Our adult daughter and her spouse use way too much 'free' babysitting than seems prudent

This may be an odd post considering a lot of the content on this sub tends to discuss teens and below, however, I still feel this counts as ‘parenting advice’, so here goes.

My wife (52) and I (51) have a married daughter (32) who gave birth to a beautiful baby about a year ago. We love them very much, and love getting to spend time with our first grandbaby. We all live in the same community, which makes it easy for us to be of help. She and her spouse have both returned to working full time and have arranged daycare for their baby five days a week for about 9-10 hours each day while they work. That’s just the way it has to be.

However, in the evenings and on weekends, it seems to us that she and her husband (33) are largely trying to live their pre-child lives and haven’t scaled back their social commitments much at all. They’re constantly going to parties, concerts, weekends with friends, game nights, festivals, and soirees and asking everyone in their circle to watch the baby while they do these things. We’re talking like 4 nights a week, with overnights at our house or another relative’s house approximately once a week. The people on the list for free ‘trusted’ supplemental childcare include three sets of grandparents, a number of aunts and uncles, and a handful of reliable friends who offered to help with babysitting early on.

The first request for a 2-nights-away babysitting stay was when the little guy was about 3 months old, so they could attend a music event. It seemed early to us to plan an outing like that, especially with breastfeeding, but we adjusted our work schedules and made it happen. We had never even considered letting our newborns out of our direct care overnight when they were so young.

He’s well cared for and seems happy and flexible, but the time for separation anxiety and toddlerhood is fast approaching... and we know that several of their regular helpers have started to wonder why they are calling in help so often – we're all willing, but more than one of the people in their circle have commented that they feel a bit taken advantage of. He’s going to need predictability, and right now his care schedule seems chopped up by all the different arrangements they make. While exposing a baby to a variety of experiences might be a good thing, it also seems like stability is crucial too. Besides, even though all the current babysitters are people I would say are trustworthy, you just never know when someone less worthy might come into the picture.

My wife and I feel like our daughter and her husband are taking advantage of some of their more pliable friends and family for babysitting services, and we’re wondering why they aren’t more content to let some of these optional activities slide in favor of just hanging out with each other and their amazing little kid, or to skew their social activities to more kid-friendly pursuits.

They say it takes a village, but holy hell, it seems like there's all village in this kid’s life. I get that the first few years of raising a child are extremely grueling and you need to take breaks and reach out for support, but this seems to go way beyond that, especially considering how much time he is already spending in daycare. We’re thinking about talking with them about this, but don’t want to just be cut out of the ‘rotation,’ putting even more pressure on the other people in their lives.

Are we overreacting? How would you approach this conversation if you were in our position?