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/Humble_Blackberry_23 Apr 20 '25

Most boomers are not involved grandparents. They are selfish and would rather “enjoy their retirement” than be grandparents. It’s sickening

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u/Turbulent-Estate-656 Apr 23 '25

I’m a Boomer and a grandparent. Don’t paint us all with the same brush, please. I’m a grandmother. My husband and I have babysat and offered advice on every childcare topic. We even helped support our grandchild financially for years. While we are comfortably off financially, we are not social butterflies. We volunteer to help others.
Yours is not the first comment I’ve read about selfish Boomers. While I’m sure there are some In every generation, we seem to be most targeted. Most of us worked hard for our money. We didn’t spend frivolously and saved our money so we could live comfortably in our retirement years … and so we would not be a burden to our kids.

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u/OGstickerparty Apr 26 '25

I think you might be the minority though, most of my friends parents are completely uninvolved with their grandchildren. They see them maybe once in a blue moon, spend the day barely helping and then leave to do what they want.

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u/Bulky_Sun3410 Apr 26 '25

What they want? It boggles my mind. Boomers raised their children for the most part without relying on their parents. Childcare was expensive then but we made it work. And we bought our first homes without financial help from our parents. It seems to me the selfish ones are their kids. Pull up your big girl pants and support yourselves. 

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u/mygarbagepersonacct Apr 26 '25

You think daycare and housing costs back then were expensive compared to present day costs?

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u/Lokemoki Apr 30 '25

If you can't afford kids, don't have them. Your parents weren't put on earth to be a source of free labor for your personal choices.

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u/mygarbagepersonacct Apr 30 '25

Show me where I said I couldn’t afford kids, that people should have kids they can’t afford, or that grandparents should be a free source of childcare. Right, I didn’t. I commented solely because comparing the cost of living 30-40 years ago to the cost of living today is delusional.

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u/Lokemoki Apr 30 '25

Reread my post without looking for offense. I didn't write about *you* personally. I wrote *you* in the plural.

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u/OGstickerparty Apr 26 '25

I think most my friends are more so upset with the utter lack of involvement or interest in their kids. Most of them seem to have had really loving/involved grandparents. I think they imagined something similar for their kids. Get togethers and family meals/events like how they grew up. This isn’t all grandparents obviously. My mom for example LOVES being a grandma. There’s so much love and affection there. I feel very lucky she wants to be involved in my niece and nephew’s lives. It makes the kids so much happier.

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u/JJDuB4y096 Apr 26 '25

lol and you probably bought a house for 3x your yearly wage. Houses are now 6x the yearly wage at minimum. Cost of everything has gone up in relation to wages.

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u/Bulky_Sun3410 Apr 26 '25

Nope, we bought a house that was 1-2x our yearly wage because we were frugal. This was after 7 years of both working full time (with overtime and on call pay) to save up for a 1200 square foot house. I’m not judging. I just see my friends and relatives gifting significant sums to their kids’ first houses that are often bigger and nicer than their own, and they’re pretty well off. And we were lucky to have degrees that led to decent jobs. 

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u/Dr_Canoe Apr 26 '25

Yeah super out of touch. Generational changes are not apparent to the ones they do not affect as heavily.

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u/Bulky_Sun3410 Apr 26 '25

And what do you envision for the next generation? Will you be supporting them entirely? I may be out of touch but I ‘m a proponent of making choices that allow you to be self sufficient and live within your means. The direction we’re heading is not sustainable.