Grandma Wracked With Guilt After Telling Her Daughter She Needs A Break From Babysitting Her Difficult Toddler Granddaughter — 'I Feel Like Such A Failure'
Grandparents are not a solution for America's childcare crisis.
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A | Shutterstock With childcare costs reaching astronomical highs, many parents rely on family members to help them with babysitting and daycare as the situation becomes increasingly desperate. But how that work impacts those family members often goes overlooked.
For one grandma on Reddit, it's taking a serious toll on her mental health, as well as her relationship with her daughter.
The grandma is wracked with guilt after asking for a break from babysitting her granddaughter.
Childcare costs in the U.S. are the highest they've ever been — so high that many parents are opting to quit their jobs because it's often cheaper to lose a salary than pay for daycare bills.
And amid this full-on crisis, politicians like Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance have been unable to come up with any solutions beyond asking grandparents, aunts, and uncles to help.
That is absurd, inept, and wildly incompetent on its face — many people don't even have grandparents nearby to help, and many grandparents still have to work full-time themselves. However, this Redditor's story illustrates some of the other reasons why simply relying on grandparents is not a tenable solution.
"I’ve been watching my granddaughter since she was born," she shared in her post, explaining that she not only babysits but also takes the child Sunday and Monday nights so that her daughter and son-in-law can get some sleep before they start their work week.
But now her granddaughter has become a handful, and it's taking a major toll on her mental health.
"It's been great until now," the grandma wrote of her granddaughter. "She’s at a hard age where she’s into everything, and I live in a small trailer where I can only childproof so much, I have nowhere to go with anything."
What used to be simple babysitting has now turned into basically running interference for this inquisitive toddler. The little girl is too young to "know what 'no' means yet," which means grandma has to be constantly "hovering over her" to protect her.
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"She goes for anything not nailed down out of curiosity," she continued, describing a situation that all parents will instantly identify with. She constantly worries the little girl will get hurt and is finding it so hard to keep up with her.
"My anxiety is through the roof," she admitted. "They put me on hydroxyzine for my nerves but it’s not doing much."
When she told her daughter she needed a break from babysitting, she was furious.
"I told my daughter I needed a break," the grandma wrote. "She flipped out on me and said a lot of choice words to me."
She was deeply hurt of course. "I cried my eyes out and feel terrible," she wrote, adding that she feels "like such a failure" as a mom and grandmother.
"Now my daughter isn’t speaking to me over it. I tried to explain to her I just wanted to be grandma again and not the person always saying no," she wrote. "It’s been so long since my daughter was so small, and I don’t remember how I got through it all back then."
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She's at a loss as to what to do and knows she's putting her daughter in a bind. "Do I start taking her again and screw my anxiousness?" she wondered. "I’m just a wreck and feel like a terrible person."
Her situation perfectly illustrates the American childcare crisis — and why JD Vance's 'solutions' are not solutions at all.
This is a situation where nobody wins — it's a choice between an elderly woman's mental health continuing to crumble or parents who can't afford childcare being left in the lurch.
Many agreed, though, that the choice is clear: She has to take care of herself before she can care for anyone else.
"Put your own oxygen mask on first, Grandma. Your daughter should be more concerned with your health than whether she has free babysitting," one commenter wrote.
Many felt her daughter was totally out of line. "I have no village and would worship the ground my mother walked on if she babysat so much for me," one mom wrote. "You are a treasure and I hope your daughter is more appreciative of you in the future."
She's right — but it's also likely the truth that the grandmother's daughter is desperate. A recent poll of more than 1,000 parents found that 70% struggle to pay for childcare, and for 28%, one parent was forced to quit their job because it was more affordable than paying for daycare — which now costs more than college tuition in more than half of US states.
Meanwhile, aging Gen X'ers and Boomers are more and more unable to help with childcare than previous generations, because the economy is keeping them shackled to their jobs long into their golden years. Nearly half of Boomers have no retirement savings, and the same proportion of Gen X'ers worry they don't have nearly enough.
It is infuriating that families are in this situation in the wealthiest country on Earth — nearly the only wealthy country that doesn't have some kind of federally funded childcare system. Even more infuriating is politicians' response to this problem, which is to basically deny it exists.
And if you thought JD Vance's response to the question was bad, don't even bother looking at Donald Trump's, which, near as anyone can tell from his inscrutable word salad about the matter, is to tax foreign countries and use that to pay for childcare, which is utter and complete nonsense and an answer so incoherent even Fox News couldn't believe he said it.
The bottom line is that no family should be thrown into crisis trying to pay for daycare, and relying on grandparents isn't a solution — many parents don't even HAVE parents to lean on for help in the first place.
Our leaders have no problem spending our tax dollars on everything from bombs to corporate welfare, but when it comes to doing anything with those taxes that actually benefits us citizens, they love to claim it would tank the economy. It's a lie and an incredibly stupid one.
We all need to stop falling for it and demand better. Enough is enough.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.