It’s virtually impossible to belong to afamilywithout getting the short end of the stick. There’s so much compromise that someone inevitably has to sacrifice.
Faced with the dilemma of balancing personal responsibilities and their family’s expectations, Liya chose the former and unloaded the boy to his grandparents, but as they explained in a post on ‘Am I the [Jerk]?‘, that sparked significant backlash.
Image credits:cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)
But they just couldn’t do it
Image credits:Sarah Chai (not the actual photo)
Image source:ayumi_doll
Many parents choose to include relatives in the everyday care of their child, but there have to be limits
Grandparents are becoming an increasingly important source of child care in many places around the world.
“Our findings show that different groups of grandparents are likely to provide different types of care. Importantly grandparents with less income and less education, or who are from minority groups, are more likely to take on care for their grandchildren,”saidLinda Waite, the Lucy Flower Professor in Sociology at UChicago and an expert on aging.
So the fact that Liya and their sister’s folks wanted to take a break from it is completely understandable. But pressuring your sibling into it without any heads up is not.
The primary solution to their frustration is to start drawing boundaries and only care for the kid when it suits them, and for their parents to do likewise. Maybe this would finally compel “Risa” to find a sustainable plan B for when all family members are unavailable.
Let’s hope the family will find an arrangement in which everyone feels their needs are being met. Otherwise, they run the risk of building resentment and animosity towards one another, with the child ending up caught in the middle of their conflicts.
As people reacted to the story, its author provided more information to them
The vast majority said Liya did nothing wrong
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