‘I stopped doing childcare for my grandson – now I rarely see him’

Many grandparents long to help with childcare. They can’t wait to get their hands on their gorgeous new grandchild and support adult children who are struggling to pay nursery fees. Besides, all their friends are doing it: the country would grind to a halt without the nine million-strong grandparent army found to be providing unpaid childcare in the UK. But grandparents often jump in with offers of help without fully taking on board what they’re letting themselves in for. Looking after someone else’s child, even if it’s your grandchild, is not only hard work, it’s a huge commitment that gets in the way of all the other stuff you need to do. Rosa, 60 and based in Edinburgh, looked after her two granddaughters two days a week while working part-time herself, found the experience difficult. “Looking after the girls was very special. But it was also challenging and exhausting and frustrating and it often meant my husband and I had to work at weekends and make compromises,” she says. “Their flat was on the third floor, and they were happy with a level of chaos that we found really difficult. There were never any clean clothes or proper food in the fridge. If you go into a place that’s in chaos and you’ve got to get the kids dressed and find their stuff and get them fed and in their car seats and off to nursery on time it’s not that much fun.” Rosa felt torn a lot of the time. “I wanted to be understanding; they were struggling to adjust to having two young children and working long hours, and above all, I wanted to support them,” she says. “And I felt bad for being judgmental when I shouldn’t be. “But on the other hand, I felt a bit taken for granted and resentful at times. I was having to cram my own work into three days, and I got really stressed out and exhausted. I’d think, I’m doing all of this for you and you’re not even sorting out the clothes and nappies so that I can find them easily, rather than having to ask the three-year-old. There was also a kind of unspoken expectation that we’d make dinner, so we had to think about that on top of everything else.” Grandchildcare is fraught with dilemmas because it’s an unpaid labour of love. No paid childcarer would put up with the kind of behaviour that makes some grandparents change their minds, such as parents who get back late without texting or apologising. And it’s easy to find yourself agreeing to extra days at short notice, as Lisa, 72 from London, knows all too well. “When my daughter was launching her business, the childcare I was doing gradually built up to two and sometimes three days rather than the one we originally committed to,” she says. “I’ve never felt exploited, but three days is too much – it’s exhausting. I sometimes have to cancel arrangements, and I get behind with my own work [as a writer]. There have been times when I’ve thought, I really can’t take this.” But how do you tell your adult child you want to back out of an arrangement they’ve come to rely on? Some parents have to work longer hours to pay for the extra cost of childcare. Rosa agonised about pulling out of regular childcare. “After three years, I decided I’d rather be the nice grandma who takes the grandchildren out for treats. But I had sleepless nights worrying about how to tell my daughter because I knew it would be really tough to find childcare that they could afford; the other granny did one day a week for a while but she soon decided it was all too much,” she says. “I had a good excuse for giving up: my daughter knew that in the winter, I’d been ill for weeks after looking after the children. It was clearly a blow, but we offered to stay until they’d sorted out an alternative. I don’t think they held it against me.” Things weren’t so easy for Jan. She soon discovered the downside to relinquishing the increasing responsibility: when childcare is no longer an automatic date in the diary, you have to constantly arrange to see grandchildren. That can be a particular issue for paternal grandparents like her. “I used to have an OK relationship with my daughter-in-law – perhaps because I was doing her a favour,” she says. “But now she often doesn’t respond to my messages, and that makes it harder to see my grandson, who I adore. That’s the saddest thing. It’s such a big change from being with him two days a week, and I really miss the closeness.” When it comes to childcare, parents and grandparents are notoriously bad at communicating how they really feel. But if too much is left unsaid, resentment can build up. And sometimes the childcare arrangement ends after an outburst, rather than the diplomatic way the grandparents had planned to break the news. Mo and Sonia, who are both in their mid-sixties and based in Derby, looked after their two grandsons while their dad worked part-time from home for about eighteen months. “It was always quite difficult, because my son-in-law kept coming downstairs, especially if he heard one of the boys crying, and of course that was confusing for them and made us feel a bit useless,” reflects Sonia. “Everything came to a head one day when we got there early to take the boys to a music workshop. They were both still in their pyjamas, and they hadn’t had breakfast – that was annoying enough. The kids started saying they didn’t want to go, but we managed to persuade them and got them dressed. But when their dad appeared, he gave in and said they could stay at home if they wanted to. It wasn’t the first time this kind of thing had happened, and my husband was furious. We both felt that totally undermined our authority, and set us up for a really challenging day with the boys. He said, ‘I can’t deal with this’, and walked out. “The next few weeks were frightening and very uncomfortable. My daughter was furious; it was the worst argument we’ve had since she was grown up. I was terrified that she might stop us seeing the boys, although deep down I felt we were too close for that to happen. In the end I suggested meeting up without the kids to talk, and the men apologised. We said we wanted to stop doing regular childcare, and they weren’t surprised. Luckily they found a lovely local childminder quite quickly. But we were a bit wary of our son-in-law after that, and we still are.” Grandparents are often relieved when they stop, but there are regrets too. “When I stopped doing childcare, I felt light and spacious; I’m much happier having fun time with the girls,” Rosa says. Now, she takes her grandchildren to museums, parks and plays board games with them every two weeks. “But in some ways,” she says, “I regret giving up, because I wanted so much to support the family. When I look at photos of that time I’m just so glad we did it, because it was really special. We didn’t want to do it and we loved it.”Ceila Dodd’s new book Grand Expectations: The Joys and Dilemmas of Being a Grandparent is out now