Minding the childcare gap

I agree with her. In our family, it's not the week-long child-care arrangements that have to be set in place - that gets sorted out before mum goes back from maternity leave. It's the ad-hoc and after-school arrangements that depend on me being around to help out. If a child is off school when parents have to work, mum is working late, children need picking up from after-school club, half-term, it's grandparents that cover those times. There's be no point going to work if all of these additional times had to be paid for, too.

Most importantly, the children have a close attachment to me and when they are tired or unwell, the last thing they need is to be with an after-school assistant or holiday club supervisor, no matter how lovely they are. If they can't cuddle up to mum, then grandmother will do very nicely. I would have been unavailable for all that if I had carried on working.

Working out the time spent on unpaid child-care over the course of each month, I reckon I have 4 of my 6 grandchildren in my sole care for about 30 hours a month, not counting the occasional sleepover.

As people marry and have children later in the future Grandparents will be too old and infirm themselves to be able to to undertake childcare.

If my DGC leave child bearing/rearing until the age their parents were when their first child was born, their parents will be nearly 80 before they become grandparents.

Good points whenim64

My DD could not afford to work and pay for childcare for her two, they are now both at school but as she leaves at 7am and often its after 8pm when she gets home, I dread to think how much she would have to pay out and thats not taking into account the tooing and froing the children would have to do. And then the full time care needed for school holidays.

What happens to the next generation when DD is working longer before retirement and her children require her to step in for childcare, its all going to come unstuck isnt it.

Ageing parents compound the problem of grandma being pulled in all directions and this will get worse as people are living longer.

Women and children are always the ones caught in the trap. When mine were small no employer would take on a woman with young children and if they had there was no formal childcare or available, it was grandparents of full time Nannies.

I went for new job when I was 40 and both children were in secondary school, and one of the panel asked whether I thought I might have more children! I did get the job and the subject never arose again.

Please see my comments on the "Nice one Geraldine" thread. Which is on exactly the same subject.

Who came up with this first? Geraldine or Sarah Wellard?

I work but my husband looks after our youngest grandchildren if needed.