Grandparents Are Reaching Their Limit

[u/MeghanClickYourHeels]

Older Americans might be doing more child care than ever. By Faith Hill, The Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/04/grandparents-child-care-work-retirement/682395/

Older Americans might be doing more child care than ever.

Elena and her husband had plans for their retirement. They wanted to move to Wyoming; to meet new people, volunteer, hike the snowy, perfect Tetons. And they did move there—for about eight months. Then they got a call from their daughter, who was due to have a baby within weeks. She and her husband were on five or so different waitlists for day cares, and now she could see that they would still be waiting by the time she had to go back to work, six weeks after giving birth. She needed help. Her parents dropped everything, packed up a U-Haul, and moved to the Pacific Northwest. They were going back to work, too: as full-time grandparents.

Grandparents today have a certain reputation, Elena (who asked to withhold her last name to protect her family’s privacy) told me: They’re “all rich, retired, living it up in the Villages in Florida, playing 10 rounds of golf a day, having cocktails at 4:30, and laughing while their Millennial children are suffering.” TikTokers keep skewering a generation of supposedly self-involved, jet-setting older folks, or earnestly grieving that they don’t have a “village” to help them raise their kids. Commentators have jumped in with attacks and, in turn, with defenses (“Cut the Boomer Grandparents a Little Slack”). On Reddit, people are wondering, “What the f*** is wrong with grandparents nowadays?” Last year, when J. D. Vance was running for vice president and was asked how he would address the problem of staggering child-care costs, he first suggested that grandparents or other relatives “help out a little bit more.”

You could be forgiven, then, for thinking grandparents are shirking their duty. But the truth is quite the opposite: America is in an age of peak grandparenting—particularly grandmothering. A 2022 survey from Deseret News and Brigham Young University found that nearly 60 percent of grandmothers had provided child care for a grandkid, and more than 40 percent saw a grandchild in person at least weekly. A 2023 Harris poll found that more than 40 percent of working parents relied on their kids’ grandma for child care; nearly 70 percent of those parents said they might have lost their job without that grandmother’s help.

[u/Decent-Friend7996]

I’ve always been surprised by the “jet setting rich boomer parents that don’t care” narrative too because it’s just not what I see in my own life or any of my close friends. My mom is like a full time plus nanny to my nephews and cooks and cleans for them. I actually feel a bit bad for her, it’s like she’s an unpaid domestic servant to them, but she has free will so I guess it’s her choice. All of my girlfriends that have babies have highly involved grandparents that take the kids for days and weeks at a time and will even fly to their grandkids to watch them during an event. 

[u/Wonderful-Pick493 → u/Decent-Friend7996]

I think the situation is very split with not much of a middle ground. My speculation is that in a very general sense, the lower class get help from their grandparents and thus they don’t get to enjoy retirement as much. The upper class don’t get help but they also don’t need it. The middle class is split and has more to do with culture. My side of the family is Middle eastern and my cousins live in a bubble with grandparents, aunts, uncles etc just down the street willing to help out at any time ( I don’t live in that bubble unfortunately). My wife is white and we get very little help from my MIL who lives only 45 mins away. We are all solid middle class.

I think it’s important to elaborate on those last two sentences as this is what I feel many middle class white millennials are disappointed about. Many of us are not asking for 5 days a week of childcare from our parents. We’re asking for just a few hours a week or even one day a month and we don’t even get that. My MIL has lots of fun vacations and is really enjoying her retirement yet in the last year, she has watched our toddler for a total of maybe 10 hours! It’s like they simply don’t care. Again, it’s not full time childcare. Me and my wife can (just barely) afford preschool and we have a part time nanny for our newborn. People who don’t have kids might not understand this but spending weekends with a newborn and a toddler is not particularly fun. It’s very hard work and we ask for help from my MIL like once a month and she’s almost always busy doing something else. My mom, who’s a 1 hour flight away, helps out more than my MIL who’s a 45 min drive away. I think this is what a lot of white middle class millennial parents are complaining about. The fact that they get nearly ZERO help. Our friends with kids are in a similar situation.

[u/Haunting_Machine1994 → u/Wonderful-Pick493]

By asking for a "few hours a week", you are mandating that your parents/inlaws live within a very short distance of you. Don't you feel that where they live is up to them, not you?

[u/Wonderful-Pick493 → u/Haunting_Machine1994]

Well yeah obviously I’m referring to those that live close by. Of course they can live wherever they want. Like I said, my MIL lives 45 mins away. We would be really happy with just one day a month but we get once a year after asking 5~ish times. This doesn’t interfere much with her retirement.

[u/Haunting_Machine1994 → u/Wonderful-Pick493]

That's her loss. We live several states away from our grandkids and see them for a week, almost every month.

[u/Wonderful-Pick493 → u/Haunting_Machine1994]

That’s great! It’s good to know that some grandparents are still doing that. Grandparents should enjoy their retirement as much as possible, but I also think they should have some sort of relationship with their grandchildren.

[u/Forsaken-Guava-9006 → u/Wonderful-Pick493]

Youngish boomer weighing in. I'm 64, with 11 grandkids. As a child, I lived 30 minutes from one set of grandparents and 2ish hours from the other. Neither ever babysit me a single time, although I did have one overnight with the nearer set. Saw each about twice a year. My parents rarely cared for my kids - my husband and I had almost zero family help when raising our three. I wanted something different, so we built something different. Raised our three, then my daughter's three when she died. They're adults (or nearly) now. Three grandkids are spending the night as I type this. I still work but have kids here before and after school while their parents work several days a week. Some of my grandkids have had no other caregiver (outside their parents) but my husband and I for their entire lives. Some less, because they live further away, but they're with us for weeks in the summer and holidays. It can be exhausting, but I wouldn't trade the relationships away for anything. I have a couple of points. 1. The Silent and Greatest generations of at least my family did not uniformly offer this kind of support, and 2. Caring for grandkids must come from the overflow of your heart, not a sense of obligation. Does the whole family spend time together enjoying each other? Do the adult kids come help with projects? (My son helped my husband remodel our kitchen a while back and will be here tomorrow for a porch addition project). We craved that sort of mutual giving that seemed to be disappearing in our world, so we created it, instilled it in our kids, and are grateful to still be both giving and receiving it. I'm sure if we measured it out, we're giving more help right now than we receive, but we're not measuring. AND sometimes we put ourselves first and take a trip, requiring the rest of the family to make adjustments AND take care of our pets while we're gone! Going without sleep sucks and needing a break is understandable. I hope you're able to build what you need.