Grandparents praised after refusing to babysit for free

Ellen Fitzpatrick

A massive debate has kicked off around a parenting issue recently as grandparents have begun refusing to babysit for free.

There will always be some very obliging grannies and grandads that don’t believe they should be paid to mind the little ones, but one set of grandparents are being praised for refusing to pick up the slack for free.

The average cost of childcare in Ireland is €186.84 a week, working out at just under €750 a month.

As prices continue to rise across the board, one couple divided Reddit after complaining that their child’s grandparents demanded money for babysitting.

The new dad wrote: “Before we decided to have kids, we moved out into our own house shortly after we got married.

“We took everything into consideration: community, area, school district, but most importantly… location. Not just distance to work or local shopping areas, but more importantly, the distance to my wife’s parents, as we knew later on, we would have them babysit as they were the closest grandparents.”

The mum-in-law seemed to have no issues with the request to babysit, but his father-in-law had terms and conditions when it came to childcare.

They noted that he didn’t like the idea of “free handouts”, but the dad was furious that he was being asked to pay his father-in-law despite knowing he didn’t “need money”.

He continued: “I was going back to work, my wife had another month left, and her dad started talking about paying them for babysitting.

“Seeing as he wasn’t fond of the free babysitting, he started to compare pricing of daycares in today’s market and how much he would start charging us weekly.

“After his research, he surmised his amount to $400 per week for babysitting and $100 for weekends and we were shocked.”

He and his wife always intended to pay the grandparents and to provide any essentials, so they were upset by the price and how it was demanded.

One person took to the comments, saying: “You are focused on money, ignoring that the more precious resource is time. When you have been parents for 20 years, you will understand this better.

“Grandchildren are better than children. Why? BECAUSE THEY GO HOME. Your in-laws have done the whole married with children thing, the young’ns are all launched.”

Another said: “This should go without saying but you are also YTA for assuming grandparents would volunteer for daycare duty (paid or otherwise) just because they are the grandparents.”