Harrington Meyer Discusses Parents Turning to Grandparents for Childcare in NPR Article

September 20, 2026

NPR

Madonna Harrington Meyer

Policy, Place, Population Health and Aging Program

Sociology Department

Center for Policy Research

Child & Elder Care

Labor

United States

NPR

Portrait of a smiling person with short gray hair, wearing a blue ruffled shirt, set against a blurred green background.

Madonna Harrington Meyer

Rising childcare costs are pushing more American families to rely on grandparents for regular, often unpaid, childcare—a trend driven by more dual-income households, single-parent families and gaps in the country's childcare infrastructure.

While grandparents often value the bonding time and flexibility this provides, the arrangement can also come with real sacrifices, including career setbacks, physical strain and less time for leisure with their grandchildren.

University Professor Madonna Harrington Meyer says she has heard a complaint in her conversations with grandparents: that they are spending too much time with their “parenting” hats on and have fewer opportunities for carefree fun with the kids, a generally agreed-upon right of grandparenthood.

“They would say, ‘I would love to take the grandkids to the zoo, but I'm too busy helping them with their calculus or too busy helping them get to flute lessons on time,’” she reports. “They were doing a lot of things that they regarded as parenting and didn't have as much time left over for a trip to the park or something fun and frivolous that they would like to do as grandparents.”

Read more in the NPR article, “U.S. childcare costs are astronomical. More families are turning to grandparents.”