Millennials feel 'abandoned' by parents not available to help raise grandkids: 'Too busy'
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Anonymous
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My Boomer MIL watches our toddler three times a week and is an absolute gift.
My Boomer mother, who is five to six years older than my MIL still works to maintain her unnecessarily expensive lifestyle. Both are minority immigrants. I say this to say White Boomer parents aren’t the only ones not so willing to help out, spend time with grandkids, and indirectly build generational wealth by saving you yens of thousands on childcare. It really just depends on the person. |
Anonymous
Genx cycle of selfishness, that's why you are boomers |
Anonymous
Do you have data to back that up? I didn’t have any living grandparents growing up. Many of my friends growing up didn’t even have a father to help their mother care for them. To claim that many people born in the 40s, 50s, and 60s had grandparents helping to care for them is one of the stupidest statements you could make. |
Anonymous
Yup. "You owe me your time/energy/money because you gave birth to me." |
Anonymous
The selfishness on this thread is coming from the entitled Millennials. (not a Boomer) |
Anonymous
My mom was born in the 40's. Her Grandma was still raising kids of her own and was in absolutely no position to help anyone. My own Grandma raised 5 kids without help from anyone, including my Grandpa who was away working a lot. My brother and I (now in our 50's) saw one set of grandparents a couple of times per year. The other set had major health issues. |
Anonymous
Dp. My grandparents absolutely watched us on date nights and did after-school care for many of my cousins. I never talked about it with my friends. Why would I? Point being, unless you questioned all of your friends, there's no way you would know how much help their grandparents provided. Tbf, there's no data on any of this it seems. The linked article quotes an individual discussing her *therapy* patients. There's no actual data on how many millennials actually feel "abandoned." Even on this thread, a few posters have admitted feeling this way while many others have said something to the effect of, 'I understand xy and z, but I don't have this expectation of my own parents.' |
Anonymous
| Gen X here from an era where kids had lots of independence and responsibility and not tons of extended family help. My widowed mom had our baby sister in Head Start while she worked a shitty job where she was sexually harassed by the boss. My brothers and I were on our own, riding our bikes around the neighborhood getting into mild scuffles with no supervision. We were expected to do some basic chores and be home when mom came roaring up in her station wagon with the baby and would put something like Hamburger Helper together for dinner. She worked until she practically dropped and by then my siblings and I were raising families of our own. We never expected anything but love from her which she's always given. If she wants to read novels in bed till afternoon or take budget trips to Hawaii with her girlfriends, we're all over the idea. She has earned her rest and retirement. |
Anonymous
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Since we’ve only had anecdotes from some very bitter women , here’s some statistics on what’s actually going on with grandmothers.
According to the u.S. Census Bureau, there are about 11.3 million children under age 5 with working mothers. of those children, about 3.3 million (30 percent) are in the care of their grandparents for some period of time every week. With nearly a third of the children of working mothers being cared for by grandparents, The Census Bureau also reported that many older children often are cared for by their grandparents before and after school, while their parents are still at work – 12 percent or 4.7 million children between the ages of 5 and 14, are regularly in the care of their grandparents. (National assoc of childcare). NACCRRA’s survey found that nearly 40 percent of grandparents with grandchildren under age 13, and who live within an hour’s drive from them, are currently providing child care to their grandchildren. Note the first paragraph references children under 5. The second was children under 13. U.S. census data shows that 7.1 million American grandparents are living with their grandchildren under 18. Some 2.3 million of those grandparents are responsible for their grandchildren meaning they have custody of their grandchildren. |
Anonymous
It doesn’t always work out that way. My parents immigrated from a developing country. Their fathers both died young and their moms were 10k miles away raising the other kids. I married an immigrant, and same story. His dad passed; his mom is 10k miles away and we take the 20 hour flight to see her once every few years if lucky. |
Anonymous
| My mom died young (61) but was very into my kids when she was alive. I’m not sure MIL was ever into kids, even her own. Same with FIL and my dad. So my kids lost the only involved grandparent they had. Sucks. |
Anonymous
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What I can’t stand are grandparents (and, yes, the two I’m thinking of are boomers) who want their grandkids to love them and run to them and pose for pictures based on occasional visits and presents.
It doesn’t work that way for grandparents any more than it does for absentee parents. If you want the connection, you have to invest time and, yes, show some willingness to caregive because that’s what young kids need and how they form bonds. The main reason I exercise in middle age is because I hope to one day care for my grandkids. The idea of devoting 20 years to my children and then leaving them on their own to parent in this crazy world makes no sense to me |
Anonymous
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I am a genx latchkey kid. Most of my friends either had a stay at home mom or were latch key kids. I can think of 2 friends who were cared for by a grandmother every day. One friend's grandmother lived with her family. The other friend's grandmother did not live with their family, but my friend said that her parents paid her a small amount to watch kids. Most of my friends were like me, we did not have grandparents living close enough to provide daily childcare.
My one grandmother lived far away from all of her grandchildren, so wasn't able to help out. The other grandmother lived with my aunt (partly for financial reasons), and she did provide childcare to my cousins. For those that were cared for by grandparents? What was their socio-economic status? Maybe boomers have more $$ than their parents so can afford to take trips etc. rather than just hang out at home being a nanny. Fulltime childcare is a huge responsibility. I was a SAHM for 6 years and 2 kids born very close together. Kids don't care if you aren't feeling well, have a doctor's appointment you need to schedule, etc. It is very hard to find backup care during the day if you need to take care of something. Going to various doctors appointments is basically a fulltime job for my inlaws. No way would they agree to fulltime childcare of grandchildren. |
Anonymous
Totally. For us it’s a mixed bag - like everything. Our parents are divorced and only one remarried so that makes things hard because we have three young kids and two dogs who routinely misbehave -and that’s a lot for anyone to handle alone, let alone someone who is 70+. My mom will occasionally help but she works FT and lives six hours away. She also easily gets overwhelmed and when she does she lashes out at whoever is around (so it would be my children) and then after freaking everyone out with her rage cries or pretends nothing happened. Additionally she’ll reference any time she helped with childcare when she gets upset at me. Something like “I looked after Larla on that overnight” - even if it was four years ago when she looked after one child for nine hours by herself she’ll never let me forget. My father is not an option - he thinks he’s good with kids but my kids are scared of him because he’s old and rigid and not talkative. My husband’s parents either ply the kids with candy or can’t walk, so equally fraught. |
Anonymous
This should completely shut down the idea that millennials aren’t getting grandparent help. Now, how this plays out by geography and SES level, you’d have to do more research… |