Work, full-time grandparents? a job worth 3,200 euros per month

Being a full-time grandfather or grandmother could prove to be a profitable job: private drivers, but also entertainers and chefs at home, for them the virtual paycheck would be around 3,200 euros. A cold number, this one, which is ill suited to an activity made only from the heart, of course, but which serves at least to quantify the order of magnitude of the absence of services to support a family with children and the importance of a family welfare not always recognized. To take into account all the activities carried out, and the relative hourly wages recognized to those who carry out the same trades as a professional worker, drawing on a database of 600,000 professionals, divided into 500 categories of services, is Prontopro on the basis of a survey conducted by Senior Italia FederAnziani according to which 35.5% of grandparents dedicate up to 10 hours a week to their grandchildren, 24.4% between 10 and 20 hours, 7.4% between 20 and 40 and 7.4% for over 40 hours. A salary that therefore collects various jobs that grandparents find themselves alternating even on the same day: as animators, grandparents would earn an average of 50 euros for an hour of work; instead, as cooks and perfect home chefs, the rate could increase to 55 euros per hour per person, while as domestic cleaners they could count on a ‘salary’ of up to 15 euros per hour. And when they are improvised handymen, the Prontopro investigation still quantifies, their ‘golden hands’ could cost no less than 30-35 euros for half an hour of intervention, to plug a leak from a tap or to wear the clothes of a usually unavailable electrician. Even the role of private driver to accompany the grandchildren to school, to the pediatrician or to various sporting events or to friends is not far behind: they are about 20 euros per hour assuming that they invest in this role on average 6 hours a week. But the grandfather and grandmother are also unsurpassed school ‘substitutes’. A lot of tasks and repetitions for a tutoring service that would require an investment of 20 euros per hour, not to mention the psychological support that often solves the small and big problems that children may encounter at school or in adolescence: lying on the bed of grandparents therefore could cost up to 55 euros per hour. For all this, therefore, by calculating the monthly commitment at 360 degrees, the salary of the grandparents profession is not less than that of a managerial ‘executive’, 3,200 euros per month. Not bad.