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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Lifestyle
Eleanor Gordon-Smith

My father-in-law lives with my young family but I don’t want to ‘sandwich parent’. What should I do?

A painting of a multi-generational family
‘Wanting to do it all might not be enough to mean we can,’ Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. Painting: La familia de Gaspar Soliveres (The family of Gaspar Soliveres) by José Aparicio Inglada. Photograph: Album/Alamy

At my suggestion, my husband and I moved his father to live in a granny annexe of our home. This was for two reasons. First, he was experiencing health issues and getting visibly older and we thought he’d end up needing to live with us eventually. Second, we wanted to start a family and I naively thought we could have some live-in childcare.

We now have a toddler and although my father-in-law is useful in many ways he isn’t able to provide childcare as he is emotionally and physically frailer than I thought, and we are also having to deal with his very sensitive and difficult moods that are exacerbated by his ageing.

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