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More than half of grandparents look after their grandchildren to help with childcare costs, but this can create brand new problems…
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Maria recently came home after a long day in the office to find her youngest child tucked up in bed and her eldest in pyjamas, reading a story. Their grandmother – Maria’s mother-in-law – had collected them from nursery and school, cooked them dinner, played with them and got them ready for bed while Maria and her husband were still working.
Yet the overwhelming emotion which hit Maria as she walked into her spotlessly neat home wasn’t gratitude. It was rage. Her mother-in-law, Jane, had taken it upon herself to do a spot of rearranging in the kitchen.
“She told me she’d noticed the toaster and kettle were getting in the way of a cupboard, so she moved them to a totally different counter,” says Maria. “She went through all the pans and moved them around, threw away half-used packets of food she decided were old and re-ordered all my cookbooks.
“She does things like that all the time. She doesn’t seem to understand that it’s not her house, it’s ours, and it drives me absolutely insane. But she helps us so much with childcare that I feel I just have to bite my tongue and pretend it’s fine.”
The relationship between a spouse and their mother-in-law has been fraught with tension since time immemorial, and the subject of jokes for almost as long. In recent years, however, comments that were once staples of cliched 1970s comedy routines have taken on new, distinctly unfunny meaning as the dynamic has grown more intense than ever.
Where a decade ago, women might have encountered their mother-in-law once a week at the very most, depending on proximity, now many see them multiple times. With childcare costs rising to an average of £14,030 a year for a full-time nursery place for a child under two, almost two-thirds of grandparents regularly look after their grandchildren to help with costs – in some cases, even sleeping on their child’s sofa to be there first thing in the morning.
Grandparents providing childcare for their grandchildren save working parents approximately £6.8 billion nationally in childcare costs. And many are more than happy to step in, relishing the opportunity to spend more time with their grandchildren once they’re retired.
But the arrangement turns the relationship from purely familial into one which is, as psychotherapist Susie Masterson says, ‘transactional’.
It has created the potentially thorny situation currently being negotiated by thousands of families in which boundaries for acceptable behaviour can be blurred – on both sides.
Women are entrusting their mother-in-law with their precious children, and know they owe them a debt. Like Maria, though, they can feel she is overstepping the mark and not showing respect for their role as mother or the rules they have created for their children – rules which, due to culture evolving, may be quite different from her day. On the other side, mothers-in-law can feel they are not being valued for all the work they are putting in.
Masterson explains that there are often complex underlying dynamics at play which affect how different generations of women in this situation react: everything from a mother-in-law’s unconscious anxiety about losing her son, to a daughter-in-law’s defensiveness about not being perceived as good enough for the ‘golden child’ son.
“These can result in one or both parties forming judgments about each other – for instance, the daughter-in-law criticising the mother-in-law’s quality of meals for the grandchildren,” she says. “The mother-in-law’s behaviour can become overly controlling or critical as she unconsciously attempts to maintain her position of influence in her son’s life.”
For Maria, the sense of Jane trying to exert control has spiralled since the birth of her second child in 2021. She believes her family’s need for childcare support with his arrival coincided with a change in Jane’s behaviour following the pandemic.
“She’s lived alone since her husband died, and lockdown was very hard for her,” says Maria. ‘We did everything we could, including forming a ‘bubble’ with her so she could spend time with us, but since then, she’s seemed much more inflexible and set in her ways.
“I’m so grateful for all the help she’s given us, particularly as my own mum lives abroad. But if I even try to ask her to do things in certain ways, like timings of naps, she gets spiky and defensive, or she just totally ignores me.”
On one occasion, Maria says Jane gave her youngest some chocolate, despite being aware of his allergy to cow’s milk. “He had a stomach ache and diarrhoea and eventually told me that Grandma had given him a treat and told him not to tell me,” she says.
“I was livid, not just because she’d made him ill, but also because it showed she clearly thinks I’m exaggerating the severity of his allergy.”
When she confronted Jane, “she got upset and didn’t apologise; my husband took her side because he thought she’d just made a mistake and I ended up saying sorry to her.
“When she rearranged the kitchen, I knew not to say anything to him as he’d just say she was helping and I was being irrational. It’s damaging my relationship with him, too. Awful as it sounds, I’m starting to actively dislike her being there.”
This antipathy is a feeling with which Sandra, a grandmother of four, is sadly familiar. She looks after her youngest grandchild two days a week at her son and daughter-in-law’s home, but frequently questions if she’s welcome.
“I try my hardest to do everything in the way I’ve been asked to do it, but my daughter-in-law is so cold towards me,” she says. “She barks orders at me in a way I find so rude.
“If I ever suggest anything – like that a dummy might help the baby with his reflux, or that a little bit of sugar occasionally won’t do them any harm – she bites my head off and lectures me about how things are different now, as if I’m 105 years old.”
Until recently, their relationship was far more harmonious. “We used to go to the theatre together to see shows my son didn’t want to see, and sometimes we’d go shopping,” she says. “She’s quite a serious person but I could make her laugh. It all changed when I started looking after my grandson.”
Sandra thinks she knows the reason: jealousy. “I think she hates that I’m in her house with her son while she’s at work,” she says. “I can understand how difficult that must be, and how it pains her to see how much he loves me.
“It’s harder for modern women than it was in my day, but it doesn’t give her the right to take it out on me. I’ve often gone home crying after an encounter with her and my husband and daughter both tell me I should stop going there as she doesn’t deserve my help. The emotional aspect is exhausting me, far more than the childcare part.”
Masterson says that, daunting as it appears, it’s essential for families in this position to establish a “family contract”.
“It doesn’t have to be written down, but is essentially about coming together and agreeing how to interact with each other to bring about mutual understanding.”
Part of this should be about parenting styles, with the aim of setting boundaries and also making compromises where possible. Family members don’t have to agree on everything, but if the part they’re expected to play is clear, it’s easier to avoid misunderstandings. And if everyone is more open about their feelings, it might foster tolerance.
Maria and Sandra admit that their situations have involved too much quiet resentment and not enough speaking up – in both cases, for fear of causing a family rift which may prove irreparable.
Sandra is contemplating telling her son and daughter-in-law that she can only provide one day of care in the hope this will ease some of the pressure. Maria, meanwhile, knows she needs to initiate a difficult conversation.
“I need to find the right words to ask Jane to dial it down a bit, without upsetting her,” she says. “I need my husband to take some responsibility, too. I’m dreading it, but we can’t go on like this forever.”
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