Should mums and dads pay grandparents for babysitting?

In a first-of-its-kind law, Sweden is allowing parents to allocate some of their paid leave to their grandparents.

Described as a win-win for all parties involved, it raises the question of whether Nan and Pop should get paid to take care of their grandkids and if Australia should follow Sweden's lead.

Futurist's Ben Hamer said in the 1970s, Sweden was the first country in the world to allow dads, as well as mums, to access paid parental leave - now they are including grandparents.

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"So over there you get 16 months and you can split that between two parents, or if there's just a sole caregiver, they get all of the 16 months," he told Today Extra.

"Now as the grandparent, you can tap into that as well, you do have a lot of grandparents who do it for free and out of the goodness of their own heart, but now you can actually financially compensate them and overall it doesn't cost any more money because you're just still tapping into that quota that's been given."

Ben said Australia is typically quite "risk averse" when it comes to these things, so we don't like to be first to make such a big move.

However, he said seeing it work well in another country, allowing grandparents access to your paid parental leave could absolutely take off Down Under.

"We do have something that's quite similar, when you think about caring for older Australians who are unwell and say their spouse or one of their kids is actually a carer, they can apply to Centrelink and get a carer's allowance," he said.

"So we already do it for older Australians, now it's just doing it for much younger Australians."

Ben said there are already a lot of supporters for the policy in Australia, particularly mothers who are eager to get back into the workforce, but feel guilty doing so.

And following Sweden's lead again, he said the Europeans are also making big moves in closing the gender pay gap.

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"They're real groundbreakers in this space when it comes to the gender pay gap, they actually are at $0.91 to the dollar for females, whereas here we're $0.78 to the dollar," he said.

But Ben admitted there are some grandparents who are reluctant taking money from their children to babysit the grandkids.

"I think it's just this idea that it costs more money, but at the end of the day, you look at an example of a policy like this where it's actually not going to cost the taxpayer any more," he said.

"But at the same time, it means that we can take some of that pressure off the childcare system, I can see the reluctance in terms of the financial side of it, but the way that the Swedes have done it is a bit of a win-win."

Hear the full chat with Ben in the video above