Grandparents shouldn’t feel obliged to offer free childcare

Expecting grandparents to step up and look after their grandchildren as unpaid childcare – their moral obligation or a selfish ask? Discuss.

The UK’s economy is propped up by an army of retired volunteer child carers for their so their grown-up children can work.

Largely women at the end of their own working lives stepping into new mightily responsible roles looking after, stimulating, entertaining, nourishing and exercising challenging small people often for longer hours than they used to work as a favour so their own children can make ends meet and afford the luxuries.

Too often, while tied to toddlers from dawn to dusk, they also care for their elderly parents.

They do it because they care. But by saving their loved ones costs, will they pay the ultimate price with their own health?

Replacing the stress and demands of work with those that come with small children is exhausting.

I met a grandmother in a café queue last week struggling to keep her six and four-year-old grandchildren in check.

She seemed at the end of her tether, resorting to empty threats they were totally immune to. “If you don’t behave, you won’t be going on holiday/have a cake/play on the swings.”

They took no notice, instead hitting her with their straw sunhats.

She was clearly struggling. The third, even more lively, grandchild was at home with her husband. She was looking forward to a break at half term when the children were away on holiday.

They looked after the children because they didn’t want a stranger to do it. It sounded like a guilt deal.

When she should be taking time for herself, she was being pulled every which way because it was important that her grandchildren were with people that loved them. I totally got that, but felt she was the only one in the deal that wasn’t a winner.

And what was a privilege to this kind woman, is a pain to other grandparents, and such a sacrifice they refuse point blank to make.

Some grandparents want time with their grandchildren to be a rare treat rather than a daily chore. This can cause divisions between long-term friends who feel the other is being a sop or downright mean.

Envy and division simmers between parents who can cash in on free grandparent childcare and those who don’t have the option, footing huge nursery fees.

A Mumset discussion featured one mother ranting that it was morally poor of her parents, retired and in good health, only to agree to have her children for a day at a time and on their terms.

“Am I being unreasonable to think it’s morally poor not to provide any childcare whatsoever as a grandparent if you are retired and in good health?” she asked the community.

Childcare was a “horrendous cost,” she said, although she could afford it. Her parents enjoyed being with their grandchildren but “pretty much always on their terms.”
Apart from the odd day, they wouldn’t be consistent or reliable. 

But why should they give up what should be their time, to do what they enjoy, if they feel it wouldn’t work?

Such entitled expectation is selfish. Anyone who decides to have children must accept the responsibility to look after them.

If they are fortunate enough to have parents who view regular caring for grandchildren as a pleasure, they should be grateful.

Some don’t have that chance when distance, ill health, or death has deprived them.

Resentment simmer s between those who have free help and those who don’t and can’t.

Then there’s guilt – from those who appreciate their position and feel guilty for burdening their parents, sometimes from grandparents who refuse to be regular carers, and then grandparents who refuse to apply for the state pension boost through the Specified Adult Child Credits, missing out on more than £1,300 because they feel they’re not entitled, and it feels wrong to claim for something done for love.

The country is in a childcare crisis and our economy on its knees if grandparents withdrew free labour – not to mention the free elderly parent care.

The government handily turns a blind eye because the selfless grandparents are doing it a favour.

Please don’t let them pay the ultimate price for being too good.

We need more young farmers
Overheard in Waitrose last Saturday: “There are no avocados at all, let alone organic, and people are scrapping over the Jersey Royals.”

Shoppers were aghast at the glaring gaps in the fruit and veg section.

“It feels like an apocalypse,” one man exclaimed, when the penny dropped he could barely meet half of his bank holiday barbecue ingredients. In horror, he muttered: “I’ll have to go to Tesco.”

The ultimate punishment

Waitrose blamed the shortages on an IT glitch, but, no sooner than stocks were replenished, another warning of food supply issues because of a looming retirement wave of increasingly elderly farmers.

More than four in 10 are at least 60 with almost three in ten 65 or over. Fewer young people going into farming when so many are leaving would be hugely disruptive to domestic food production.

With the backdrop of the wonderful Suffolk Show this week, where farming and food were celebrated, more needs to be done to attract young people into farming with its new technology and the vital role it plays in all our lives.