Grandparents who don’t want to be exploited: ‘Taking care of grandchildren punctually is different from becoming the main caregiver’ – 10/24/2023 – Balance

When passing near a playground on any weekday afternoon, it is possible to see a typical scene: grandparents taking care of their grandchildren after school.

What may initially seem like a beautiful image, for some has become an obligation, with consequences even for their health.

Cayetana Campo made it clear from the beginning that she did not want to be one of those grandmothers and communicated this to her four children, when they began to have stable partners, to avoid future problems.

“I was clear about this. I have four children and if you do it with one you have to do it with all of them”, she explains in conversation with BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s Spanish service.

For this 71-year-old woman, who lives between Benavente (in the north of Spain) and Madrid, it is one thing to help her children when a specific problem arises and another to always be with her grandchildren.

“If one day they can’t and they need me to pick up the child from school, that’s fine. But picking up the grandchild in the morning and staying with him all day until the parents get back from work is definitely not right, because I have my life and now that I’ve retired I have time to do other things”, he says.

“I have seen grandparents who pick up their grandchildren in the morning, take them to school, feed them and sometimes even their children go on vacation and leave their grandchildren with them”, he adds about the elderly who become the grandchildren’s main caregivers.

Although she admits her children wish they could count on her more, they didn’t react badly. “For me, leaving the child with me and living life is not right. That’s why they have children, right? So they can take care of them.”

‘I am busy’

She criticizes the belief that many hold that “you can have children because the grandparents will take care of them”.

“I had four children and I worked, and they (the grandparents) didn’t take care of them for me. They took care of them when they could.”

“In my day there may have been a grandmother who could have done more, but in general it was like what happened to me: grandparents weren’t there all the time like they are now. Now there are grandparents who are raising them.”

Cayetana had her first child at age 23 and her fourth at age 41. “I’ve been busy for a long time,” says she, who has six grandchildren.

Throughout her life, the woman always had other occupations, in addition to motherhood: she worked with her father in the family pastry shop and then with her husband in a butcher’s shop.

Far from what many might imagine, she has a very good relationship with her grandchildren, with whom she spends quality time.

“We have a grandmother-grandchildren relationship. We enjoy together, that’s what grandparents are for”, says Cayetana when talking about how she divides her time between helping her son in his store in Benavente, something she loves, and going out with her friends.

“In Madrid I do gymnastics in the morning at Retiro Park and in the afternoon I either stay at home doing things or meet friends to go to the theater or go for a walk”, he details.

She has many friends who, like her, refuse to take care of their grandchildren all the time, but she also knows grandparents who take care of their grandchildren full time, because otherwise the children will get mad at them.

“They take care a little as an obligation and that cannot happen”, he comments.

“Talking to people you realize that there is always someone being exploited.”

Afraid of what they will say

But not everyone has Cayetana’s strength. Establishing limits is not always easy and driven by feelings of guilt, many grandparents end up immersed in a whirlwind of schools, extracurricular activities, meals, vacations and other activities, with almost no time for anything else.

“They feel guilty for not wanting to take care of their grandchildren as much”, psychologist Ángel Rull explains to BBC News Mundo about the people he serves.

“They arrive as if there is something wrong with them for not wanting to take care of their grandchildren, for imposing limits, for needing a little more space, for being able to travel.”

“And that’s where we really restructure ourselves so that they know that what they feel is normal, but that socially we don’t talk about it as much, because we are traditionally obliged to take care of silence, of ‘my obligation is to take care of you and not I can complain about that'”, he points out, on a topic that remains taboo, as BBC News Mundo found out when looking for grandparents who decided to set limits.

There have always been grandparents who refused to be with their grandchildren all the time, but when asked if they would be willing to say this publicly, most refused. The fear of what people will say continues to weigh heavily. It’s one thing to comment on the topic confidentially and another to tell the world.

“It’s very difficult for them to say, ‘Well, I don’t take care of my grandchildren,’ because it seems like saying that is like saying you don’t want to contribute to the family,” says José Augusto García Navarro, president of the Spanish Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology .

Manuel Sánchez Pérez, president of the Spanish Society of Psychogeriatrics, sees the situation in the same way:

“The very autonomous grandfather, who makes his own living, who travels, who doesn’t want to start taking on that role of taking care of his children, is still seen culturally as a, let’s say, selfish grandfather. A grandfather who prioritizes his own comfort, his own good -being and that, a little, leaves the children on the sidelines. It is an unfair assessment in many cases.”

