R absent grandparunts

Where parunts go to complain that their parents dumped them off on their grandparents regularly (PT or FT) and now they are SHOCKED that their same reluctant parunts don't want anything/little to do with their grandspawn.

Why is this shocking, exactly?

Grandma told her daughter that she is retiring:
https://www.reddit.com/r/absentgrandparents/comments/18apidi/shes_yours_to_raise/

This was the first thing out of the moo's mouth after hearing this:

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moo
All I said was that would leave her more time to come by and visit/sometimes watch my daughter.

Oh, is that all she said? So, no congratulations just here is what you can do for me mother now that you have oodles of spare time.
Grandma told her daughter that her child is hers to raise, defined her boundaries, and dropped the mic.
My guess is that grandma had already anticipated the daughter trying to pawn off the grandkid, and had this response ready just in case.

Moo is infuriated about this, of course. Imagine hating being around your own kid so much that the first thing out of your mouth to your mother when she mentions retirement isn't congratulations but is obvious desire for a babysitter more often. It comes across as pure selfishness to only care about your mother being more available to bratsit.

Moo is shocked because she spent 2-3 days at her grandparents so she somehow thinks that her mother will do the same. Yeah, right!

The problem with grandparents giving into this dynamic is that the moo/duh will just become more and more demanding of it. I've seen it happen over and over again.

https://www.reddit.com/r/absentgrandparents/comments/18apidi/shes_yours_to_raise/

And this one wonders if her parents wanted her based on their lack of interest in her children:

Some parents regret having kids 100% of the time and a lot more parents probably regret having kids at least 50-75% of the time.
When I was a kid I quickly saw that the overwhelming majority of parents would tense up and seem unhappy when any kids were around. They always looked visibly happier and more relieved if the kids were leaving. People divorce just so that they have a break. I would guess that parents who want to be around their kids often or all the time and don't feel regret are in the minority, so there isn't any reason to be hurt by this. It doesn't mean that parents don't love their children at some level, or maybe just feel an obligation? Plenty of people have kids to have someone in their lives they can overpower, too. And some just seem to do it to populate the earth.

If anyone can understand why/how a person doesn't love their children I would think it would be a parent because they have to deal with the realities of being a parent daily or for a decent chunk of time and they are also adults (mostly).

https://www.reddit.com/r/absentgrandparents/comments/184dn6t/did_our_parents_even_love_us_kids_if_they_dont/

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freya
And this one wonders if her parents wanted her based on their lack of interest in her children:

Some parents regret having kids 100% of the time and a lot more parents probably regret having kids at least 50-75% of the time./

I kind of wondered if the wave of grandparents peacing out of babysitting (read: raising) their grandkids was a generation realizing they didn't want kids and didn't have to have them. We CF have become more vocal and visible over the years...you'd think that would have some affect on people who somehow really thought they *had* to have kids and are now realizing no, they didn't.

Older grandparents (born 1920s) didn't have a choice as there wasn't effective legal birth control.

+++++++++++++

Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!

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craftyzits
Older grandparents (born 1920s) didn't have a choice as there wasn't effective legal birth control.

They'd all be in their 90's at this point and would be much more likely to be great or great-great grandparents. I would hope that no one would expect a person in their 90's to bratsit. If anything, they should be congratulated on being in their 90's. I'd guess that the age of most grandparents with kids expecting to help out are likely under 70.

Pretty much all grandparents under 70 could have used birth control as it has been around for over 50 years.

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kittehpeoples
I kind of wondered if the wave of grandparents peacing out of babysitting (read: raising) their grandkids was a generation realizing they didn't want kids and didn't have to have them. We CF have become more vocal and visible over the years...you'd think that would have some affect on people who somehow really thought they *had* to have kids and are now realizing no, they didn't.

Probably just a mindset of "I already raised my kids," implying that they are done minding brats and will not be raising someone else's kids, even if it's their grandkids. Some people know if they give their adult kids an inch, they will take a mile and pretty soon, Meemaw and Peepaw have the grandshits for days at a time while Moo fucks off to do who knows what. They have to put their foot down with their breeder children, which of course gets interpreted as being mean and selfish and not caring about their grandbabies.

They served their sentence and they aren't interested in extra-curricular parenting. I think that's reasonable. But if their adult kids feel entitled to their spare time in retirement, that might have something to do with how those adult kids were brought up. Just sayin'.

