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Points made by BirdieBelle and germaine2626 confirm the "enthusiastic" part of our BB nature. It's something I've started to suspect in myself and my personal situation.
When we were growing up grandparents didn't expect to be an active part of grandchildren's daily lives.
They would never have dreamed of selling their long time home and move closer to the grandchildren.
Boomer Grandparents on the other hand think nothing of doing just that--and do it! Often without the agreement of their adult children. They just do it. No wonder young parents feel slightly irritated with their own parents sometimes.
MarisaMay also raises some important issues too: grandparents providing free daycare and parents working executive level jobs. A recipe for conflict/misunderstanding/too much togetherness.
Free daycare puts gparents in the position of being half employee/half parent. Who makes the decisions about food/naps/activities? Parents or gparents?
If the children were sent to commercial paid -for daycare they would have virtually no decision making input, other than whether or not to send their children there.
Yet there seems to be a desire to tell their parents what to do and when. Hmm
Do they (the young parents) really have a right to do that when they're accepting free services from their parents?
Yet there seems to be a desire to tell their parents what to do and when. Hmm
Do they (the young parents) really have a right to do that when they're accepting free services from their parents?
Well, yeah ... theoretically.
It's tricky, though, because they are basically setting up a business arrangement with a family member, and a lot of the issues that would be explicitly discussed with a paid child-care provider are glossed over or avoided or assumed when grandparents provide the child care.
Fortunately I didn't know any freeloading parents who just handed babies over for free child care. Those I know who used grandparents often and regularly did offset costs like food and gas.
In any event, there are inevitable conflicts when your grandparents are your child care. How those are handled will vary according to who is involved.
I don't have any grandchildren so it is not an issue, but anyone that has parents willing to be free babysitters because they work should be grateful. Obviously if their parents had been abusive they shouldn't use them at all, but that's a different subject. Want your kids raised your way...... Stay home with them or pay for a sitter, daycare, etc.
One thing that pops into my mind is that parents are usually a little more relaxed with a second child, and even more so for a third or more. My oldest sister with six ( two adopted) said they wear one down until the little things don't matter anymore. Do it occurs to me that grandparents being experienced with children may not be so concerned about every little thing.
I don't have any grandchildren so it is not an issue, but anyone that has parents willing to be free babysitters because they work should be grateful. Obviously if their parents had been abusive they shouldn't use them at all, but that's a different subject. Want your kids raised your way...... Stay home with them or pay for a sitter, daycare, etc.
I do think most parents I know are grateful for the grandparent care provided. In Sydney we do have a large segment of the population whose heritage is from countries where the grandparents normally take on the role of full time childcare, eg China and even Italy. In some ways this puts some pressure on those of us from Anglo background whose own parents did little childcare. Obviously we can refuse but mostly we compromise to a day or two a week.
In my case I have the conflict of being a believer in women's rights to have a career. I was pushed into teaching as a career as it was believed to be suitable for a married woman, which is true to a fair extent. But I did not want my kids to choose their career on that basis.
Because Australia has a small population some careers are very much centred on the biggest couple of cities which have by far the most expensive housing costs. Which pushes up the cost of childcare as well as general COL. Staying home with the kids for long term is simply not an option for most families.
But I have Grandma Rules for my house or when I am in charge. The kids respond well to them but it is not as clearcut when the parents are around too. I keep in mind the parents' general wishes especially on amount and type of screen time and of general diet. But I do give treats and occasional fruit juice and so on.
Just for my information, what on earth do working parents in the US do with the kids in school vacations, especially with the summer vacation being so long and parents leave so short? It is a nightmare here even with people getting four weeks annual leave and the kids usually having six weeks summer vacation and three shorter breaks.
My DIL will be going back to work in August after taking a year's sabbatical after my GD was born. Because my allergies prevent me being able to spend more than about 20 minutes inside their house, and my house is the farthest thing in the world from being child-safe, I was wondering what their daycare arrangement would be. DIL's parents are extremely doting and live only 2 miles from their house so I did wonder if my DIL would use them as caregivers... but discovered just last week that GD will be put into daycare. No idea what factors went into my son and DIL's decision to do that instead of asking DIL's parents (who'd have jumped at the chance, no doubt ... her mother has made herself the baby's Favorite Person already even at this early age) to do it.
To be honest I'm relieved that circumstances make it impossible for me to act as weekday caregiver, because I'm just not a baby/toddler person regardless of the relationship. Young children are not my thing.
My paternal grandparents did not babysit (before they moved to Florida when I was in grade school) and my maternal grandparents died long before I was born. As for my MIL, the one thing I actually agreed with her on was when she once said (in reference to my BIL's kids, while I was dating her older son) "My sons have been told not to expect me to be a babysitter." Not that I would have ever wanted her to anyhow, and as it turned out I never had to face that problem because she died when DS was only a week or so old.
Just for my information, what on earth do working parents in the US do with the kids in school vacations, especially with the summer vacation being so long and parents leave so short? It is a nightmare here even with people getting four weeks annual leave and the kids usually having six weeks summer vacation and three shorter breaks.
MarisaMay, not really sure but it seems to work out. There are a lot of summer programs, camps, Bible school at churches where everyone is welcome and attendence is free.
And then there's always a week or two at Grandma's or auntie's and the cousins. And the family vacation for a week or two. Somehow it comes together.
For little ones daycare is all year round and there are summer events, picnics, trips to farm, zoo, etc. That's how my granddaughter's (very expensive) daycare was.
I cherish the memories of the long lazy summer days when I was a kid.
I suppose what we do not have here ,to any great extent are summer residential camps. Otherwise it is as you say, there are all sorts of programs for day activities, daycare is generally 50 weeks a year, my kids generally have a week away in each of the four holiday periods. But none of the formal programs are free.
I guess what I do find a bit hard is that I spend about five hours every Wednesday and Thursday with before and after school care and drop off and pickups. Then it seems in no time it is school vacation again and we are scheduling them in to stay. Unfortunately one set of the other grandparents live interstate and do not have the confidence to mind the two grandkids themselves. All the siblings of my daughter's husbands are single so no use for childcare.
One of them has a part time nanny and she pays $US18 an hour which is a really good rate. But it really adds up if she uses that in the vacations, her kids getting fifteen weeks a year. So we help out as we can.
My parents are boomers. They weren't helicopter parents to me or my younger brother. I'm at the very end of Gen X and he's an older Millennial. At any rate, I'm the only one with grandkids and they like spending time with them but they dont' really help out that much. My mom usually takes them for a few days in the summer so that's nice. My husband's parents watched the kids a lot when they were little...I always felt guilty asking but they swore up and down they LOVED having them over...they would drop whatever they were doing if they could see them. We were really lucky there!
I hope to be the type of grandparent in between the 2 extremes. I want to babysit them and help my kids out but I don't want to smother them (I'm not a helicopter parent either). I would definitely respect their wishes regarding diets or whatever.
The other influence is pediatrician visits. Growing up, I don't recall any "wellness" visits; only those necessitated by a serious illness.
The "rules" I gave my MIL were a result of those visits and were met with minor disagreements-- remedies for teething, when to start solid food, toilet training, etc. I relied on my daughter's pediatrician more so than my mother did for advice.
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