Millennials feel 'abandoned' by parents not available to help raise grandkids: 'Too busy'

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boomers are too busy and galavanting around on vacations to help their kids and grand kids, sad. Another example of boomer selfishness on top of the wealth taking and focusing younger generations to find their lifestyles, sad.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/millennials-feel-abandoned-parents-available-help-raise-grandkids-busy.amp

Don't have children expecting your parents to be your free child Care. We took care of our kids and you can do the same.

I think the point of the article and the point many posters are making is that many parents by and large did not take care of their children without assistance from their family but now that they are the grandparents they arent paying it forward.

Many posters here including myself were practically raised by our grandparents during summers but have not received the same type of assistance from our parents.

you need to really take a good look at the lives of boomer women compared to silent gen women. Do you think women in the silent generation worked until they were 65 and helped take care of grandkids? No, they did not. Many were sahm. Did you grandmother work until she was 65? I doubt it. Most women of that generation didn't even work, and if they did, they quit after having kids. Not so with boomer moms. They worked even after having kids. And that is tough, as you know. So, I don't blame these women who after having worked and taken care of kids for most their lives (probably mostly on their own without their husbands help), don't want to continue taking care of little kids after they retire. I sure wouldn't, and I'm genx.



and

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/lfp/women-by-age

Im the PP you are replying to and Ill emphasize that I made this same point earlier about SAHM (my grandmother) vs my own mother who is still working at 60 and therefore cant provide care. There are societal factors at play and therefore society needs to catch up. My mother DID benefit from having help as did many others in her generational cohort which is why they are selfish because they balk at societal efforts to assist with childrearing because they benefited from individual assistance due to other womens free labor. Boomers by and large scoff at widespread efforts to assist with childrearing. They talk about bootstraps but forget they had the free labor of women in their familiy donning their hats and shoes for them.

They scoff at childcare costs and summer camps and afterschool care. The problem is that instead of 50% of the population needing those services , its now 80-90% so costs go up, demand is up, and supply is actually down. These are costs that a majority of the population did not have to bear with earlier generations. The FSA allowance hasnt been increased in decades. The child care tax credit is actually DECREASING this year for taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boomers are too busy and galavanting around on vacations to help their kids and grand kids, sad. Another example of boomer selfishness on top of the wealth taking and focusing younger generations to find their lifestyles, sad.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/millennials-feel-abandoned-parents-available-help-raise-grandkids-busy.amp

Don't have children expecting your parents to be your free child Care. We took care of our kids and you can do the same.

I think the point of the article and the point many posters are making is that many parents by and large did not take care of their children without assistance from their family but now that they are the grandparents they arent paying it forward.

Many posters here including myself were practically raised by our grandparents during summers but have not received the same type of assistance from our parents.

you need to really take a good look at the lives of boomer women compared to silent gen women. Do you think women in the silent generation worked until they were 65 and helped take care of grandkids? No, they did not. Many were sahm. Did you grandmother work until she was 65? I doubt it. Most women of that generation didn't even work, and if they did, they quit after having kids. Not so with boomer moms. They worked even after having kids. And that is tough, as you know. So, I don't blame these women who after having worked and taken care of kids for most their lives (probably mostly on their own without their husbands help), don't want to continue taking care of little kids after they retire. I sure wouldn't, and I'm genx.



and

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/lfp/women-by-age

I’m GenX and really do not want to be expected to provide a lot of childcare. I’m looking forward to relaxation and travel when I retire in the next year or so. I have no idea how this will play out if/when my kids have kids, and I hope I am inspired to be very helpful, but TBH, I’m just not sure. I also cannot picture my DH wanting to heavily participate either, but he is several years older.

[Anonymous]

I think it can be kind of cruel to see someone struggling, have the means to help, and refuse to ever help because you feel like you aren't obligated. This is true regardless of who you're talking about, and I think it's worse when you're talking about the child you brought into this world. A lot of people might read that and get defensive but in the situations I see where a millennial is complainting about that particular scenario, yeah it's messed up. Especially if the Boomer parent got childcare help from their parents (which they usually did).

