With the cost of childcare as high as it is, many of us rely on family members to help out watching the kids when we have to work. But is it fair to lean on them when they don’t want to be caregivers? That’s the question at the center of a post on Reddit’s “Am I the A**hole” forum today, where a grandma is seeking advice on how to tell her daughter that she just wants to be a grandma—not a mom to her grandson. Basically, Grandma is tired of babysitting and only babysitting.
“I have a 20-year-old daughter who has a one year old son,” she wrote. “I agreed to babysit for her so she can work and support her son and everything. I am the one who supported her during her pregnancy and until my grandson was almost a year old. My daughter now thinks that it is completely my responsibility to bathe her child, to make sure his sleep is regulated and every other thing that a mom does.”
The grandma adds that her daughter gets home from work late—around 11:30, after the baby is already asleep—and goes straight to bed. However, she also sleeps in in the morning, leaving childcare duties to Grandma during the day until it’s time for her to go to work.
“I’m at the point where I feel that it is pertinent to kick my daughter out of my house, because I want to be just his Grandmother and not his mother,” the grandma wrote. “However, she feels it is my responsibility to take on all the mother roles with him… . I also take care of our farm and the whole house. My daughter refuses to help around the house cleaning or anything like that. She’s constantly disrespectful, giving attitude, very, very entitled. When I ask her to help and to be respectful or to find another place to live, she screams, cries and throws a tantrum, throwing herself on the floor and everything. The last time I told her this, she threatened to move to California and take my grandson with her. I live in New Mexico, I wouldn’t be able to see my grandson. I can’t afford to go out there to see him all the time. I feel like the maid and like I’m supposed to be his mother. What do I do? I feel like I’m dying on the inside. I don’t know what to do.”
You can just feel this poor grandma’s desperation in her writing. And since “grandparent childcare” is very much a thing in the U.S. for desperate parents, a lot of others probably feel the same way. Pretty quickly, commenters let her know she’s not in the wrong for feeling this way.
“Your daughter is totally taking advantage of you. Let her move. It’s an idle threat because then she’d have to actually parent her child. I think you should kick her out. If she’s old enough to have a baby, she’s old enough to be a parent,” one of the top-voted commenters wrote.
Another added, “I can see how you wanted your daughter to have a smooth pregnancy and transition into single-motherhood so you did as much as you could to buffer her launch. But she’s not launching. Soon, the baby will need real parenting (more boundaries, discipline, routine) and it is the parents’ role to do this… Oh, and that threat to go to California—it’s emotional blackmail. Flatly refuse to negotiate anyone who is blackmailing you.”
Another highly upvoted commenter wrote, “You need to call her bluff. Give her a firm date for moving out of the house. Tell her it will NOT be extended. If she throws a tantrum, walk away. If she threatens to take him to California, say ‘I would miss you guys, but if that’s what it takes for you to develop independence, I support it.’”
The grandma replied, writing, “Since I posted this, everything you guys are saying is right. I don’t know how I didn’t see a lot of this stuff myself. I was enabling her, I know I was overcompensating for the loss of her father, but it’s time that she grows up.”
Do you agree?
