Are you relied on to look after your grandchildren regularly while their parents are at work?

The cost of childcare is forcing one in four UK parents to give up their job or drop out of education, according to a new study by global children’s charity Theirworld.

More than 7,000 parents and carers from the UK, Brazil, India, Netherlands, Nigeria, Turkey and the US with children under the age of seven were questioned for global children’s charity Theirworld.

The research found 23% of UK-based parents had either quit work or dropped out of their studies to avoid childcare costs, compared with 17% of their counterparts in Brazil, 16% in Turkey and 13% in Nigeria.

Some 74% of parents in the UK said they find it difficult to meet childcare costs, and 65% said they have had to make major financial changes, including taking on more work and spending less on food, in order to afford childcare.

Some 22% said they spend between 30% and 70% of their income on childcare.

For those parents who don’t get as much support as they’d like with childcare, 63% said it was because grandparents lived too far away or weren’t available, while 50% said they weren’t interested in helping out. Thirteen per cent said their child’s grandparents were still working.

Senior policy adviser at NCT, Elizabeth Duff recently said:  “Some grandparents commit to looking after their grandchildren on a specific day or days each week, whilst others help with nursery pick-ups if they live close by, or on more of an ad-hoc basis, for instance, if children are ill and they have to work. Parents who don’t have family available to help with childcare, tell us it can be difficult to juggle everything – some rely on their friends to help out in emergencies.”

Of the parents who completed the survey for the NCT who had support from grandparents, many commented positively on the help they received and on the bond between grandparents and their children

What is your experience? Are you relied on regularly to offer childcare to allow your children to work? Do you also have older parents that rely on you for care and support?