Originally Posted by Brian 48nav
'I have had 3 children, it was my job to look after them, I did not seek nor did I get help from my parents so that I could work and more to the point I had more satisfaction from being a mum than any career could have given me'
It's very easy to say that when you come from a generation that was able to buy a nice house in a respectable location for 3 x annual salary and then surf the repeated property booms of the 1980s and 1990s up the property ladder while watching inflation eat your debt every few years. If you owned a house near LL 30 years ago then I suspect you did very nicely. It is very different for today's young families, who need two incomes to stand any chance of getting a mortgage for a shoebox on a new-build estate, or perhaps a terrace in a slightly dodgy neighbourhood, in time for their 30th birthdays. Meanwhile the nice 3-bedroom semis that were occupied by young families in times gone by are now worth £400-500k in many areas, and aspiring to owning one of those will probably entail working all the way to the future retirement age of 70+. Relying on inheritance to move up the ladder won't be any use; the kids will have grown up by then.
It sounds like your children are doing just fine but there are many families out there who simply will not make any headway at the moment without some serious help from the grandparents. If that help comes in the form of contributions to house deposits and school fees, then great, but I know many grandparents who don't wish to downsize yet and have therefore offered 'free' childcare to help their daughter / daughter-in-law back to work. Don't underestimate the strength of feeling in the younger generations about this - most are too polite to say anything like this but you can bet that many are thinking it, so I wouldn't make too much of your hands-off grandparenthood!