Excerpts

‘Enslaved grandparent syndrome” – sounds extreme, doesn’t it? But that’s what some psychologists in Spain are calling the childcare burden faced by older people in that country, where 35% of people over the age of 65 take care of their grandchildren several days a week. In my London neighbourhood, the sight of a grandparent pushing a baby in a buggy, or a toddler in a swing, is fairly common, but in Madrid, even more so. The latest Europe-wide survey, in 2016, found the proportion of over 65s undertaking childcare at least several days a week in southern European countries – Spain especially, but also in Italy and Greece – is much higher than in France (13%) and Germany (15%) or the UK (18%).

This is the result of historical cultural norms of shared care between generations, but now some Spanish grandparents are fighting back. After working all their lives, and years spent raising their own children, they hadn’t bargained for spending their retirements engaged in unpaid childcare, and they are not alone in that.

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I sometimes wonder if I would have had children earlier, had I feared less the toll it would take on my education, career and finances, and had the system been more hospitable. It is not a system that was built for women of reproductive age, yet we are forced to try to work within it.

Let’s not forget, either, that this is a gender issue. Most often, the grandparent doing the childcare is the grandmother. Her own pregnancies and births may have brought their own health issues. Often, she will still be working. She may have other care responsibilities, either her own parents, a partner, or offspring. For women, retirement from paid work doesn’t mean the unpaid care work stops.

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That capitalism thrives on the unpaid domestic labour of women isn’t exactly news, but the grandparental revolt is a new manifestation of it. Love shouldn’t come with a price, but the care work that comes with love: why shouldn’t it? Why should mostly older women be propping up insufficient childcare systems?

I don’t blame parents for being frustrated. Whether they are in Spain, Germany, or the UK, they have all to some extent been shortchanged on the expectation of a family life that is easier than the generations that came before. Almost every parent I speak to is completely burned out. Meanwhile, politicians try to work out how they can improve dwindling birthrates.

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