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?

@SoupDragon merely an observation. I see it on these boards all the time - people refusing to look after their grandchildren (even when they have time to do so). It's a very British attitude which you don't see as much in other countries.

I can see that some people might find it strange that some grandparents won't give up their later lives to look after their grandchildren. But there's a huge leap between that and saying people wash their hands of their children once adults or completely refuse to look after grandchildren.

Which other countries ? countries where women are still treated like second-class citizen’s ?

or countries where women are able to afford to stay at home throughout their lives because one single income will support a family.
The new dynamic is literally going to make it impossible for anyone to stay at home with the kids, mother‘s, grandmother‘s, grandfather‘s, fathers, we can’t be far off needing the kids to get a part-time job to support the bills.

If you are retired and physically able, why on Earth wouldn’t you want to help your children and grandchildren? There’s no way in hell I would sit back luxuriating in my garden while my daughter works herself to the bone, juggling work and motherhood, struggling to buy even the most basic home, while my grandchild is being looked after by a childminder. No way in hell.

There’s no way in hell I would sit back luxuriating in my garden while my daughter works herself to the bone, juggling work and motherhood, struggling to buy even the most basic home, while my grandchild is being looked after by a childminder.

Good for you!

I'd always want to treat my children equally. There is a biggish age gap between them. If they also then have a few years between their children, I could end up providing childcare well into my seventies, whilst also caring for a relative with dementia. I will help my children with emergency childcare cover, school holidays etc but I'm not enough of a martyr to give up 4 days a week for childcare on top of my existing eldercare responsibilities. Not everyone is luxuriating in their back garden!
If that makes me selfish, after decades of 'working myself to the bone juggling childcare and work' as you describe it, (no family close by), then so be it.

@Skidaramink i completely agree.

@Nothappyatwork I was thinking of Italy, my husband's country of birth. Certainly not third world, or anywhere women are oppressed!

Is that the same Italy that has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, largely due to the lack of affordable child care?

Also the Italy of traditional roles that keep women doing all the housework etc (and presumably obliged to care for generations of children?

Compared to the UK, Italy is very patriarchal, so the young mother whose own parent will help out with childcare, is going to pay for it one way or another.

culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/italian-culture/italian-culture-family

@saraclara you make a good point about traditional roles. However, that does not detract from my original point which was that we have very different attitudes to caring for family members in the UK. Obviously there are reasons it's not always possible (grandparents are in poor health, or still having to work full time) but it's the attitude of not wanting to help I find odd.

An incorrect observation.

Threads on MN represent a tiny proportion of the country so seeing it "all the time" on here is meaningless. Especially when it isn't seen all the time anyway.

@SoupDragon not incorrect, and very much the case in my personal experience as well as what I read here.

We will just have to disagree here.

merely an observation. I see it on these boards all the time - people refusing to look after their grandchildren (even when they have time to do so). It's a very British attitude which you don't see as much in other countries

That a very romantic view of exotic other countries. I live in Mexico and most people get free nursery care for their children. AFAIK, places like Italy and Cataluña have the lowest birthrates in the world. So what other countries, China?

Of the 92 counties that have easily accessible retirement age data 80 of them have a lower retirement age for women than the uk (and lets not pretend its all men in the other countries taking up the childcare reins)

So that means in 87% of these countries childcare may be done more by grandparents simply because they retire earlier. Which gives them not only the time to do the childcare, but less rushing to try to fit some post retirement activities in before their health declines because they have more time to enjoy retirement.

Thats without taking a whole host of other factors into account.

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.

So what happened during the school holidays then?

@GoldenPineapple88

You dont think women in Italy are oppressed? Italy? The country with huge levels of harassment of women. The country which us massively more patriarchal than the UK?

OP's mother is 50, not in her 70s. I'm the same age. It was absolutely not possible for DH and I (and we are in a middling expensive part of the country) to buy a decent family house with only one parent working a very ordinary job (when we bought our house pre-children, an average 3 bed semi was about £150K in our area).

You are thinking about a generation earlier.

I do think it's harder for current 20somethings, but it wouldn't have been easy for OP's parents either. I think OP alludes to that in the fact that her dad works two jobs and has little spare time.

Its sort of sad that not only is this woman expected to give up any hope of her own life because her dd and her oh-so-charming bf decided to get pregnant before they could afford it, but she would get zero gratitude too, as it is only to be expected or even in exchange for help when life is no longer worth living.

I hope you don't kiss your loved ones with that dirty mouth.

I had missed the partners shouting. If that was him

so if you only really need childcare 2-4 I would suggest a cm. Yes you may have to pay for an afternoon space but 5 of those isn’t going to be that much @Essexgurlx

@AclowncalledAlice

🤣

"Back then" ???

OP's Mum is 50, so several years younger than me.
You are definitely not describing my life, nor the lives of anyone I know.
Everyone my age went back to work after having their baby. Overwhelmingly 3 months after having their baby, as that is how long maternity leave was.
Not many people could afford to pay a mortgage on their own.
You might need to do a little research into interest rates at the time, and the % of income we were paying just to feed our mortgages.

Exactly. Talk about entitled twats.

They should have been more careful about contraception.

Again, another wrong post

It's quite easy to have a close relationship with grandparents/ grandchildren without being unpaid childcare

@Youarehorrid Wow! You are one silver tongued charmer! The OP is one lucky lucky lady. Not only does she have someone with a mouth like a sewer but also someone who is willing to go on the internet and make themselves look like a gigantic prat!