As Childcare Costs Soar, Families Turn to Grandparents

With the average annual cost of child care in the United States reaching $13,184 for children under 5, a growing number of American families are turning to grandparents to watch their children—an arrangement that eases household budgets but reshapes retirement, careers, and family dynamics in ways that are only beginning to be understood.

Child Care Aware of America reports that the national average annual price of child care in 2025 was $13,184, a figure that consumes about 10% of the median income of a married couple with children and roughly a third of a single parent’s income. In many cases, the cost rivals rent or college tuition, leaving working parents to search for alternatives that formal daycare and nannies increasingly fail to provide.

A Structural Squeeze on Families

The shift toward grandparent care reflects deeper changes in how American families work and live. According to the Pew Research Center, 52% of different-sex couples with children had both parents working full time in 2025, up from just 31% in 1975—meaning more households than ever need reliable care during the workday.

“The reality is that because this country hasn’t invested in a childcare infrastructure that is flexible and affordable and reliable, grandparents are filling in the gaps that the service system leaves behind,” Nicole Jorwic, chief program officer at the national caregiving group Caring Across Generations, told NPR.

The squeeze has visible consequences for family decisions. Stacia Bourne, a University of Delaware psychology professor who lives in Maryland, told NPR that daycare for her first child cost “about the same as our mortgage,” a calculation that initially made her and her husband hesitant to have a second baby. That changed when her mother, Mary Jo Galusha, 67, offered to retire and move cross-country from Idaho to help. Galusha now cares for her granddaughter Robin, born in late 2024, roughly 30 hours a week.

“It’s a joy,” Galusha said. “It’s like magic to watch them grow up.”

A Sacrifice, Not Just a Solution

Experts caution that grandparent care is not a simple fix. Madonna Harrington Meyer, a Syracuse University sociology professor who studies aging and grandparenting, told NPR that grandparents often report doing “parenting” rather than carefree grandparenting. “I would love to take the grandkids to the zoo, but I’m too busy helping them with their calculus,” she said.

Caregiving can also carry physical and social costs, particularly for older people who have already raised children and may face health challenges of their own. Yalanda Lattimore, 59, an Atlanta blogger, podcaster, and soap seller, cares for her 1-year-old granddaughter about a day and a half each week—time she said comes at the expense of her own career and business.

“I felt like I could make the sacrifice more than they could, and it truly has been a sacrifice,” Lattimore said. “You just put things on hold, because your priorities are different.”

The Scale of the “Grandparent Economy”

The trend is not marginal. National data underscore how deeply grandparents have become embedded in the American care system. More than 11.7 million Americans age 65 and older were in the labor force as of August 2026, according to federal statistics—a reminder that many older adults are balancing paid work with unpaid family care.

The broader affordability crisis is intensifying the pressure. A Fortune analysis of LendingTree data found that meeting the federal benchmark of spending no more than 7% of income on child care would require a household income of roughly $402,708 a year for an infant and a 4-year-old—an amount far beyond the typical two-child family’s earnings.

“With numbers like these, it’s easy to see why birth rates are falling,” LendingTree chief consumer finance analyst Matt Schulz said.

A Political Flashpoint

The reliance on grandparents has also become politically charged. During the 2024 presidential campaign, JD Vance suggested that one solution to high child care costs was for more grandparents to provide care for free. As Business Insider reported, critics countered that not all grandparents can or want to provide care, many older people need care themselves, and the suggestion would do nothing to address the lack of government investment in the childcare system.

Jorwic’s framing captures the tension at the heart of the debate: grandparents are “filling in the gaps that the service system leaves behind,” not replacing the need for a functioning childcare infrastructure. The U.S. remains an outlier among economically advanced nations in not treating child care as a public good—and as costs climb, the private burden falls disproportionately on families and their aging relatives.

What to Watch

For families like Bourne’s, the arrangement works—for now. Galusha plans to care for Robin until she starts kindergarten, and the two review the plan every six months. Still, Bourne acknowledged there is little in the way of a backup plan. “You always worry, like if in six months she decides that she wants to move … then we’ll have to scramble,” she said.

That uncertainty defines the broader trend. As long as child care costs outpace household incomes and public investment remains limited, grandparents are likely to remain an indispensable—and increasingly strained—part of the American family economy. The question facing policymakers and families alike is whether that reliance can continue indefinitely, or whether the gap it fills will eventually force a more systemic response.