DIL’s Babysitting Rules Backfire, Losing MIL’s Help and Jeopardizing Her Job

Grandparents often help working families a lot, but when standards for child care become too high or not reasonable, problems are bound to arise. This real-life example shows how hard it can be to meet the needs of family while also setting personal limits. Because the grandmother refused to provide highly structured childcare for nine hours a day for a week, she was accused of hurting her daughter-in-law’s job goals. The case gives us important information about the limits that grandparents can put on child care, parents’ unrealistic expectations, and how family dynamics affect choices about child care.

Grandparents and parents need to work together and respect each other’s boundaries while creating a safe and loving environment for the children

DIL’s Strict Rules For Babysitting Costs Her Childcare From MIL, In Tears As It Affects Her Job — Image credits: senivpetro / Freepik (not the actual photo)

The poster shared that her daughter-in-law was going to start a new job and needed someone to look after her kids for a week until she could get them into daycare

More and more families expect grandparents to take care of their grandchildren. This is especially true as the cost of childcare rises and families look for reliable options (Pew Research). But when boundaries aren’t honored, this dependence can quickly turn into anger. In this case, the request seemed simple: one week of childcare to fill in a gap in daycare. But there was a long list of strict conditions that went beyond what was acceptable for unpaid, voluntary care.

Giving nine hours of daily care while following strict dietary rules, taking part in planned educational activities, not watching TV, and not having the grandmother’s friends visit is more like professional babysitting than family babysitting. Child development experts say that while structure and consistency are important for young children, asking unpaid caregivers to make sure that their charges do a full schedule of enrichment activities and avoid social interaction is not realistic and doesn’t respect the caregiver’s right to privacy (Child Mind Institute).

Another major source of conflict was that the daughter-in-law didn’t trust the grandmother’s friends, even though there were no health risks like COVID-19 to worry about. Calling close friends “bad influences” without a good reason not only insults the grandparent, but it also sets a tone of moral judgment that makes family ties even worse. Research has shown that parents and grandparents need to respect and believe each other in order for grandparent-grandchild relationships to be healthy (Verywell Family).

The grandmother’s refusal makes sense from a realistic point of view. It’s not reasonable to expect her to do nine hours of organized childcare every day, which is a lot of emotional work for no pay and cuts her off from her normal social contacts. Even paid child care workers have different rules, such as set work agreements, protections, and pay, which are not part of this family request.

You can’t ignore the mental side either. I understand how desperate the daughter-in-law is—the U.S. Department of Labor says that finding work is important for many families’ work-life balance and financial stability—but that doesn’t mean that the guardian doesn’t need to give permission and set limits. Family support is a gift, not a duty. If demands make it impossible for a grandparent to live the life they want, they have the right to say “no,” even if it hurts.

In the end, this case shows a truth that is often felt but not talked about enough: family relationships in childcare need to be handled with understanding, respect, and realistic goals. If you don’t do this, you could face short-term problems with logistics as well as long-term relationship problems that will hurt your family much more than a missed job chance.