But I also know some grandparents dig the role because they get to have all the fun parts of parenthood for cute Facebook photos and can spoil the kids rotten, then hand them back to their mothers when they've had their fill. Being a grandparent is kind of like being a father, now that I think about it. Still, any breeders and wanna-breeders should not assume they are owed anyone else's time and should not expect family members to be unpaid babysitters for them. If you can't afford a babysitter, you can't afford a child. Buy a fucking doll or a house plant if you need to nurture something.

I know someone who was babysitting Monday thru Friday while they were in their late 80s/early 90s. She didnt complain about it, she might even still do it for all I know, but my pal put an end to it when he saw it and told his sister to fuck off with that. He lives out of state so I don't know if they listened to him or not. The "grandmom" now lives alone I think, so she's rather independent.

I was looking at some of the all time top discussions in this sub and woooow the fucking entitlement and audacity.

This person complains that "the door is always open" doesn't involve enough effort on the grandparents' part to play an active role in their grandkids' lives:
https://old.reddit.com/r/absentgrandparents/comments/zdq33z/why_the_door_is_always_open_doesnt_work/

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One of the things my MIL always said when we’ve brought up my IL's lack of involvement with our kids in the past is, “the door is always open!” And my husband will also repeat that to defend his parents, “They’ve told us we’re welcome to bring the kids over anytime.”

This bothers me, and here’s why. It’s like telling a person in crisis, “If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know.” This puts the burden of asking for help on the recipient of this “offer,” and because most people feel awkward asking for help, don’t know what kind of help a person is willing to give, etc., the person offering never has to really do anything; they just look good for offering. Which is the whole point.

Here’s why “the door is always open” is a shitty way to approach a grandchild relationship:

• The door isn’t always open. Because when we try, we get excuses about how busy they are, we have to work around the daily childcare they provide to the other grandchildren, etc.
• It puts all the emotional labor on us. Good relationships should generally be 50/50 efforts, with some allowances for when one party needs more. But “the door is always open” puts the entire burden of maintaining the grandparent relationship on us. We have to do all the work.
• They’re the ones who are retired! Like, seriously, we work full-time and juggle busy schedules. I don’t want this on my plate too.
• It absolves them of guilt when they’re not seeing their grandkids. “Well, we told you, the door is always open!” Basically, the failure of the relationship they have with our kids is 100% on our shoulders.
• It’s telling me they don’t want to really do anything with my kids. They’re not going to plan a fun outing to a park or to look at Christmas lights or go out to lunch. It’s just “bring the grandkids here so I can park them in front of the TV and ignore them for a few hours.”

Tl;dr, “the door is always open” lets them make it seem like they want to have a relationship, but the subtext is, “I don’t plan on putting in any effort at all.”

So the in-laws come out and say they'll watch the grandkids whenever, but Moo is mad because they aren't putting in enough effort. If I was a grandmoo and heard that shit, I'd rescind my open door policy in a hot second if the ungrateful ass of a Moo was bitching to everyone online about how I'm not trying hard enough to have a relationship with the grandbrats. Why does the effort always have to be on the grandparents? If the heifer wants help with the kids, can't she haul her ass to their house?

And why are grandparents obligated to play a role in their grandbrats' upbringing? Just because they're family doesn't mean they need to raise someone else's kids. That's the kind of shit that gets your kindness taken advantage of.

---

Then we have this specimen who feels that grandparents do, in fact, owe them child care because parenting doesn't stop just because the child turns 18 and becomes a breeder.

https://old.reddit.com/r/absentgrandparents/comments/11slhth/stop_saying_they_dont_owe_us_anything/

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I’ve been reading tons of posts on here of people complaining about grandparents not being involved and I always read “I know they don’t owe us anything”.

Um, actually they do. They are your parents, you are their child. Just because you’re over 18, doesn’t mean the parenting/help should stop. They made you, they put you on this planet so YES they DO owe you. They should want to help their child naturally.

Small rant. You can disagree if you want but this is just how I feel. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Parents are only obligated to care for their kids until they turn 18. They are totally free to boot their kids out on their asses when they are legal adults because they no longer have a legal obligation to care for them. And unless they are the official legal guardians of their grandkids, they have no obligation to those kids either. Maybe they don't want to help raise their grandkids because their own adult kids are entitled asshats?

Why do grandparents owe their adult breeder children? They didn't force their grown kids to make a new human being. But hey, adults don't get this kind of entitlement all on their own, much like how kids don't become racist adults on their own. Someone instills this shitty attitude in them and makes them think it's acceptable. That someone is almost always the parents. Maybe the grandparents knew they did a shit job raising their kids and now they don't want to deal with aftermath of the entitlement they taught their damn kids that got worse with age. Like someone who abuses a dog until it becomes violent and aggressive, gives it to someone else to be their problem and then doesn't want it back because they know what a trash fire the dog is.

