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It’s a common conversation among millennial parents, so common that it isn’t worth remarking on beyond the brief acknowledgement of shared pain. A writer colleague on a trip together broke the ice with a mention.
“Yes, we’ve got three at home, and my husband has them; he’s very capable. Grandma is there, too,” she said with a long sigh. “She actually makes things harder. I just wish she could, you know, help? I don’t get it. She always wanted grandkids, she always told me she wants grandkids, but now it’s like, ‘It’s Tuesday. I have pilates.’”
The Baby Boomer generation is the greatest generation in only one measure: in terms of the redistribution of wealth to itself. No other American generation comes close, thanks to the timing of the Great Society, the expansion of old-age benefits, the timing of Wall Street booms, and a real estate market Boomers continue to dominate. They are the largest group of homeowners by far, despite being just 20% of the population; in 2025, they were also the largest group of home buyers, typically with cash. Empty nest boomers own a third of all three-bedroom homes in America. They own double the percentage of homes millennials do, and according to a 2025 survey, 61% of boomer homeowners say they never plan to sell their homes.
Those homes are often the epicenter of family moves. Because millennials rent when their parents bought, they are the ones who have to move when they have kids, proximity to grandma and grandpa being a presumed benefit offering free childcare and occasional help. Three-quarters of millennials say it’s important to live near their parents after having kids, and depending on the survey, approximately a third say they’ve relocated or already made a point of living near their parents because of the kid factor. But when it comes to delivering on that help, Boomers are sorely lacking: Just one out of five millennial parents says parents help with regular childcare. The anecdotes are ubiquitous, and they are not flattering.
“We moved 15 minutes away from my parents after we had our second,” a friend tells me. “Since we had a boy, I thought my dad would want to spend time with him. We’ve lived here a year, and he’s seen him four times. He held him once.”
The Boomer drive-by seems to be the most common interaction: a momentary disruptive pause in the day when kids are taken to do some activity that could conceivably give you enough time to run a few errands, get the car serviced, or spend actual time picking out a steak. But it turns out that something happens, or the kids were rowdy, or grandpa forgot he has to do something, and they’re back on your doorstep 45 minutes later, somehow still hungry. Or there’s one level worse: the drive-by for social media, where grandma is just in the house long enough to snap a picture for her friends on The Facebook.
“My brother had kids 10 years before I did, and he got ‘grandma weekends,’ the kids staying over at their house for two to three days,” another friend tells me. “I didn’t get married till a decade later, and I’m lucky to get ‘grandma lunch.’ She’s in Europe for a month. He played golf at Spyglass; I’m lucky to get a Costco run in.”
Anecdote isn’t the plural of data, but the conversation around this topic has been widespread and only goes in one direction: toward Grandboomers who are consistently more interested in fun than in helping out with the grandbabies. It’s fine if the elders are just deciding that taking care of a toddler isn’t “living their best life,” but they can’t expect to escape criticism for it. As one beleaguered mom whose complaints went viral told Newsweek last year, “It definitely triggered guilty boomers who were irritated and said they’re not going to raise our kids, but that’s not what we’re asking for. I have gotten so many messages from millennials saying they felt heard and less alone. They thought it was only their issue, and they had no idea that others dealt with this.” Believe me, if you talk to your fellow millennial parents, you absolutely know.
You can ascribe this social trend to any Boomer aspect of your choosing: permanent main character syndrome, an abiding aversion to any reminder of their aging nature, belief that they “did their time” changing diapers and shouldn’t have to do another run, or just a rejection of the parenting styles of millennials as being too demanding, too helicopter for their tastes. But it is an undeniable trend, one that virtually every millennial parent knows all too well.
“My mom changed our diapers growing up, and she says she’s done enough for her life,” yet another friend tells me. “But it sure would be nice if she was willing to do it just for one Friday a month.”
You can dismiss this development as just a generation that has lived longer enjoying life to the fullest. You can describe it as irrelevant because millennials should figure out ways to pay for childcare and take care of it themselves. But the hard fact is that an underlying reason for the decline in American population that we see so regularly reported, year after year, is this Boomer attitude.
It is a simple binary: In the absence of date nights, without a break from the kids, millennial parents simply do not have time to make more kids. If that’s something America wants to change, it’s going to have to bring back shame for our elders. Help your kids, or get used to fewer grandkids. You’re the product of a Baby Boom, but you seem completely uninterested in creating another one. That’s the reality. Change starts with you.
