I’d rather pay for childcare than ask the grandparents – they can’t be trusted
For many parents, having a grandparent or two on hand to help with school pick-ups, unexpected late nights at work or just a couple of hours’ respite from their kids can be a life-saver – and the chance to save on nursery fees can be very helpful too.
But it is easy for grandparents who love seeing their grandchildren to feel that they are being taken advantage of, and asked to take on far more than is fair. Suddenly retirement is filled with a full-time job, but one that comes without financial recompense.
So, should grandparents who help out with childcare be paid? Grandmother and comedy writer Jan Etherington and parent Rhiannon Picton-James give their perspectives.
Should grandparents get paid? Well, if you expect to be paid, you can expect to be treated like staff – and that’s a weird dynamic to introduce within the family.
That’s why the only people you should pay to look after your children are strangers. People who you can say “actually no, she can’t have sweets” to, without a painful and overwrought conversation.
I’d rather pay someone money than have to deal with my parenting being questioned over every decision.
Really, there’s only one very specific scenario in which I can imagine it would be appropriate to pay a grandparent for childminding services, and that’s if a grandparent had given up their paid job specifically to take on a child-caring role and they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to do it. And if it had already been agreed upon.
The whole concept is a minefield, because how much would you even pay? Minimum wage? Would you match their salary to their last role? Would you really want to pay the going rate for a professional childminder? Should they then have to register as childminders? Because professional childminders have professional qualifications. It wouldn’t exactly be value for money.
Especially when most grandparents today haven’t had a child in 30 years, aren’t up to date with CPR training and don’t know what parenting styles are. I’d much rather spend the money on a professional and not have to worry about, I don’t know, a rogue haircut. A child coming home with a fringe they didn’t have before. A child coming home at bedtime pumped up on sugar and the squash I’d already explained they weren’t to have, as per the instructions of the health visitor. Or a picture on Facebook that I have to explain must come down, because my child is in a nappy and topless, and it’s a publicly available image.
“But squash is a bit more interesting for her!” one grandparent argued, seeing no problem with going against my instructions and giving a one-year-old blackcurrant juice for the first time. There is no explaining to someone who drank warm whiskey when they were little that a poorly child does not need squash. They just can’t understand it.
It’s not even their fault. Grandparents parent according to the norms of their own era and are resistant to being told otherwise by their now adult children, despite all contradicting evidence and the research we now have.
And that is the difficulty with grandparent childcare, they do not see themselves as employees following instructions, but as experienced parents in their own right. It’s the real cost of the free help.
If a professional childminder ignores instructions, you simply stop using them. You do not then see them at Christmas or, I don’t know, hear that they’ve been slagging you off to your extended family. There is no friction.
Will this be the first ever generation of grandparents to ask for money in exchange for spending time with their grandchildren? I know my grandmother, who often took care of me, wouldn’t dream of asking for a penny for it. She didn’t see it as work, as labour, she only saw it as spending time with her family. It’s what her family did. They all looked after each other’s children.
They had even less money back then than we have now, but it didn’t matter. We have truly lost “the village” if we have arrived at a stage where grandparents are now charging their own children for helping them out with some babysitting.
Will we start charging them back? What else is transactional? Need a lift to that hospital appointment? Someone to collect your groceries? Your prescription? Lawn mowed? I accept cash or bank transfer.