BTW I have never asked for nor expected family help with childcare. I am just making observations. Also because I can see how hard it is to be a parent and maintain your sanity, I have told my kids that I will totally help out with childcare if they need it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boomers are too busy and galavanting around on vacations to help their kids and grand kids, sad. Another example of boomer selfishness on top of the wealth taking and focusing younger generations to find their lifestyles, sad.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/millennials-feel-abandoned-parents-available-help-raise-grandkids-busy.amp

Don't have children expecting your parents to be your free child Care. We took care of our kids and you can do the same.

I think the point of the article and the point many posters are making is that many parents by and large did not take care of their children without assistance from their family but now that they are the grandparents they arent paying it forward.

Many posters here including myself were practically raised by our grandparents during summers but have not received the same type of assistance from our parents.

you need to really take a good look at the lives of boomer women compared to silent gen women. Do you think women in the silent generation worked until they were 65 and helped take care of grandkids? No, they did not. Many were sahm. Did you grandmother work until she was 65? I doubt it. Most women of that generation didn't even work, and if they did, they quit after having kids. Not so with boomer moms. They worked even after having kids. And that is tough, as you know. So, I don't blame these women who after having worked and taken care of kids for most their lives (probably mostly on their own without their husbands help), don't want to continue taking care of little kids after they retire. I sure wouldn't, and I'm genx.



and

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/lfp/women-by-age

Im the PP you are replying to and Ill emphasize that I made this same point earlier about SAHM (my grandmother) vs my own mother who is still working at 60 and therefore cant provide care. There are societal factors at play and therefore society needs to catch up. My mother DID benefit from having help as did many others in her generational cohort which is why they are selfish because they balk at societal efforts to assist with childrearing because they benefited from individual assistance due to other womens free labor. Boomers by and large scoff at widespread efforts to assist with childrearing. They talk about bootstraps but forget they had the free labor of women in their familiy donning their hats and shoes for them.

They scoff at childcare costs and summer camps and afterschool care. The problem is that instead of 50% of the population needing those services , its now 80-90% so costs go up, demand is up, and supply is actually down. These are costs that a majority of the population did not have to bear with earlier generations. The FSA allowance hasnt been increased in decades. The child care tax credit is actually DECREASING this year for taxes.

PP makes great points. I would also add that society changed SO much in the 90s specifically related to kids’ independence. Local elementary doesn’t let kids come or leave solo until second grade whereas we were walking home in K, and my neighbor’s older kids born around 2000 walked to and from in Kinder. We have many more years of childcare, camps, babysitters, etc relative to how we were raised. I got “carpooled” to preschool and now that wouldn’t happen bc of car seats and schools requiring parents to sign kids in and out. There’s just so many societal forces at play to create the current situation of parenting in 2023 being so resource-intensive and parents feeling so stretched thin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel grandparents Should absolutely step in and take care of their grandchildren! Back in the day… Grandparents would literally help raise kids… But now you can barely get a weekend out of grandparents!

Many of us have been explaining that this is a myth in the US. We who are older had good relationships with our grandparents but they were not in any way helping to raise us kids.

It may not be true for you but it was true for many families. DP.

It may have been true for you, but it wasn’t true for me (gen X), any of my friends or my Boomer parents. There are always going to be exceptions but in America, being raised by your parents and grandparents at the same time has not been the norm.

My immediate family did not use grandparents for daily support - more like monthly. But I do have extended family members who relied on grandparent support to get by. GenX. Same was true for boomer generation as they were growing up.

There is no one “norm”. Families come in all shapes and sizes.

[Anonymous]

When I was little we lived near both sets of grandparents and they rotated days watching us before and after school. My parents were still working when my kids were young, so they really couldn’t provide weekday childcare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boomers are too busy and galavanting around on vacations to help their kids and grand kids, sad. Another example of boomer selfishness on top of the wealth taking and focusing younger generations to find their lifestyles, sad.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/millennials-feel-abandoned-parents-available-help-raise-grandkids-busy.amp

Don't have children expecting your parents to be your free child Care. We took care of our kids and you can do the same.

