Children should be forced to care for their elderly parents and grandparents to payback for the ‘’free’ childcare they were once given, says one of the country’s most senior family lawyers.
Baroness Deech, a professor of law at Gresham College, believes that grandparents should be repaid for years of free childcare in her latest speech on family law.
She said: “In return for all that grandparents do, should there not be an obligation to keep them – and to keep parents – and reciprocate the care that was given by then to children and grandchildren in their youth?
“There is a dearth of affordable child care and an attempt to meet it by conscripting grandmothers” she continued.
It has been reported that four out of five children receive care from their grandparents, which on average has been worked out to approximately three days. Grandparents often provide financial support and set aside £470 million in trust funds each year.
Lady Deech, who is also the chairman of the Bar Standards Board, which regulates the work of barristers, made reference to the 400-year-old Poor Law whereby sons support their parents and grandparents throughout their lives, while for daughters the only obligation lasted only until they were married. This law was revoked in England and Wales in 1948, but Lady Deech says that the increased number of working women means that more grandparents are being asked to provide free childcare.
“This places particular burdens on grandparents who may need to work themselves, but feel obliged to help out the younger generation
“They are assuming burdens which deprive them of their own chance to continue to earn a living, and for which deprive them of their own chance to continue to earn a living and for which they are not compensated, and the child care they give is no doubt at some cost to them.”
In Singapore, the Maintenance of Parents Act 1995 means that anyone aged over 60, who cannot maintain themselves adequately, “can apply for an order that their child should do so via periodical payments or a lump sum.”
