Hannele Secchia serves with SIL in Ethiopia, where she grew up and has lived and worked for the last 15 years. In Ethiopia, she has served SIL, Bingham Academy, and the broader cross-cultural community in a variety of care-oriented ways. Currently, she is the President of Families in Global Transition.
The Sandwich Generation
“This is the generation of people between having aging parents and children that they are launching out of the home.”
According to PEW Research based in the USA, About three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) have a child younger than 18 at home, and 12% of these parents provide unpaid care for an adult as well. All told, these multigenerational caregivers provide more than two and a half hours of unpaid care a day, on average, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/11/29/more-than-one-in-ten-u-s-parents-are-also-caring-for-an-adult/
For years, the term sandwich generation has generally been applied to adults (mostly women) taking care of their aging parents and their minor children at the same time. Bulson feels the same exhaustion and frustration and faces a similar lack of societal support, but she’s part of a less-recognized group: people who are taking care of their aging parents and are still supporting adult kids — at home or otherwise (sometimes referred to as the “club sandwich generation”). Another oft-overlooked group is people who are caring for their aging parents and helping out with their grandchildren (a.k.a. the “grand-sandwich generation”). https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023/03/22/caregivers-sandwich-generation/