Granny nannies’ £22k of childcare

WORKING parents often rely on grandparents to lessen childcare costs during the school holidays.

But some put in so many hours with their grandchildren they could earn an average of £22,043 in an equivalent paid role, research suggests.

A study f ound some grandparents provide up to 600 hours of childcare over the summer break.

Two-thirds of the 1,000 questioned spent significantly more time looking after their grandchildren in the summer – with 57 per cent admitting to feeling exhausted sometimes.

HSL Chairs analysed the varied roles they take over the holidays – from personal chef, to chauffeur to sports coach – and compared the time they spent ‘working’ with the children to the average salary for those jobs as listed on a human resources website called Payscale.com.

The company found those who spent time helping their grandchildren with homework, revision or reading could earn an average of £23.18 per hour as a private tutor.

Those who regularly bathed and put their grandchildren to bed, or helped them to dress and apply sun cream, could earn £19,88 per hour as a private nurse.

Other jobs surveyed included sports coach (playing games, taking to tennis lessons etc), which could yield £27.97 per hour, creative director (crafting, styling, role play), at £43.65 and life coach – considered the equivalent professional role for a grandparent’s interventions into sibling arguments, listening to problems and generally keeping the peace amongst the youngsters.

The study found that 600 hours was the maximum amount of time grandparents spent with their grandchildren over seven-and-a-half weeks, and included those that looked after their grandchildren overnight for up to a week at a time.

The average day length for a grandparent acting as a family carer was eightand-a-half hours.

So committed are modern grandparents, more than half of those surveyed said they avoided booking their own holidays over the summer break in order to help out their own offspring with childcare.

As well as being generous with their time, our grandparents are generous with their money too. A third of those questioned revealed they spend more than £100 on the little ones over the summer holiday period – with 2 per cent spending more than £400.

Chris Hudson, of HSL Chairs, said: ‘ Grandparents are getting younger and … increasingly active. This leads to our parents often taking on much more responsibility when it comes to looking after our children.’