Grandparents are secretly fuelling women’s careers

A staggering one third of working mothers in the UK rely on grandparents for childcare.

By Terri Apter, psychologist and author of The Female Lead’s Disrupt Your Feed research

When I became a grandparent, I had to confront the ageist stereotype of a grandparent as an elderly person with limited interests, inhabiting the margins of life, passive and benign. But that was a myth: what I felt was something very different.

First was a fierce attachment to my grandson and a determination to be a significant person in his life.

Second, a new anxiety about my daughter’s wellbeing erupted with memories of my own early years as a mother, when I was caught between desire to be with my children and unyielding professional goals. As a psychologist, my response to this divided experience was to search for more data. This was the inspiration for my new book, Grandparenting.

Grandparents today, I discovered, are unlike any other generation of grandparents. The truth, as opposed to the myth, is that they live longer and are generally healthier and more active than their parents were at the same age. Many are still working, still focused on their careers, still driven by ambition or eagerness for adventure or the satisfaction of social contribution, and often by financial need.

This strong cohort, both grandmothers and grandfathers, have spearheaded shifts in female identity and in changing gender roles. As parents themselves, they were wary of being confined by the domestic, caring roles that limited their own mothers’ options. Paradoxically, as grandparents they take on the same caring roles to protect their feminist legacy. Childcare by grandparents is often crucial to their daughter’s (or daughter-in-law’s) career success.

Love of our offspring is accompanied by vulnerability to their needs, and motherhood remains a sticking point in women’s career progression.

During the lockdown periods of the COVID pandemic I worked with The Female Lead on a study of career women between the ages of 30 and 40. They were very clear about the career drag from maternity leave, noting the very different impact becoming a parent had on a mother versus a father. A father was likely to be seen as primed for promotion, given his new motivation and responsibility, whereas a new mother was seen as unready or unreliable. The effect on women was what we called the ‘Unentitled Mindset’: a feeling that they are less deserving of promotions and pay raises compared to men, leading to stalled career progression.

One new truth for women is that one third of working mothers in the UK rely on grandparents for childcare. This childcare is usually unpaid, but the UK Parliament has been told it contributes over £7 billion to the UK economy, with the saving to parents in childcare costs estimated at £96 billion. However, the cost to grandparents themselves from this arrangement has no official estimate.^,,

And another truth: costs to grandparents come in many forms – money, their own careers, their perceived obligations to others - as well as their personal energy and pleasures. But when I asked them about the costs, they focused on the relative costs, thinking about the younger woman they were helping. Giving up career opportunities has less impact on them than on the new parent in mid-career.

And some grandparents want to protect their daughters from what the television journalist Leslie Stahl called the ‘cold choices’ she made as a mother and journalist. Stahl remembered feeling torn between the joy of being with her young daughter and the joy of her career. In caring for her own young granddaughter, she can ease the vicarious fear of that daughter being sidelined in her career, while reassuring her that her child is in loving hands.

This new chapter in caring roles creates a new legacy: new bonds of engagement and gratitude, but also presents challenges as older women, as grandmothers, once again struggle with balancing their own needs with those of other family members.

They still have ‘ambition anxiety’ and want to achieve more and experience more themselves. They have a long history of resisting stereotypes about women’s caring roles, so returning to more or less regular stints of child care is not simple or straightforward. Each grandmother will make her own choices and set her own boundaries in this new phase of her life – a phase wherein she invests in young people’s future while continuing to enjoy her own very personal present.

Terri Apter’s book, Grandparenting: On Love and Relationships Across Generations, is available now

Read The Female Lead’s ‘Unentitled Mindset’ research