Grandparents Become Caregivers as Childcare Costs Soar

Grandchildren can be both a pleasure and a responsibility. (Dreamstime)

Key Points

• An increasing number of grandparents are stepping in to provide child care for their grandchildren, often facing physical and financial tolls.
• A 2026 AARP survey estimated that 45 million grandparents provide unpaid care valued at $731 billion annually.
• Experts say formal financial compensation is rare because most grandparents refuse payment to help their adult children save money.

Rebecca Maier, a 41-year-old healthcare professional in Seattle, faced a child-care crisis when her first child was born in 2020.

Her in-laws relocated to Seattle from Texas to look after her toddler. In exchange, Maier and her husband started giving them a $1,000 monthly stipend.

“A thousand dollars a month is a fraction of what we would pay for full-time infant child-care that runs around $3,200 a month at a Bright Horizons type of center,” Maier says.

She isn’t alone.

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Increasingly, grandparents are asked to step in to look after children. The U.S. Census estimated that 6.1 million children under 18 were living under a grandparent’s roof in 2020, up from 5.8 million in 2010.

Some 45 million grandparents contribute an average of over 500 hours of care annually, according to a 2026 survey by AARP. The seniors organization estimated the value of unpaid care at $731 billion, double what it had been in 2006.

Grandparents move across states to be closer to young families. They often stop working or cut back on hobbies.

Some grandparents get paid for their labor. While family dynamics traditionally emphasize unpaid aid, setting up a formal or semiformal financial arrangement can help grandparents feel genuinely valued and establish healthier boundaries between loved ones, experts say.

Madonna Harrington Meyer, a sociology professor at Syracuse University in New York and author of “Grandmothers at Work,” says the increased reliance on grandparents for child-care exacts physical, social, emotional and financial tolls.

“Some grandparents are not physically able to provide as much care for grandchildren as parents might wish,” she says. “Many grandparents told me they are spending far too much time with parenting hats on, and wish they could put their grandparenting hats on.”

The burden can also be financial, with lower-income grandparents forgoing medical or dental care in some cases to pay for grandchildren’s needs.

Yet, despite these hindrances, formal financial compensation is rare, she says.

Most grandparents refuse payment to help adult children save money or to avoid turning familial love into an employee-employer dynamic, she says.

Families will instead turn to informal strategies such as giving money to cover rent, car repairs or medical bills.

“Generally pay is under the table, with no Social Security or paid time off, which may not be in the best interest of grandparents,” she says.

Natalie Renew, executive director of Philadelphia-based fund-raising group Home Grown, an association focused on improving home-based child-care, says the primary challenge in the U.S. stems from escalating living costs, such as food and gasoline.

About 39 U.S. states now offer some form of public subsidy to support relative caregivers, but those tend to be restricted to full-time carers and specific circumstances, such as children exiting the foster care system.

“Few grandparents can access child care subsidies, and the safety net for food and housing benefits is also dwindling,” notes Renew.

“In some cases parents might provide cash or share costs with grandparents,” she says, but rarely do they enter official financial arrangements, she says.

She mentioned a 57-year-old grandmother from Sapphire, N.C., whom she worked with and who travels 44 miles five times a week to look after her daughter’s three- and six-year-old children, as well as her son’s 6-month-old son.

The woman quit her job as a nurse to provide child-care full-time to her grandchildren and relies on her husband’s Social Security to get by. Yet she says the grandmother would rather pick up nursing shifts on the weekends than ask her kids for help, as she doesn’t want to tap into their savings.

“She might ask her kids for financial support [if she has a health issue or an emergency] but that would be a last resort for her,” says Renew.

Rebecca Parlakian, senior program officer at early-childhood-focused nonprofit Zero To Three, has similarly found that grandparents are reluctant to ask for payment.

Yet, because most first-time grandparents are in their 50s and still working, many reduce work hours or give up employment, she says.

When that is the case, she recommends being clear about hours of care they are able provide and where they can set boundaries in terms of costs and types of care.

“Talk through all the tricky questions,” she says.

Check-ins every few months to see how the arrangement is going are also vital, she says.

“Grandparents may initially feel comfortable with one schedule but need to scale back,” she says.

Seattle-based Maier agrees.

“Constant communication is one of the key elements that has made this arrangement successful,” she says.

While initially she compensated her in-laws for their time and effort, they eventually asked to stop receiving payments. The grandparents continue to look after her kids, now aged six, four, and 15 months old.

“I feel very lucky to have family close by that we can rely on,” she says, “My children have genuine and deep relationships with their grandparents due to their everyday presence in our lives,” she says.

“I also think my in-laws have benefited both physically, mentally and emotionally,” she adds.

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