Grandbabysitting

Advice columnist Carolyn Hax received a letter from a young mom. Here's part of it:

Let me start by saying, I have a great relationship with my mother-in-law. Before we had kids, we vacationed with my husband’s immediate family, and went for dinner and drinks very frequently together.

We live within minutes of my in-laws but do not get or ask for a lot of help. When we do ask for babysitting help, we are made to feel like it is a major inconvenience. My sister-in-law gets the same response. We get a laundry list of things she has going on that MAY be impacted by a few hours with her grandchildren. It is usually hair and nail appointments, not work, medical appointments or other terribly pressing matters.

Now obviously there are piles of facts missing from this story. We don’t know what’s going on in the grandmother’s life or in her relationship with her kids or grandkids. But, having said that, if our grandson lived “within minutes” of our house, we would claim first rights of refusal on all babysitting opportunities. In fact, we’d probably treat our son and his wife to romantic getaways in order to score additional babysitting hours.

And the long-term plan, let me add, is to live within minutes and have many such opportunities.

Does that, I wonder, make us weird or at least unusual? 

Living nearby them would certainly break the cultural norm of families being flung across the country if not the globe. Yet part of growing up with a sense of identity is knowing where you come from and, you came from your parents who came from your grandparents who came from…. Whether you love it or hate it, you have a heritage and that heritage is part of your identity.

In a culture where an increasing number of children don’t even know both of their parents, it seems to me that those who are grounded in their heritage will possess riches about which others can’t even dream.