Having kids later makes sense too - my MIL is almost 70 and my dad & FIL are 65, and we just had our first kid. I’m turning 30 next month so I’m still pretty average age but definitely not 18 like my grandma was for her first!

Definitely at least 2 generations in my family. I spent a lot of time at my grandparents houses as kids but they were not actually doing any childcare.

I think it also has to do with living further away from family becoming more normal. My parents swapped a lot of parenting time with my aunts & uncles - most of us lived within the same 3 town radius. I now live almost 5hr drive from my family so we can’t just swing by Uncle’s house for a few hours.

Just wanted to thank you for this post - my daughter is only a few weeks old but I’ve been tinkering with home assistant during pregnancy and adding smart plugs to appliances seems like a great move when she gets more mobile

They actually did something similar when creating Sesame Street (and I think Blues Clues); the main difference being the goal was to make the educational parts the most attention grabbing, so kids with parents who just plop them in front of the TV would be more prepared for school.