Minding the grandchildren: the best job in retirement, and the one nobody negotiates

Our article on what caring for an ageing parent costs your own retirement dealt with care running in one direction. This one is the mirror image — the care that runs the other way — and it has a completely different feel, because for most people it's a delight rather than a burden. Grandparents are the largest source of informal childcare in this country: when the Australian Bureau of Statistics last measured it in detail, grandparents were the most frequently used source of informal care across every age from birth to four, with about one in five infants under one, a third of one-year-olds and roughly 30 per cent of two-year-olds usually in a grandparent's care (Australian Bureau of Statistics, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/education/childhood-education-and-care-australia/latest-release). For an enormous number of Australian families, Grandma is the childcare plan.

And it is genuinely one of the best things about retirement. The relationship you get from two days a week is not the relationship you get from Sunday lunch. Being needed is good for people. Watching them grow up close is a privilege most working parents never had time for. Let me be as clear as I can be at the outset: nothing in this article argues against doing it. It argues for one thing only — that a commitment this big deserves to be agreed rather than assumed. Because it almost never is. This article is general information only, not personal advice.

What is the distinction to make first?

This article is about regular minding — the two or three days a week so your children can work. That's a completely different thing from kinship care, where grandparents raise their grandchildren full-time because the parents can't. That situation is far harder, far rarer, and has its own Centrelink, super and estate consequences — our separate article on grandparents raising grandchildren covers it. If that's you, go there instead.

Is it a commitment, not a hobby?

Here's the honest framing: two fixed days a week is job-shaped. It has set hours, it can't be moved, someone is relying on it, and calling in sick creates a crisis for somebody else. We just don't describe it that way, because it's family and because it's lovely. But describing it accurately matters, because it's the only way the costs get seen.

What does it actually cost?

The big one is your time and your freedom, and it's almost invisible while it's happening. Two locked days a week determines when you can travel, whether you can go anywhere in school term, whether you can volunteer, whether you could take a part-time job. Retirements get quietly redesigned around the arrangement — and years later people notice that the trip they'd saved forty years for has somehow still not happened.

Then there's money, untracked: the food, the outings, the petrol, the spare clothes at your place, the little treats you'd never begrudge. Individually trivial, collectively often thousands a year, and essentially never discussed. There's the physical toll, which nobody prices in — a toddler at 68 is genuinely hard work, and the lifting, the car seats, the getting down on the floor and back up again all take a real toll. As our article on falls sets out, an injury at this stage of life is not a trivial thing. And sometimes there's your own earnings: some grandparents don't take the part-time work, or cut back further than they meant to, because the days are locked. That's the same peak-years contribution loss our article on caring for a parent describes, in miniature.

Why does it drift — "we assumed you'd be free"?

Almost nobody negotiates this. It starts as a favour — just Tuesdays, just while she settles in. Then it's Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then your daughter takes a job whose hours only work because you're available, and now you are not a favour, you are infrastructure.

And here's the trap: by the time it's too much, saying so feels impossible. Your children have built their working lives on it. Speaking up sounds like "I don't want to see the kids," which is the last thing you mean. So you say nothing, and the resentment goes underground — which is worse for everyone, including the grandchildren, than an honest conversation in year one would have been. It's worth being fair to your adult children here: this is almost always thoughtlessness rather than selfishness. Nobody sat down and decided to consume your retirement. They just asked, and you said yes, and nobody ever revisited it.

How do you do it well?

Agree it explicitly, at the start: how many days, which days, what happens in school holidays, what happens when you want to disappear to Europe for six weeks. Vagueness is what breeds resentment on both sides — clarity is a kindness. Say the real number early, too: if two days works and three doesn't, say two now, while it's easy, because renegotiating in year three is ten times harder than setting it in month one. Build in a review — "let's check in each year" turns changing the arrangement into a normal event rather than a family incident, and things should change as the kids get older and as you do.

Talk about money. Parents should generally cover the costs of their own children — the food, the activities, the car seat. This isn't mercenary and it isn't about the money; it's about the quiet resentment that untracked spending breeds, which is corrosive precisely because nobody ever mentions it.

