gave out at the imposition to HIS life, even though his wife really wanted it.

He didn't like that his wife was away every friday afternoon and increasingly into the evening with her grandchildren, that he found a bit loud and tiresome.

His whole life he had insisted she run around after him, and she had.

When only a few years later her mum was taken quickly with illness, my friend was so grateful her children had that time with her every friday, and they had such nice memories.

How quickly her father produced a list of weekly tasks that he expected her, working full-time with 3 children, to fulfil.

He was given very short shrift and told to pay someone to do any tasks he didn't want to do.
My friend was certainly not running herself raggedy after a perfectly fit, healthy 70 year old.

She continued to visit once a month, just as he had insisted before her mothers death.

I have heard so many versions of this over the years, huge expectations on female family members, none on the males.

Very irritating.

Did anyone happen to bookmark the OP's partner's rant? I'd like to read it but don't have time to scroll back through. Thanks kindly to anyone able to reproduce it. :)

They started properly on page 8, if that's any help.

Really grim how many posters insist it’s ‘sad’ or ‘a shame’ that a grown woman wants to have agency over her own life and sees value in her later years beyond being an unpaid skivvy for her adult offspring.

I think it’s far more sad when older women are viewed by everyone as only good for giving, for caring, for sacrificing - and are given no respect or value as a person in her own right who wants to live her own life for herself, just like we all do. Maybe she is a rounded person who takes joy in things other than her grandchildren - that doesn’t make her some sort of unnatural, selfish ice maiden. Perhaps she would gain plenty of great joy from spending time with her grandparents socially and helping out ad hoc around her other activities…but that doesn’t count or have value because the kids’ parents aren’t benefitting financially from it. So we continue to label it ‘a shame’ when she’s not interested in childminding regularly. It’s not a shame, for anyone but the tight-fisted parents who feel entitled to another person’s time.

If those posters are honest, they’re just ‘sad’ and find it ‘a shame’ that they’re having to pay for childcare and not benefitting from unpaid female labour.

This is so well put.

you all need to look at yourselves

It's interesting how wages have dropped so significantly.

When my parents were young they and the children were all able to live quite well off my father's wage. Nowadays, father and mother have to work, while the grandmother also has to donate her work for the family unit to survive.

I think the definition of "live well"'has escalated quite a bit since then.

Can you reduce your hours slightly? Or work from home and alter your hours slightly. Your entitled to tax free childcare which knocked 20% off. Plus a childminder may be cheaper. If you ca tweak the hours slightly you could probably do half day child care which would save money. And on the plus side your mum may help out in emergencies or for the odd night out..

This is just silly, I don’t believe a word. No one with a toxic mother would want them to look after their children die several hours a day. I also don’t believe a young male partner would login into MN and start throwing insults about standing on Lego and having sleepless nights because a young naive male would likely have never experienced these things to consider them as threats. This post is so off it’s a joke.

have another 🍷 OP.

How so?

im a similar age to the GM. I worked full time when mine were babies, toddlers, tweens and teens. My entire wage went on nursery fees and DH worked away Sun-Fri. I did it all alone for decades.

most Of my female work colleagues and friends also worked full time to pay the nursery but retain our jobs in the longer term.

what is it that we had easier (without 30 free hours childcare to boot)? I’m curious.

do you think when fifty years olds had their kids they were all stay at home mums pushing their silver cross pram
through the park and coming home to bake with their LOs? 😂

Poster has been asked a few times how we had it easier but they never answer . I don't really remember much Government help with childcare then either .

Poster has been asked a few times how we had it easier but they never answer . I don't really remember much Government help with childcare then either .

