Half of all young
families in Britain today couldn’t survive financially without the help of grandparents.
As the credit crunch bites
ever harder, more and more grandparents are providing free childcare for their
grandchildren allowing their own children to work without having to pay crippling
nursery or childminder costs.
Grandparents also think
it is ‘better emotionally’ for their young grandchildren to be cared for by
them rather than professional nurseries or childminders outside of the family
unit.
* Half of all modern
day grandparents now childmind at least one young grandchildren (48%) an average
of 20 hours a week
* A quarter of these childmind for more than 25 hours per week and 12% ‘more
than 40 hours a week’.
Grandparents save parents
of under-fives alone more than £2.4 billion a year in childminding costs,
according to The 21st Century Gran Survey 2009 commissioned by Yours Magazine.
This figure does not account
for the fact that most childminding grandparents frequently look after two grandchildren:
* A fifth look after
‘three or more young grandchildren’ (19%)
* Six out of 10 grandparents (63%) also look after grandchildren between the
ages of eight and 14 when required
Working mums
At present, working mums
who have grandparents willing to childmind their pre-school grandchildren have,
on average, an extra £128 a week in their pocket if they work full-time
(average four days a week) and an extra £80 per week if they work part-time
(two and a half days a week.)
This amounts to £6,144
saved by mums who work full-time per each pre-school child, allowing for four
weeks a year holiday from work and therefore childminding costs (£128
x 48 weeks) and £3,840 a year for part-time mums (£80 per week x
48 weeks).
Childcare costs
Average nursery costs are
now £160 per week full-time (£32 a day) and average childminder
costs are £140 full-time (£28 per day).
The amount grandparents
save their working children has been calculated according to the average number
of hours grandparents spend childminding per week.
However, this has only been
calculated on the basis of one under-five being cared for by grandparents, whereas
in reality most childmind an average of two young children.
This means the amount
working parents save if they have two under-fives can be doubled.
* The majority of grandparents
who childmind are ‘retired’ (71%) and surviving on their pension.
* Only 7% receive any payment from their children for childminding and even
then it’s only £10 a day compared to an average nursery cost of £32
per day.
* 87% of grandparents say they ‘wouldn’t take payment from their children’
and 56% say their children ‘couldn’t afford to pay them anything’ anyhow.
* Only 7% of childminding grandparents receive ‘childminding expenses’ from
their children for ‘food or outings’ and 20% ‘some expenses’.
* Seven out of 10 childminding grandparents receive ‘no expenses at all’ (72%)
and totally foot the bill themselves.
More information
: Yours magazine
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