TUC report on grandparents and childcare

I don't think you can expect employers to pay for everything. It wouldn't encourage employers to take on older people if they may have to give them grandparenting leave in the near future. And it would make running a business more difficult.

Families need to work this out for themselves. Perhaps make do with a little less income? Give up some luxuries?

I wonder how many grandparents on here still work and provide childcare. I know I wouldn't have wanted to in my late sixties.

I did it for a while jingle all be it part time and not the demanding job I had done previously as I couldnt have done it. I had to give the job up as it was too much juggling the DGC and having to be out in the evenings.

But as the pension age is constantly changing I feel in the long run I will lose pension not working and not paying a stamp, but dont know how DD would manage to have the children with a child minder from 7 am until after 8pm some evenings and thats only 2 DGC in January there will be 3, so she would be working to pay for child care.

The government needs to look at the cost of child care in this country and how many parents have to work to be able to keep their heads above water and not by any means working to live in luxury just mking ends meet.

There seems to be some implication that parents' jobs are more important than grandparents jobs. Maybe this is because younger people are getting paid more .
It is not talking about emergency leave "he's got a temperature and I've got an important meeting mum - can you take a day off?"
It is talking about unpaid "parental' leave "Can i have a week's unpaid leave to cover half term". Employers will have a right to say no to this, as they do to requests for unpaid parental leave.
Are grandparents going to be paid by their offspring to compensate them for loss of earnings I wonder? Or is the old emotional blackmail going to happen all over the country "Can you take a week off mum, you don't mind do you?" (because my job is more important and well paid than yours mum... and I don't want to ask for unpaid parental leave myself)

For a long time, bosses of many small private businesses have covertly avoided employing young women because they know they would struggle with the expense of maternity leave etc. As things keep changing, how much longer will it be before they feel they can only employ older people who have no family to speak of - or elderly men who, if we are honest, are much less likely than women to take on the child-care of any grandchildren?

Exactly MamaCaz

After the report yesterday that the current generation will not be as well off as their parents, why are we all assuming the parents earn more than the grandparents (or should I say grandmother)?

As the age for having a first child rises more and more families will find that grandparents have retired before grandchildren arrive. We were 67 before we became grandparents and if our grandchildren have children as late as their parents, DS and DDiL will be 80 before they become grandparents and will probably no longer have the stamina to provide regular full day childcare

I gave up work at 50 so that I could offer childcare to my grandchildren when their mother went back to work. I have been repaid more than fully with the bond I have although I also have a terrific bond with my other grandchildren even without my looking after them. I know we are all proud of our offspring and my grandchildren are the bestest ever.

It was not easy to give up work although 'cutting our cloth' at that time stood us in good stead for entering the pensioner world. I would never have expected my boss to offer paid leave for a decision which was mine to make. Just occasionally I have little niggly regrets for not building on my own career at the time but they are soon brushed aside.

My daughter needed to work at that time or there would have been no food on the table or roof over the children's heads but I later learned that her now ex didn't like her working such long hours because it hurt his pride, even though he did not earn enough to keep them all.

Maybe it is wrong that the Government takes the grandparent input for granted but overall I enjoyed what I did.

I have looked after my three grandchildren 1-2 days a week (including a sleepover) since they were all around 6 weeks old when DiL went back to work. The other gran does one day and the children all went to nursery on the other days. Neither my son or DiL have very well paid jobs (DiL works shifts) and at one very low point, when there were 2 of them in nursery, my DiL's entire wage was paying the nursery fees. We are fairly lucky in that having our own small business I am often able to juggle things around to take the children at the last minute if an emergency arises and do doctors, dentists etc. but I know that if I worked for someone else I probably wouldn't have a job by now. The demands on my time from 3 grandchildren plus elderly parents and my grandma too means that I am often called out of work. Speaking as an employer MamaCaz is dead right. Small businesses are already extremely reluctant to take on young women (and men) as they cannot afford the additional demands for maternity leave, paternity leave, parental leave and last minute childcare etc. Its fine for governments to make sweeping promises of more time off, flexible working patterns etc. which can probably work in a large organisation or the public sector but can be the nail in the coffin for a small business.

It says older people earn a lower average wage in the article flicketyb
lizg - big decision - particularly for 50 year old women who may not have much money put away for a pension. Today's 50 year olds could work another 20 years if they wanted to...
Yes I agree about employing young women. Maternity leaves can be a big hit on small and medium organisations.
In schools, for instance, finding an adequate replacement teacher for a year, at a random point in the school year, can be impossible.
Occasionally it is glaringly transparent that a candidate is wanting a particular job because she wants to start a family (hmm, why are you giving up your career as air crew for an office job - no other plausible explanation offered .... very hard not to voice suspicions to the recruiting manager - which is of course illegal)

JessM that surprises me, but it may depend on the type of job you have. In professional and managerial jobs older staff are better paid because they are more senior.

Wow Cari I am almost famous ! (well my words are anyway) The FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) are continuously campaigning (mostly unsuccessfully) for the government to provide special arrangements for small businesses such as ours. Successive governments pay lip service to small businesses telling us we are "the backbone of Britain" but they never consider the realities of how we actually operate.

If I had to guess flicketyb it would be that more young people are in highly paid jobs like computer programming and more older people are in low paid jobs like checkout assistant. I suspect if you looked at women the difference would be much more marked as fewer women of my generation had good education and lucrative careers than their daughters and granddaughters are having.
Agreed gilybob much lip service paid but those in government seem to think that Business = Big Corporate Business and don't seem to understand that SMEs employ far more people , create more jobs and are a vital part of the economy. They say that german industrial might has grown out of small, high quality family businesses that make things.