And check the mix, because this is the part where the ground has genuinely shifted. A lot of families assume formal childcare is unaffordable and default to Grandma without ever running the numbers — but formal care is both more used and more subsidised than that assumption suggests. In September 2024, 846,000 children, just over half of all children in care, used Australian Government subsidised child care (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/childcare-and-early-childhood-education). A family earning under $88,520 can get the maximum Child Care Subsidy rate of 90 per cent of the fee, tapering as income rises and cutting out at $538,520 (Services Australia, https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/how-much-child-care-subsidy-you-can-get, thresholds updated 6 July 2026). More importantly, the old activity test — which tied your subsidised hours to how much you worked — was replaced on 5 January 2026, and eligible families can now get at least 72 hours of subsidised care a fortnight regardless, rising to 100 hours where both parents each do more than 48 hours of recognised participation a fortnight (Department of Education, https://www.education.gov.au/early-childhood/providers/child-care-subsidy/3-day-guarantee; Services Australia, https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/recognised-participation-and-activity-test-for-child-care-subsidy). That's three days a fortnight of guaranteed subsidised care that many families don't know they now have — and it may be exactly the thing that turns "Grandma does all of it" into "Grandma does the one day she'd actually love." Finally: protect the retirement you saved for. If the trip keeps not happening, that's the signal. You are allowed to go.

What do the worked examples show?

These show the same arrangement working and not working. They are illustrative only, and not personal advice.

Consider Margaret, 67, recently retired and delighted to mind her daughter's two-year-old. It started as Tuesdays; it is now Tuesdays, Wednesdays and half of Thursdays, because her daughter's shift pattern changed and nobody re-opened the conversation. Margaret has twice postponed a long-planned trip. On these facts Margaret is carrying a job-shaped commitment she never agreed to, and the drift is the problem rather than the caring. It is generally rational for someone in Margaret's position to raise it now rather than at the point of resentment — and, crucially, to raise it with the alternative in hand: since 5 January 2026 her daughter's family can access at least 72 hours of subsidised care a fortnight without an activity test (Department of Education, https://www.education.gov.au/early-childhood/providers/child-care-subsidy/3-day-guarantee), which means "I'd love to keep Tuesdays" is a workable proposal rather than an abandonment.

Now consider Frank and Susan, both 70, who mind their son's children one day a week by explicit agreement, reviewed each January, with the parents covering food and activities. On these facts nothing needs fixing — and the reason it works isn't goodwill, which every family has, but that the arrangement was sized, named and revisited. It is generally rational for a couple in their position to keep the annual review even while everything is fine, because the review is what makes a future change ordinary rather than a rupture. The distinction between Margaret's situation and theirs is not how much they love their grandchildren. It's whether anyone ever said the number out loud.

Is it allowed to be a "no"?

Or a "not anymore," or a "not that many." Being loved does not oblige you to be free labour, and a grandparent who sets a kind boundary early is far more use to that family for far longer than one who says yes to everything and burns out at 74. A sustainable arrangement lasts for years. An unsustainable one ends — usually badly, usually with someone hurt.

What if you're the adult child reading this?

Your parents saying yes is a gift, not an entitlement. Ask what genuinely suits them, rather than what they'll agree to. Ask again each year. Cover the costs of your own children. Check what you're actually entitled to in subsidised care before defaulting to your mother. And when the answer changes — because their health changes, or because they'd like to actually go on the holiday — believe them the first time.

What if you're doing both directions at once?

Some people are minding grandchildren and caring for an ageing parent, simultaneously, in their early sixties. That's the sandwich, and it is genuinely crushing. The rules are the same in both directions: name it, size it, share it, and use the services that exist rather than being the only resource. Our articles on caring for a parent and on the sandwich generation go through the supports.

What should you do in short?

Mind the grandchildren. It's one of the best things you'll ever do and one of the few genuinely irreplaceable jobs in the world. Just do it as a decision instead of a drift: agree the days out loud, say the real number early, revisit it every year, let their parents pay for their own children, check what subsidised care the family can actually get now that the activity test is gone, and don't quietly hand over the retirement you spent forty years paying for. The arrangement everybody has actually agreed to is the one that lasts — and lasting is the whole point.

Sources

• ABS — Childhood Education and Care, Australia
• Department of Education — 3 Day Guarantee (Child Care Subsidy)
• Services Australia — How much Child Care Subsidy you can get
• Services Australia — Recognised participation and activity test for Child Care Subsidy
• AIHW — Childcare and early childhood education