New survey reveals grandmothers are under far more childcare pressure than grandfathers

If you’ve ever felt a flicker of guilt asking your mam to step in for the third time this week, or wondered quietly whether she actually wants to be there at 7am on a Tuesday, a new survey has put some hard numbers on what many Irish families already know in their gut: grandmothers are carrying far more than their fair share of the childcare load — and a significant number feel pressured into it.

New research commissioned for the Grey Matters podcast found that 56% of women regularly mind their grandchildren, compared with just 37.8% of men. More striking still, 15.4% of women report feeling a lot of pressure to help with grandchildren — versus a mere 1.4% of men. The survey, conducted by iReach in July 2026, polled 1,000 adults across Ireland aged 50 and over.

The numbers that stopped everyone in their tracks

The findings form the basis of the latest episode of Grey Matters, the podcast hosted by Terry Prone and Fergus Finlay, with returning guest Valerie Cox joining them to pick the survey apart. Cox, for her part, wasn’t surprised. She pointed to the long-established pattern of women leading on caregiving — a pattern that, as these figures show, doesn’t simply stop once the children grow up and have children of their own.

Prone pushed back on the idea that women are naturally better suited to caring roles, questioning what the women’s liberation movement had been about if not to dismantle exactly that assumption. Finlay was more direct: he doesn’t believe there’s anything natural about it at all, calling the burden falling on grandmothers “a terrible injustice”.

The gap between men and women in the figures drew particular comment. Finlay described a difference of roughly eleven times between women and men as “absurd”. Cox agreed, calling it “absurd”, “selfish” and “terribly unjust”. She went further, suggesting that for some grandmothers the pressure can amount to “very subtle bullying” — adult children squeezed by mortgages and the cost of childcare quietly leaning on a parent to fill the gap.

Where support ends and exploitation begins

It’s a line that will resonate with plenty of Irish mothers sitting on both sides of it. Many of us rely on our parents in ways we’d struggle to admit out loud, particularly when childcare costs are what they are. But the conversation on Grey Matters goes somewhere more uncomfortable: the question of whether that reliance has quietly tipped into exploitation.

Cox noted that because people are having children later, some grandparents providing regular care are now in their late 70s and 80s. She didn’t mince words about the expectation of full-time grandparent childcare: “I would emigrate because I’m just not enough of a grandmother.”

On the question of money, Cox argued that grandparents acting as full-time childminders should be paid by their adult children — suggesting around €500 a month, which she described as “peanuts compared with going to a childminder”. Finlay pointed out that nobody in Dublin would hire a babysitter for less than €15 an hour, yet many parents expect their own mother to take on the same job for nothing. It’s the kind of observation that lands differently when you’ve just handed your mam a thank-you card and a box of Roses.

The grandfathers aren’t completely off the hook

The podcast doesn’t let grandfathers entirely escape scrutiny either. More than one in three grandfathers regularly minding grandchildren was noted by Prone as a substantial improvement on previous generations. Finlay suspects many grandmothers have simply insisted their husbands join in — reflecting the rule in his own household: “if one of us is doing it, both of us are doing it.” Cox offered a slightly different take, suggesting grandfathers may become more involved as grandchildren get older, stepping in for trips to matches and golf days when the heavy lifting of early childcare has already been done.

The episode is a genuinely worthwhile listen — not least because it’s rare to hear a frank conversation about the expectations Irish families place on older women, conducted by people who are actually in that life stage themselves. It won’t make the school-run WhatsApp group any less chaotic, but it might prompt a conversation worth having.

Grey Matters Season 2, Episode 5 “Grandparents Under Pressure” is available now on all major podcast platforms. You can listen on Spotify here.