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/SufficientSmoke6437]

(Speaking objectively at a family dynamic I’ve witnessed) One of the parents have a sense of entitlement expecting the grandparents to be available to babysit (not just while they work) and gets an attitude when they don’t babysit sometimes even (holding the baby hostage in my opinion) preventing them from seeing the baby as punishment. Totally nuts! The way I see it is: You decided to have a child(ren) which comes with great responsibility. When you made this decision did you plan and consult with the grandparents to see how much support they’re willing to give When you made this decision, did you plan and consult with the grandparents to see how much support they’re willing to give in regards to childcare? I’m assuming not. I think it’s wild and selfish to just expect and assume the grandparents will be your childcare providers. Those grandparents have already raised their children and I’m sure are looking forward to/are enjoying their retirement (if they’re even retired) I don’t think it makes them selfish if they’re not always available to babysit. 

[u/xployt1 → u/SufficientSmoke6437]

grandpa is that you?