Are grandparents the UK's forgotten workforce?

Grandparents are providing hundreds of millions of hours of free childcare each year but their efforts are not always recognised.

The price of childcare has risen as its availability has shrunk, leaving 57% of parents with children under 13 relying on support from at least one grandparent, usually the grandmother.

Unpaid nannies

"More and more grannies are acting as unpaid nannies to their grandchildren," said Claer Barrett in the Financial Times. They might have thought their "child-rearing years" were behind them, but a "childcare crisis" has come along to "take another bite" out of "the more mature woman’s retirement prospects".

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This "army of grannies" provides 766 million hours of free childcare each year, said Tom Utley in the Daily Mail, saving parents "a cool £3.5 billion" in nursery costs.

The family is the "most enduringly humane and effective support network and welfare system known to man", so "striving" to look after grandchildren is "a labour of love".

Grandparents are expected to be ready to "spring into action as an unpaid social safety net", said The Guardian. But this "unpaid labour" is more than "just a family matter; it's an invisible pillar of modern economies".

The "unpaid, sometimes physically demanding" childcare that grandparents provide "supports the country's economic stability", while "remaining largely unrecognised". And the "assumption" that grandparenthood is "a calling" can be "alienating" for those with "more ambivalent feelings", who can be seen as "off-track".

Hidden scandal

Parents sometimes refuse to let granny and grandad play a part. An estimated two million grandparents have been denied contact with their grandchildren, in "one of Britain’s biggest hidden scandals", said The Telegraph. Grandparents can sometimes be "threatened by police for sending presents or cards as it allegedly counts as harassment".

Sometimes, parents are not able to leave their children with older grandparents. Amy Grier said in The Times that her parents were approaching their eighties when her son was born. "My mum was diagnosed with Parkinson's" so "her hands mean she can’t change a nappy". They couldn't "chase after a speedy toddler" and "picking a wriggling 12kg weight off the ground is no joke".

Any grandparents who want to calculate how much they would be paid for the hours they work as a "childcare provider, chauffeur, chef, cleaner, nurse or private tutor" to their grandchildren can calculate their "Grandparent Salary" on the insurer SunLife's website, said Barrett in the FT. The result "may surprise you".