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Grandparents in charge
“I feel so guilty,” said my friend on the ‘phone. She was
telling me how her three-year-old grandchild, Rebecca, had squashed
her fingers in a drawer. Rebecca had been on an overnight visit when
it happened. She had been fiddling with a drawer, the way small kids
do, and my friend had accidentally closed it on her tiny fingers.
When her fingernails turned blue, my friend rushed her to A
and E, where an X-ray showed that nothing was broken, though there
was some bruising.
And how was Rebecca? “She just ate a whole pizza, so I
suppose she’s all right. But I’m dreading telling her mother.”
Fortunately, daughter-in-law responded with sympathy and
understanding, but I understood the guilt that my friend had been
feeling.
We grandparents, when we’re in charge, become a jumpy lot.
The responsibility of looking after small children puts us on extra
alert. We watch, continually do a count if there’s more than one,
and if they are out of sight for a second, even when they’re in the
sandpit, we get nervous and jittery.
Parents, I notice, are often more relaxed, presumably making
sensible and balanced assessments of the dangers of accidents or
kidnapping, or whatever else is lurking in grandparental
imaginations. In other words, they do just as we did when bringing
them up, and are continually on low-level alert, so they can switch
at any moment. Whereas by the time we get to be grandparents, the
habit and the instinct are lost.
At least for some. Grandparents Plus says that there is a
‘vast army’ of grandparents providing regular childcare so that
their children can work. These same grandparents may also be carers
for their elderly parents. (It’s not easy being the middle of the
sandwich, as I know from my own past experience.)
Grandparents who provide childcare, full or part-time, get a
raw deal along with the nervous tension. They are an unpaid,
no-rights workforce, invisible to government and social services.
Flexible working hours? - so they can juggle the childcare with
their own work - forget it, though that’s something granted to
parents of pre-school children. Needless to say, they don’t get paid
for childcare either.
Grandparents Plus is on the warpath over flexible working
hours, though not for paying grandparents for childcare. A
spokesperson for the charity points out that the government’s
10-year childcare strategy published last December included no
consultation or recognition about the extended family, which
consists of an estimated 5 million grandparents providing five days
a week care for the grandchildren.
For many families, the most satisfactory arrangement is to
have grandparents doing the childcare, but let’s face it, the
reality is that it’s usually grandma, not grandpa, doing the main
job, while carrying on running her own household and possibly
helping with the elderly parents too.
Yes, of course we should be recognised and given the rights
available to parents, but let’s not get too carried away. We also
have our own lives and maybe don’t want to take on childcare on a
regular basis, unless there’s no other option.
Do we really want the responsibility of being hands-on
grandparents? Does this fit with the way we want to live as we
get older, no matter how much we love our grandchildren? And if we
get their fingers caught in a drawer, do we receive free
counselling?
Tell me what you think. Email
helen@laterlife.com
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Talkback is a
regular feature in laterlife.com run by
journalist and author Helen Franks. 
