A new dad says he and his wife thought they were doing a pretty good job keeping both sides of the family involved after welcoming their first daughter in October 2025. Instead, they recently learned that both sets of grandparents have been privately upset, disappointed, and even “depressed” that they are not more involved in the baby’s life.
That might sound understandable on the surface until you hear what “not involved” actually looks like. The grandparents were there in the hospital right after the baby was born, they visit at least weekly, sometimes two or three times a week, and according to the dad, they are always welcome to hold and play with the baby for as long as they want. That is what has left him so confused. If they already have regular access, what exactly do they feel they are missing?
They Visit Often, but Somehow It Still Wasn’t Enough
In his post on Reddit, the dad explained that both he and his wife have relatively healthy relationships with their parents, but there is one important layer underneath that: both of them were heavily parentified as children because of serious mental health issues in their families.
That history seems to matter here.
He says their parents are people they love and respect, but also people they have always felt some degree of responsibility toward. On his wife’s side, there is also a clear precedent for much heavier grandparent involvement. Her siblings had children young, struggled with parenting, and relied heavily on her family for support, including full care of infants who were only two or three months old. On his side, this baby is the first grandchild.
So while he and his wife are pouring themselves into raising their daughter, the grandparents appear to be looking at the situation through a very different lens. The couple sees regular visits and open access. The grandparents, somehow, see distance and disappointment.
What They May Miss Is Not Access but Feeling Needed
That seems to be the real tension in the story.
The dad openly wonders whether both sets of parents would actually prefer that he and his wife were struggling more, just so they could step in and feel useful in a bigger way. He sounds half-joking and half-genuinely hurt by the possibility. The relationship has already started deteriorating, and he says small remarks and tension have been building as a result. He also found it especially strange that both sides of the family felt strongly enough about it to meet up privately and talk about their disappointment together, something they had apparently never done before.
That detail makes the whole thing feel less like ordinary grandparent longing and more like something emotionally loaded.
The Sharpest Reactions Said This Sounds Less Like Love and More Like Unmet Adult Needs
A lot of the strongest comments focused on one uncomfortable possibility: that the grandparents may not actually be asking for more connection with the baby so much as more emotional gratification for themselves. Several people urged the couple to stop trying to decode the grandparents’ feelings and instead ask them directly what “more involved” actually means. Others pointed out that if the answer turns out to be unrealistic or controlling, then the disappointment belongs to the grandparents to manage, not the new parents.
One of the most pointed reactions came from commenters who thought the old parentification dynamic may still be alive here. In that reading, the grandparents are once again expecting the now-grown children to do the emotional labor, guess what they need, and soothe feelings they should be handling themselves. That idea seemed to resonate strongly in the thread.
What makes the whole post so striking is that this dad is not describing absent grandparents begging for scraps. He is describing grandparents with frequent access who still seem unhappy because access is not the same thing as being central. And for two exhausted new parents already doing the work of raising an infant, that is a very different problem.
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