Changed the title as it wasn’t clear
WFH, summer kid camps that did free or cheap activities during the day, friends who also had kids (returning the favor another day), relatives (mine were extremely unreliable), and all else fails paid child care.
My relatives were absolutely useless for childcare. Its fine if you don’t want to look after your own grand children, just say so. But under no circumstances repeatedly say you will have the grand children then back out on the last day, many many times.
Grandparents! They signed up for this when they had kids, or at least it’s common practice where I live.
So many of my coworkers tell me their parents said they refuse to babysit. I’m can’t believe the refusal to care for one’s family.
If their parents are retired they’re Boomers. Considering the levels of “got mine, fuck you” attitude and delusions about how they “did it on my own without help” this doesn’t surprise me at all. Not saying this is the entire generation, there are actually very caring Boomers out there. But in general, it’s a pretty pervasive sentiment of today’s retirees.
My wife has it figured out this year - she was laid off 2 weeks before her 20 year anniversary.
On the one hand, I’m lucky that my wife works at a daycare that runs day camps for children up to 8 (my daughter is 5), but we still don’t like that she spends the entire summer with strict schedules and things like that, so that for 15 days she goes with my in-laws and 15 with my parents, in both cases they are retirees in very good physical health and eager to play with their grandchildren.
barely.
