There’s something comedic about the grandad child-swap case, but it hurts my heart

September 5, 2025 — 11.20am

In 1975 our parents went to Europe for six weeks so our nans moved into the Glen Waverley casa to look after us four kids and the dog. Cool, right? What’s the worst that can happen when nans run the show?

Neita, mum’s mum, did the housekeeping. And did it on her ear. She was a fantastic cook who’d make ginger creams in five minutes. To this day, I miss her cheese omelettes.

Grandparents are increasingly being called upon to help out with their children’s kids.Credit: Sean Davey

Beatrice was transport chief. She’d only had her driver’s licence for a couple of years since Grandad died, but — aided by Bex powders — gamely squashed us all into her Cortina with the 007 number plates for school runs and grocery shopping.

All good. Until one day Beat fanged it into the garage and out the brick wall at the end, like a slow-mo cartoon scene. Clipping Dad’s silver Ford GT on the way. Watching, my sister and I were delighted and alarmed in equal measure.

Our family bestie Mr Miller had the GT, Cortina and wall fixed but the real damage was done. The verdict: the nans were past childcare. Their day was done.

That episode came flooding back this week with the bizarre news of the one-year-old boy taken home by the wrong grandfather from a Sydney childcare centre.

Collecting his grandson, the grandpa was handed a different boy by a childcare worker. The toddler snuggled into the stranger and went to sleep at his house — until the family realised they had a random child.

If it wasn’t so serious, there’d be a weirdly comedic flavour to it, just like Beatrice emerging, unhurt, from a ballooning dust cloud. It’s like a classic Walter Matthau tale about a harmless bumbling grandpa.

But mostly it’s a story that hurts my heart. Not the mistaken grandfather — I’m letting him off the hook although his own wife is “cranky” about his rookie error.

It’s the idea of little kids being put down for naps, having food spooned into them, by people who, as per this case, don’t even know their names or recognise their faces let alone their personalities or what makes them feel safe.

The unbearable side is the childcare sector is broken. As NSW Greens MP Abigail Boyd said, it’s “under-resourced” and “staffed with a transient and casualised workforce” who might rock your baby to sleep today, be gone next week.

Hardly new news, but the fact this vital industry keeps making headlines for the wrong reasons shows how deep-seated the crisis is.

Let’s fix it. Let’s swap the salaries of teachers and carers with those of politicians and CEOs.

Name a job more important than looking after little kids — the most vulnerable among us. Yet their safeguarding and happiness is entrusted to people whose expertise is valued at between $25 and $35 an hour.

Less than, say, warehouse workers at Kmart.

Fact: most families can’t afford to have one parent step back. Mortgages and groceries are eating families alive. Childcare fees gobble up a terrifying slice of wages. Parents are working longer days to pay for childcare, then needing more childcare because they’re working longer days.

Chicken, meet egg.

So families lean on grandparents. That’s been happening since the dawn of time but one major thing has changed.

The average age of a first-time mother in Australia is now 30, up from 26 in the mid-1980s. The waterfall effect is grandparents are older too. My mum and dad were grandparents at 45 but today’s crop is in their 70s and 80s.

A lot of these grandads in particular were never hands-on with their own babies, yet here they are fumbling with five-point harnesses and daycare QR codes.

My nans were only 59 during the six-week childcare stint which ended in the “never again” edict. I’m the same age now — with no grandbaby in sight, which means I’ll probs end up as one of the out-of-my-depth nannas.

Most grandparents may not drive through walls or take home the wrong child but we’re still asking octogenarians to be the safety net in a system that’s imploding.

And the cracks are showing in every young family I know.

Kate Halfpenny is founder of Bad Mother Media. Her new book, Boogie Wonderland, is out now.

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