I'm slightly younger than OP's mother but had no help with my childcare either. The cost of childcare was the same as my salary at one point (I'm saying this as a reference point, not because I paid for childcare or thought it was just my responsibility, before people jump on me). Plus maternity leave was shorter so you had more time to pay for before they started school. And it was only 15 free hours after age 3 and not 30. And I had precisely zero help from extended family and a husband who worked away a lot when the DC were small. The norm was to either save a lot before you had children or work opposite hours to your partner (I used to know one parent who worked 11pm-6am before going home to look after a baby and an 8 year old) or just accept you would be very poor for a few years. I don't think that has changed. The problem here is that OP has "assumed" probably based on the fact that she's young enough that her parents/mum generally do do lots for her. I can see it's a shock, but now she needs to take some deep breaths and work out a solution. Suggesting that mum can babysit for 1 or 2 afternoons may be a good compromise (and even then she will need to be flexible enough to allow for mum wanting to go away etc).

I am laughing at the posters who think the older parents had it easy! When I had my first DC I was in the early stages of my career. Nursery fees took nearly my whole wage. Maternity leave was shorter and my DC was in nursery at 4 mths. My mum lived miles away and my in-laws were a 100miles away too. I am in my early 50s and still have 3 of my 4 DC in the house and when I retire I certainly will not be offering child care. I do agree with others though that this thread is cringing. So much for woman’s rights, getting the vote, fighting for equality to then have woman criticising other woman for not providing childcare. The OP could ask her dad but nope let’s berate the woman

Her dad works

Isaidnoalready ah I missed that he does two jobs

I think she is being selfish. It's so much harder these days to bring up children than it was for our parents. You would think she would want to help - I would if it were my daughter, no doubt about it.

@Skidaramink you need to come back and explain how we had it easier. I am almost a decade older than the OP's mother. We had no family locally at all. We had to pay for all childcare. All of it. No help from the Government whatsoever.

@RockingMyFiftiesNot It was easier because back then it was absolutely possible to buy a decent house with just one parent working a very ordinary job.

Most families could get by just fine with one parent being a stay-at-home parent or working part-time school hours.

I know because I came from a working-class background, my mother stayed at home looking after us and my father was a builder. We lived in a three-bed terraced house which 40 years ago cost £30K and is now worth £800K.

Even when my parents got divorced when I was 6 and my father decided he didn’t want to pay any child maintenance, we got by and managed to keep the house with my mother working as a part-time secretary, around school hours. No help from wider family.

None of the above is possible now. My own mother (in her 70s) is always saying how she feels so sorry for the younger generations because they have it so much harder than she did. Why can’t you admit that too?

My IL's said not to expect
Them to help regularly and they'd help if we needed any when the children were sick. We just managed, found a nursery that could do ad hoc hours and days/half days. The nursery support helped when it kicked in I think eldest was 3 then. You'll be fine you just need to factor it in, perhaps pay your loans off later, get a cheaper mortgage on your home, pay interest only for a few years before paying capital also.
Some employers have a nursery voucher scheme, I still use mine form my children for extra studies or after school club. Don't forget you'll get some money 'family allowance' )or whatever it's called) which for 1 child is about £90 I think a month

I sympathise OP. I find it so sad that in this country it seems that parents simply wash their hands of their children when they become adults.

My mum retired when I had children so that she and my dad could care for their grandchildren full time. My siblings and I have never paid a penny in childcare.

I plan to do the same for my own children when they start their own families. Each generation fully committed to looking after the next is how I have been raised. As a result my children have the most wonderful bond with their grandparents.

That wasn't the case when we bought our house in the late 80s at all. I of course agree the housing market is much tougher now, but we couldn't have bought a 3 bedroomed property on one graduate salary back then, we needed both of us to work to be able to buy a fairly modest family home. All of our friends were in the same situation. I only had one friend give up work but she was the exception because her husband earned a way beyond 'normal' salary.
The decision to continue working isn't just about paying the mortgage, I couldn't have returned to my industry after having my children as it had changed so much. I know there are still people who believe you shouldn't work after having children but I'm not one of them. And I definitely don't agree with posters who are suggesting you shouldn't have children if you aren't prepared to look after your grandchildren.

I find it so sad that in this country it seems that parents simply wash their hands of their children when they become adults.

this is not what has happened here and is not what anyone has said.