I can't ask my kids' grandparents for help with childcare. One set lives hours away, and the other is not in great health.

• Victoria Thorsen was taken aback when JD Vance said grandparents should help with childcare.
• Her parents live close but can't babysit because they're in poor health and have a lot going on.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Victoria Thorsen, a retail manager from Pennsylvania and mom of two. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Many working parents like my husband and I have thought about the practicality of the recent suggestion by Sen. JD Vance that grandparents and other family members "help out a little bit more" to relieve the burden of childcare costs.

Not all people are positioned in the sort of world that maybe Vance thinks exists. It's a blanket assumption to think everybody has access to grandparents — or still has grandparents alive.

In our case, we have two sets of grandparents, all in their mid-60s. However, neither can consistently watch our kids.

Health and distance get in the way of help

My parents live just 15 minutes away, so you might assume they can help. They can't — and, at this stage, won't — because they're in poor health, and my dad works very long hours.

Meanwhile, my in-laws live in another state, a six-hour drive to our city in Pennsylvania. They're both employed and can't assist us when we need them unless it's planned months in advance.

I'm a retail manager who works in a store between 40 and 45 hours a week. My spouse is a civilian engineer who works for the military. His role is hybrid, so he regularly goes into the office. It is also not a job where he can watch our sons when working from home.

Our boys — aged 2 and 13 months — attend day care full-time. I typically drop them off on my way to work, and my husband picks them up at 5 p.m. The day care costs $3,400 monthly, about half my monthly salary.

We're saving for a down payment on a house. Interest rates are crazy, and the median cost of a home in our area is $430,000.

I need to — and want to — work

It's really important for us financially to keep me in the workforce. Evidence shows how much you lose from your career when you stay home with children. The longer women are out of the workforce, the harder it is to get back in.

I also want to work. I enjoy it, and it's a key part of my identity.

But with both of us working, childcare constantly feels like a push-and-pull situation, where we sometimes just need a little extra help to fill in the gaps.

It's really challenging if we must stay late at work and need somebody to come to the house to watch the kids for an hour after school. It's hard to find a babysitter because it's a short period of time and people have their own children in the evenings.

Of course, it's not like my parents don't love their grandkids or want to see them. But asking them for help with things like pick-up can be problematic. It's also an issue if we want the occasional date night or if there's something going on at the weekend.

Little kids need a lot of attention

They sometimes have the mentality of "When we were young and had kids, we didn't have any extra help." They'll ask why we can't just figure it out because "we made it work."

I get it. They're adults. It often doesn't fit their schedule, or they can't be bothered. They're my family, but they shouldn't be obliged to help.

Many grandparents — like my mom and dad — aren't really physically capable of looking after two babies. My youngest is walking. He is everywhere. My mom isn't strong enough to lift a car seat, especially with a 25-pound kid. She easily gets confused by the one-way road system near our house and has difficulty parallel parking.

Dad's job is demanding. He often travels, works long hours, and gets tired easily. No wonder he wants to protect his time off and enjoy his weekend with my mom when they're wiped out and exhausted.

They recently did a pick-up from day care, and it was stressful. They got turned around with the directions and parking. "After everything was finished, my dad said, '"We really can't do this anymore." And, since then, they haven't.

My in-laws are generally in a lot better health than my parents. But it's a 12-hour return drive for them to come and babysit. They work full-time and can't drop everything with little notice. It wouldn't be fair to them or their employers if they did.

Still, they watched the kids overnight when a close friend recently married. It's not something my parents could do. We scheduled with them months ahead of time to come up and stay.

My husband will be working for a week next month in a different country. So my mother-in-law is traveling to stay with me to help with drop-off and pick-up.

Without her input — which she can only provide occasionally — we would be really stuck.

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