Balancing Caring for Children and Aging Parents

A working parent is on their way to work. As they are clocking in, they get a text from their child’s school. Their child is in the nurse’s station feeling ill. While they are starting their workday, they keep thinking about who they know that could pick up their child if they get worse. Their phone rings and they take the call from their mother’s doctor. They have a meeting they must prep for that’s this afternoon. By lunchtime, they coordinated child pick-up, scheduled a follow up appointment for their mother, and hurriedly prepped for their meeting.

This story might not be uncommon for a working caregiver, who has to juggle multiple responsibilities at once. They must balance the demands of their jobs with caring for both children and aging family members.

What is the Sandwich Generation?

The sandwich generation refers to middle-aged adults (typically between the ages of 35-60) who are responsible for raising their own children and caring for aging parents simultaneously. Those individuals are “sandwiched” between two generations that both need their time, money, physical, and/or emotional support.

More than half of Americans in their 40s have a parent aged 65 years or older and are raising a child under 18. 52% of employees who identify as a caregiver are part of the sandwich generation or will be in the future.

Why the Sandwich Generation is Growing

The average age of childbearing has been increasing every year, causing the age gap between generations has grown over time. As a result, workers are more likely to take on caregiving for their parents at a younger age, while having young children with care needs at home. In addition, lifespans have increased, but good health does not match the longevity of life. This means that parents are alive longer, but need care provided by their children. Rising costs of child and senior care limit employees’ ability to hire professional support.

Unique Challenges of the Sandwich Generation

Financial Pressure

Expenses for children can be a lot. School or school supplies, after school activities and sports, medical care, saving or college funds, birthdays or travel expenses all add up.

Time Pressure

People in the sandwich generation are handling multiple schedules—navigating things like children’s after-school activities, transportation in addition to a parent’s doctor or social appointments and transportation.

Emotional Pressure

The feeling of being pulled in multiple directions, chronic guilt, isolation, and emotional burnout are all common among those raising children and caring for aging parents.

What Employers Don’t See

Employers can’t often see these pressures caregivers in this generation face. Invisible labor like time, emotional, and financial work, often are unrecognized in the workplace, but affect the workplace nonetheless.

When having to navigate work, raising children, and caring for an aging adult, attention is divided among multiple urgent priorities that don’t abide by a shift schedule.

Employees deal with code or context switching that an employer can miss. This is when a caregiver moves rapidly between their role as employee, a parent, and adult child.

Frequent role switching can increase stress and mental fatigue.

What Employers Can Do to Help

Employers play a role in reliving the caregiving burden, especially for this generation of caregivers. Emotional well-being, decision-making and planning, and practical support are all a part of a caregiver’s ecosystem that benefits need to cover.

Uprise Health has programs, Uprise ParentHood and Uprise AgeWell, that work in tandem with others to care for the entire system, closing the gap between the individual and their emotional well-being, their ability to make decisions and plan, and the practical support offered to them as they navigate caregiving.

Request a demo with one of our experts to find out how we help build support systems that make caregiving more sustainable.