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LynneE4's latest comments
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7th Oct 2018LynneE4 commented on:
Does your family rely on you for childcare to enable them to work?(6 kids and 8th grandchild on the way.) I travel a lot now I am technically retired but I make sure I am in England for all major moments. My mobile phone has not been switched on at the airport before my children know I am on all points alert for any help I can give. This is usually helping out with nursery and school drop offs and pick ups, with weekend stay overs, and frequent 'just a couple of hours while I go to the doctors/shopping/have a sleep, get ready for work.' These often involve their dogs too which is even more fun. I prefer them all at my house as I think I can get on with my stuff at the same time but of course I never can or indeed want to. My over-riding feeling is that I was so lucky to never have it assumed that I had to work while bringing up my 6 children. I gave up my work as an actress in the theatre, not without regret at the time, and I did part time and later full time teaching. I had no help from family whatsoever as my parents had died before I got married. Occasionally my mother-in-law would come down from Glasgow to stay but this is what I find funny - it was me who would run around like a mad thing, looking after her, trying to keep the kids quiet and polite and gainfully employed ( no TV watching or making a mess) and the house perfect and meals well-presented. And most comically on reflection, breast-feeding but never mentioning the fact, pretending that I was going upstairs to clean the bathroom or something and praying the kids downstairs would be good without me to glare at them or shepherding them all upstairs with me pretending I was going to cut their toenails or something. I very much missed having my Mum and Dad share my family with me; they would have been such wonderful grandparents in every way. Even now and then I desert my kids to travel and also visit the youngest in Sydney. It's a sort of reward to myself for never doing anything at all while they were growing up. I guess we all have the best of everything now as a family. They all look after one another's kids too, so always the grandkids feel safe and very much loved by all of us. I want my 3 daughters and 3 sons to enjoy modern life and modern expectations: coffees out with friends, holidays abroad, expensive activities with the children, regular meals out as a couple. With one wage it wasn't possible for us as a family when they were young. When I began part-time work, I had a couple of friends who I paid to mind the babies and toddlers and pick the children up from school until I returned, all very ad hoc depending on husband's shifts. No way would it have been worth me working nowadays with the 6 of them -now you pay regardless and cannot have an unregistered child-minder. I wish there was a drop-in state child care provision system. Perhaps grandparents could run it! All in all, it is what it is. And it will be in the future what it will be. But it will also be what we as grandparents choose to help to make it become.