“People who opt for this type of position are defending their right to a dignified and healthy old age, and to be able to enjoy the extra time that not having to work gives them, and this is perfectly legitimate”, he adds.

Experts insist that the best alternative is to find a middle way, in which older people can enjoy the autonomy, their time and the health they have and can also, in a reasonable way, be a point of support for their children. However, in many situations there is no such balance.

The exploited grandfather syndrome

In Europe, one in four grandparents takes care of their grandchildren and does so, on average, seven hours a day, a percentage that increases during vacation periods, according to the Health, Aging and Retirement Survey carried out on the continent.

The difficulty of reconciling professional and family life due to the scarcity of public daycare centers and long working hours, precarious employment, as well as the lack of economic resources of many families and the increase in life expectancy, which in 2020 was 82.2 years in Spain, according to official data, it has made grandparents a fundamental factor in childcare, reaching the extreme in some cases.

“The exploited grandfather syndrome is that moral obligation, that pressure that grandparents feel to take care of their grandchildren, which can be imposed directly by their children or because they see that their children really need help, because they are in a precarious situation at work. or in a situation where it is impossible to reconcile with the jobs they occupy”, explains García Navarro.

This need for families to rely on grandparents to raise their children is not something new, but, according to Sánchez Pérez, it is a situation that “although it has always occurred, is increasingly observed.”

“It was found that a significant percentage of elderly people can spend between 6 or 7 hours a day, which is almost a working day of any other job, looking after their grandchildren. And in fact the proportion, according to various studies carried out, of grandparents who “They do it voluntarily, either for pleasure or because they decide, it’s very small. Only 1 in 9 who do it with this intensity do it for pleasure, by their own decision”, he details.

“Now there are more cases, because there are more young people who have more precarious jobs and with more difficult conciliation, although the law tries to guarantee conciliation, in practice this does not always happen. Furthermore, their purchasing power is lower and this prevents them to receive support. I think this clearly happens for these two reasons”, explains García Navarro.

However, Rull highlights that something important is that we are now aware of the problem. “In recent decades we didn’t even think that grandparents could be suffering from this. Now we see that there is suffering and that’s why we try to set limits.”

This happens, above all, in Mediterranean countries and Latin America. “In these countries there is more of a feeling that we are all a family and that everyone should contribute at any age”, says García Navarro.

The health effects

“This moral obligation to take care of grandchildren often ends up resulting in a situation of greater stress from a psychological point of view that can have real repercussions such as anxiety. In some cases it can lead to insomnia and, mainly, that feeling of tiredness and overload” , he adds.

Insomnia and severe fatigue can cause side effects such as driving errors or memory failures due to stress and anxiety. Additionally, if older adults have ischemic heart disease, they may be more likely to suffer a heart attack.

“Their physical health is always deteriorating because a person of a certain age suffers more fatigue, more pain or illnesses, which worsen. And then on a psychological level, frustration, anger, guilt, sadness, anxiety and stress. These are usually emotions that vary between sadness and anger”, says psychologist Rull.

“On a psychological level, it would be close to what is known as burnout syndrome, when you become overwhelmed by a task with little gratification”, explains Sánchez Pérez, at the same time that he insists on taking into account that there is a great diversity of people over 65 years old.

How not to fall for it

The Spanish Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology (SEGG) recommends taking care of communication with children to inform them about any problems that may arise, having their own space and time, knowing the health conditions of each one and how far they can go, and the Most importantly, learn to say “no” to your children.

“It’s important that you point out your limits from the first moment and make them clear from the beginning. Say: ‘I’ll be able to spend time with the grandchildren one day a week, which will be Tuesday’, for example, or ‘every weekday 10 to 12, but not afterwards’, because there will always be exceptions and you will often have to cover these exceptions, but make a very good agreement with your children. Say: ‘Yes, I want it or I don’t want it, but if I want it, it’s under these conditions ‘”, explains the president of SEGG.

“It is also important that you understand that you are not doing anything wrong by doing this, but rather you are doing a very good thing for everyone, because when they are overwhelmed they also take poor care of their grandchild. There is nothing negative about setting limits”, he says .

This text was originally published here.