I think the point of the article and the point many posters are making is that many parents by and large did not take care of their children without assistance from their family but now that they are the grandparents they arent paying it forward.

Many posters here including myself were practically raised by our grandparents during summers but have not received the same type of assistance from our parents.

you need to really take a good look at the lives of boomer women compared to silent gen women. Do you think women in the silent generation worked until they were 65 and helped take care of grandkids? No, they did not. Many were sahm. Did you grandmother work until she was 65? I doubt it. Most women of that generation didn't even work, and if they did, they quit after having kids. Not so with boomer moms. They worked even after having kids. And that is tough, as you know. So, I don't blame these women who after having worked and taken care of kids for most their lives (probably mostly on their own without their husbands help), don't want to continue taking care of little kids after they retire. I sure wouldn't, and I'm genx.



and

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/lfp/women-by-age

Im the PP you are replying to and Ill emphasize that I made this same point earlier about SAHM (my grandmother) vs my own mother who is still working at 60 and therefore cant provide care. There are societal factors at play and therefore society needs to catch up. My mother DID benefit from having help as did many others in her generational cohort which is why they are selfish because they balk at societal efforts to assist with childrearing because they benefited from individual assistance due to other womens free labor. Boomers by and large scoff at widespread efforts to assist with childrearing. They talk about bootstraps but forget they had the free labor of women in their familiy donning their hats and shoes for them.

They scoff at childcare costs and summer camps and afterschool care. The problem is that instead of 50% of the population needing those services , its now 80-90% so costs go up, demand is up, and supply is actually down. These are costs that a majority of the population did not have to bear with earlier generations. The FSA allowance hasnt been increased in decades. The child care tax credit is actually DECREASING this year for taxes.

PP makes great points. I would also add that society changed SO much in the 90s specifically related to kids’ independence. Local elementary doesn’t let kids come or leave solo until second grade whereas we were walking home in K, and my neighbor’s older kids born around 2000 walked to and from in Kinder. We have many more years of childcare, camps, babysitters, etc relative to how we were raised. I got “carpooled” to preschool and now that wouldn’t happen bc of car seats and schools requiring parents to sign kids in and out. There’s just so many societal forces at play to create the current situation of parenting in 2023 being so resource-intensive and parents feeling so stretched thin.

These blanket claims that boomers had the “free labor of women in their family” to help despite multiple posters explaining that isn’t true is wearing thin, but I totally agree with the last point - the real crux of this is the intensive level of modern day parenting. The expectation of supervision, lack of free range and adult-free play, the increased demands of both education and extra curriculars - and that’s setting aside the issue of cost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boomers are not some monolithic group. What is relevant to this debate are the boomers with the relatively affluent demographics of DCUM denizens. People born between 1946-1964 (the boomers) started turning 18 in 1964. The idea that a large proportion of the (affluent) DCUM boomer crowd needed and benefited from lots of grandparent help to support two careers flies in the face of the fact that far fewer of those families had two stressful careers back in the dark ages of the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s than is true in today’s DMV.

I don’t think most of us are asking for full-time childcare. In my case, I can’t get them to watch kids briefly once or twice a year.

How old are your parents? Every single person sighing here about how their parents are selfishly refusing to help them should state the age of their parents. Most of the time it’s a good 10 or even 15 years older than their grandparents were when they provided similar help. It’s something that nobody warns you about when you decide to delay childbearing. Just an unforeseen consequence that is being used to fuel generational grievances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it can be kind of cruel to see someone struggling, have the means to help, and refuse to ever help because you feel like you aren't obligated. This is true regardless of who you're talking about, and I think it's worse when you're talking about the child you brought into this world. A lot of people might read that and get defensive but in the situations I see where a millennial is complainting about that particular scenario, yeah it's messed up. Especially if the Boomer parent got childcare help from their parents (which they usually did).

BTW I have never asked for nor expected family help with childcare. I am just making observations. Also because I can see how hard it is to be a parent and maintain your sanity, I have told my kids that I will totally help out with childcare if they need it.

