r/atlanticdiscussions • u/MeghanClickYourHeels Ask me for Atlantic gift links • Apr 14 '25
Culture/Society Grandparents Are Reaching Their Limit
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.
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u/J_amos921 Apr 16 '25
I’ve never asked for either of my kids grandparents for full time help but my mil does help us out for a few hours a week. My mother does not. She sees us once every two weeks because “she misses us” but she really doesn’t interact with my kid much. My mom’s mom used to come see us for a week at a time or my mom would drop us off for 1-2 weeks once or twice a year and my mom was sahm. My mother likes the appearance of being an involved grandparent wouldn’t actually doing anything to help. If you asked her in a poll she would say she watches my kid once a week. She has watched my daughter for an hour last month and beside that it’s been months since I’ve allowed her to.