I am on maternity leave but going back to work in less than 2 months. My in laws will be doing a days childcare. We were happy to have my daughter in nursery but my mum asked to do one day and so we asked my in laws if they also wanted to (to be fair). They agreed and said (I think half jokingly) they’d be upset if we hadn’t asked.
My question is would it be unreasonable to say we want them to have our daughter on this one day at their house not ours? We’ll both be working from home and so it would be very distracting as one of us will need to work downstairs and the other upstairs.
The reason I ask is because my in laws to date have always seemed really reluctant to have my daughter at theirs. They generally like to see her twice a week and visit me and my daughter for a couple of hours up to half a day. I have previously asked if they’d like to have her for a regular afternoon at theirs instead. I thought it would be nice for them to have one on one time with her and meant they could still see her as regularly without me in their hair. They will sometimes have her but always revert back to asking to visit her at ours instead. So they seem to have a strong preference for seeing her here. They’ve also on various occassions given a good range of reasons as to why they can’t have her at theirs. All of which I accept and empathise with. And they certainly don’t owe me childcare on maternity leave.
However it makes me concerned about where they expect to care for her when I go back to work. My partners assured me they’ve preciously discussed it and they’re having her at theirs. But some of the reasons they’ve given previously for preferring or needing to visit here won’t have changed.
So firstly can I check it unreasonable to ask that they do the childcare at theirs? The only alternative would be for her to go to nursery which I’m more than happy to pay for but I don’t want to set that out in case it sounds like a threat.
Secondly do you think it’s unreasonable to ask my partner to revisit the conversation with his parents to make sure we’re all on the same page?
I really don’t want to cause any upset and I don’t know how to go about this situation.
Angela Rayner lashes out and calls Sunak “pint sized loser”.