Maybe people struggling that much need to reassess their lives and make changes. Because whatever they are doing is not working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boomers are not some monolithic group. What is relevant to this debate are the boomers with the relatively affluent demographics of DCUM denizens. People born between 1946-1964 (the boomers) started turning 18 in 1964. The idea that a large proportion of the (affluent) DCUM boomer crowd needed and benefited from lots of grandparent help to support two careers flies in the face of the fact that far fewer of those families had two stressful careers back in the dark ages of the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s than is true in today’s DMV.

I don’t think most of us are asking for full-time childcare. In my case, I can’t get them to watch kids briefly once or twice a year.

This.

The PP just before you is saying the article and many millennials want less than full-time but more than just a few times per year.

Which is it?

DP. You might be shocked to learn that a grow of tens of millions of people sometimes want different things.

Oh, you mean like lots and lots of people grouped into an artificial construct can be really different and have different experiences and act in different ways and want different things? Does that only apply to “Millennials”? Does it apply to any other “generation”? Or just “Millennials”?

Of course it applies to other generations. You're the one demanding to know what millennials want, I'm not making blanket statements about any other generation, even if that's what you seem to be imagining in your head now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boomers are not some monolithic group. What is relevant to this debate are the boomers with the relatively affluent demographics of DCUM denizens. People born between 1946-1964 (the boomers) started turning 18 in 1964. The idea that a large proportion of the (affluent) DCUM boomer crowd needed and benefited from lots of grandparent help to support two careers flies in the face of the fact that far fewer of those families had two stressful careers back in the dark ages of the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s than is true in today’s DMV.

I don’t think most of us are asking for full-time childcare. In my case, I can’t get them to watch kids briefly once or twice a year.

This.

The PP just before you is saying the article and many millennials want less than full-time but more than just a few times per year.

Which is it?

DP. You might be shocked to learn that a grow of tens of millions of people sometimes want different things.

Oh, you mean like lots and lots of people grouped into an artificial construct can be really different and have different experiences and act in different ways and want different things? Does that only apply to “Millennials”? Does it apply to any other “generation”? Or just “Millennials”?

Of course it applies to other generations. You're the one demanding to know what millennials want, I'm not making blanket statements about any other generation, even if that's what you seem to be imagining in your head now.[/quote

I am glad you agree. Not all millennials are complaining and not all boomers are not providing childcare.

However, the whole thread is based on blanket statements about boomers and doesn’t recognize that different people “sometimes want different things” (your words), regardless of when they were born. Did you want to argue that the whole thread isn’t a blanket statement?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do get a bit annoyed at my boomer parents, who are always on vacation, while I have small children at home, a demanding career, and cannot get enough sleep.

Your parents definitely failed, but not in the way you think. What an entitled whiner you are.

Because some things annoy me? Go look in the mirror and think about what kind of human being you are.

Well I’m not entitled or annoyed at someone else’s good life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do get a bit annoyed at my boomer parents, who are always on vacation, while I have small children at home, a demanding career, and cannot get enough sleep.

Your parents definitely failed, but not in the way you think. What an entitled whiner you are.

Because some things annoy me? Go look in the mirror and think about what kind of human being you are.

Well I’m not entitled or annoyed at someone else’s good life.

+1. Maybe you should have remained child-free. I don't know any child-free couples who have regretted their choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait till these grandparents need help.

np The difference is pp that your parents raised you so at least you should give back in that regard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it can be kind of cruel to see someone struggling, have the means to help, and refuse to ever help because you feel like you aren't obligated. This is true regardless of who you're talking about, and I think it's worse when you're talking about the child you brought into this world. A lot of people might read that and get defensive but in the situations I see where a millennial is complainting about that particular scenario, yeah it's messed up. Especially if the Boomer parent got childcare help from their parents (which they usually did).

BTW I have never asked for nor expected family help with childcare. I am just making observations. Also because I can see how hard it is to be a parent and maintain your sanity, I have told my kids that I will totally help out with childcare if they need it.

What? If my kids choose to have kids I would hope they'd plan ahead as to how they are going to take care of them. It's not like someone drops a kid off on your doorstep every three years and then you just have to figure out how to deal with them.