Childcare is too expensive. Is paying grandparents the answer?

Parents are increasingly turning to grandparents to help cope with childcare costs, and are even helping to pay some of the bills, according to new data.

Sixty-three per cent of those surveyed by Choosi said they help care for their grandchildren, 39 per cent provide regular care, 25 per cent provide weekly care, and 97 per cent say they enjoy the experience. However, half admit they find it tiring and a quarter say sometimes they do it because they feel they can’t say no.

With the majority of families around the country now dual income, and Australia historically ranked among the highest countries for gross, out-of-pocket childcare costs relative to family income, the sad reality is most parents rely on the free childcare grandparents provide.

Which begs the question: Should financial assistance be provided to grandparents who act as regular carers for their grandchildren to help parents work in the form of government payments?

Should grandparents be compensated for caring for grandchildren?

We posed the question in a nine.com.au reader poll, and the verdict was almost split down the middle.

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Most respondents (39 per cent) said “no”, as the care provided by grandparents “is a family matter, not a government responsibility”. Twenty-eight per cent felt grandparents should be compensated, while 24 per cent said yes, but only for lower income families. Nine per cent were unsure.

Georgie Dent, CEO of parent advocacy organisation The Parenthood, told nine.com.au she isn’t surprised by the poll results as “there is a genuine argument on both sides”.

She said the case for recognising the contribution of grandparents caring for their grandchildren is real, and care has been “economically undervalued forever”.

Grandparents shouldn’t replace quality childcare

Dent stressed we should distinguish between the importance of grandparents’ contribution to their grandchildren’s lives, and the very real issues in Australia’s childcare system, being quality, affordability, and availability.

In terms of compensation for grandparents who care for their grandchildren, Dent said her concern would be “what problem we’re trying to solve”.

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“If childcare is unaffordable or unavailable, paying grandparents to step in may help individual families, but it doesn’t fix the underlying problem,” she said.

“We would not want to create a system where some children get access to subsidised, high-quality early learning while other families are effectively encouraged to make do with whatever informal care they can assemble.”

The gender issue also can’t be ignored, Dent explained.

“Grandmothers provide a very large share of grandparent care. For those who are still in paid work, encouraging them to reduce their hours can mean another hit to earnings and superannuation after many have already carried that cost while raising their own children.”

If any broader payment were to be considered for grandparents, it would need to “sit alongside a properly funded universal early education and care system and never become an alternative to building one”.

Government payments would likely come with a form of regulation of that care, Dent explained, which could add further complication.

“If public money were being paid specifically for the provision of childcare, I think some level of accountability would be unavoidable,” Dent said.

“Public money comes with obligations, particularly when we’re talking about the care of very young children. And that exposes one of the difficulties with the idea.

“You immediately have questions about eligibility, working-with-children checks, basic safety requirements, how many hours of care qualify, whether payments can be made to several relatives, what happens when arrangements change and how the government verifies that the care is actually being provided.

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“The more substantial the payment, the harder it becomes to say none of those things matter.”

Dent warned the further you go down this road, the more you risk turning an informal family relationship into a quasi-provider relationship.

“Suddenly, Grandma isn’t just picking up the kids on Tuesdays; she’s participating in a government-funded childcare scheme with obligations attached. Some grandparents may be perfectly comfortable with that. Plenty may not be,” she said.

“That’s the tension: if you’re going to publicly fund childcare, accountability matters. But once you impose the accountability, you start losing the very informality that makes grandparent care work.”

Care provided by grandparents a ‘workaround’, not a solution

Dent said the care grandparents provide for their grandchildren is more of a “workaround” when childcare falls through, when a child is sick, for early or late starts at work, and other unplanned occurrences.

“If cost is driving families towards arrangements they wouldn’t otherwise choose, let’s fix the cost. If families can’t find a place, let’s build supply where it’s needed. Let’s make fees genuinely affordable and pay educators properly because quality ultimately depends on the people in the room,” she said.

“The 3 Day Guarantee that began in January was an important step. But it doesn’t guarantee you a place, and it doesn’t mean the care is affordable.

This Australian Government initiative gives all families eligible for the Child Care Subsidy (CCS) at least 72 hours of subsidised early childhood education and care per fortnight (the equivalent of three days per week).

“The work now underway to explore a national Early Education and Care Commission is an opportunity to build a system with much stronger national stewardship of affordability, access, quality and safety,” Dent said.

She added that when care arrangements with grandparents works, “it can be a beautiful thing”.

“But you’re allowed to say no. You’re allowed to say one day rather than three. Loving your grandchildren doesn’t create an obligation to become your family’s childcare system,” she said.

“Grandparents should get to be grandparents. Building an early childhood system that works for every family is a job for all of us.”