Parents who rely on grandparents for childcare and don’t pay them are “demeaning”.
Independent columnist Anne Atkins appeared on Newstalk Breakfast after seeing a Reddit post asking if she was wrong for refusing to pay her own mother $20 (€18.60) per hour for minding her child. Â
Stating the user was wrong for denying a grandparent money for their child care services, Atkins told the radio show that doing this is “demeaning”.
“She wanted her mother to provide a professional service and be there all the time. She was then outraged at her mother for asking to be paid.”
She said that while personally, she is happy to take care of her own grandchildren for free, people should not expect the same from their own parents.
“If you can do that for your grandchildren, it’s a huge privilege, and if you don’t need the money, it’s fantastic, but if you want to be paid, there’s nothing wrong with asking.”
“If somebody in the family can provide something that you would otherwise pay somebody else to do, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Newstalk Breakfast host Shane Coleman then added that he has no plans to give childcare to his own grandchildren, saying: “I want to see them, I want to bring them to matches, I want to do fun stuff.
“But we did the heavy lifting with our own kids. We have made sacrifices [for our own children] and that’s as it should be and that’s how we wanted it – well, we’re not doing that again in 20 years time.”