Wow those posts are something else.

See, if I was a busy moo, I'd spend my time better than be online complaining about grandparents. Get something done or take a nap.

Also, what if grandparents had like 5 kids, should they be on call for all 5 adult children? Why should anyone pay a babysitter again?

Who the fuck grows up thinking someone is indebted to you for the rest of your life?

Will breeders ever stop shocking the shit outta me w/ their delusions and entitlement?

Nope! The entitlement is like a blackberry bush.

+++++++++++++

Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!

I took a gander at that subreddit and noted all the posts that get engagement are the ones that basically boil down to whining that they're not getting free childcare of their parents/in-laws, but the one post I saw that wasn't that but a child who lives with her grandparents and is struggling with the death of her grandmother and the grandfather is distant, nobody had a single comment for her.

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There was a guy on collapse with kids who referred to his father not being there for the grandkids as "abandonment" of himself. He complained that he was "dumped" by his parents as they demanded he grow up and deal with his choices. He saw his parents as ending their parental relationship with him basically when they would not help him raise his grandbrats. What if his parents die and leave him with bratraising?

My parents were born in the mid 1930's and never expected help from their parents, of course the grandparents on each side had 10 kids on each side themselves and would be overwelmed so I never grew up looking at a grandparent as someone to depend on as people do nowadays. My gran did knit all us grandbrats slippers so there was that.

I never saw my grandparents as babysitters or part of raising me and my siblings. But both mom and dad were, I think, trying to raise us a bit differently from their own parents, and the grands lived a long drive away. The grandparents were the fun people we.visited for holidays and summers. I liked it that way.

Parents aren't obligated to help with grandkids. If they're disinterested in parenting, then lack of interest in grandkids certainly tracks.

Gosh this current gen of young parunts really really hate their 'boomer' parents/now grandparents. Now not only will you find a barrage on this sub in OP, but it is 70% of the complaints on the sub BoomersBeingFools. Now I'm not a Boomer, but this sub is bizarre to me, just like Breeders would never understand a CF site or sub.

They hate everything about their parents-kids' grandparents. I'd like to tell them these are somewhat normal family problems and really have nothing to do w/ 'Boomer' They get mad that the Grandparents whined for grandbabies but they DARED to retire and then retire in FLA, which let's face it many many ppl do. Then they are mad that Grandparents want visits, but they dont want to travel w/ said child and the grandparents have all the time in the world to do the schlepping. This is the story as old as time, isn't it? In my office when I was in my 20s, I saw all the 30something parunts go on a vacay every year to the ILs house or parents house that was out of state w/ the kids. Everyone did it. They didnt blame it on the 'greatest generation'. And, while something I didnt want to do, oddly enough I never heard them complain about these vacations, but I always wondered how they really felt about it. My ILs live local (some out of state too) and I'm glad I dont have kids of any age that would add to visiting them more often, even if the visits go well. Once again, not really a boomer prob but a family prob. Sounds like they hate what kids add to their lives. I mean, before my grandma died, she was in the process of moving to Az, my parunts didnt resent her having this decision.

They are also mad that the boomer grandparents wont have any money left for an inheritance. I really hate when people count other peoples' money and feel entitled to inheritance. They are also mad at 'boomer' Seinfeld saying comedy has to not take chances now therefore there is less of it, and they are all "fuck you" because he has 40 cars. (should he donate his money to some parents' fund?) Wow, Seinfeld isn't allowed to make money I guess, and be successful at it. What is wrong with them?

But these grown adults, with kids complain til the cows come home on Reddit, dont they? Endlessly about the spouse, the schools, the grandparents, and the job that they willingly just do enough to not get fired. Whine resentfully that the grandparents wont babysit. That their dad who lived out of state had little interest in their child. IDK what they wanted him to do after awhile. He can face time, and send a card/gifts, maybe visit once a year. They constantly pat themselves on the back what great parents they are of 'happy kids' and how they are the first gen to 'push back' on the grandparents, and have good mental health. They sound like the same disgruntled parunts we always hear from and are delusional how great they parunt and how much joy it actually is.

They push back on everything and think every thing is toxic and everything is abuse, and likely divorce, they are gonna have a life as a forever single moo/duhd suffering all along and getting more bitter.