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The “Sandwich Generation” Are Who We Need To Be Helping Out

People raising kids + dealing with elderly parents, simultaneously. There are 80 million such people in the U.S. alone.

Ted Bauer
4 min readAug 6, 2024

If you are unfamiliar with the term “Sandwich Generation” and cannot figure it out via context clues, here is a good article describing the basics:

Essentially, you are “sandwiched” between “I have younger kids” and “My parents are becoming older and need help.” This applies to about 80 million people in the U.S., and the idea of a “Sandwich Generation” is only scaling, because people do get married + have kids later, for various reasons.

The number one quote in that article above would be this:

“At a certain point, your parents become like kids,” Ling said.

Indeed.

Years ago, I was in this church group and, as we sat on one couple’s lawn, this towering intellect of a man who turned out to not be such a good friend to me said: “You know what’s weird? As your kids age, your parents age too.” That’s not weird, per se. It’s just numbers going up at the same time. You could call it “math.” But what he was describing, ostensibly, was being part of the Sandwich Generation.

Let’s take the obvious part first: there is an exhaustion element to dealing with a young child and then your older mom all at once. If you wanted 3–4 kids and you land in Sandwich Generation, you might only have 1–2 kids because you’re so exhausted from dealing with completely different eras of life that are oddly the same in terms of how limited you are (newborn + elderly). So that brings down the fertility rate.

There’s also an issue of money. Maybe your elderly parents had a nest egg and they didn’t burn it on cruises. Maybe they have some government cheese. But a lot of people don’t have enough money to live until 90, even if they think they do, and that creates economic stressors…

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Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.

Responses (7)

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I am sure taking care of elderly parents at the same time as children is difficult. I would like to see a list of help for people providing care for their elders agnostic of whether they have kids, because take it from me, even with no kids it ain't…

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More tax breaks for childcare providers

I’m part of this sandwich generation with minor children and I think you’re spot on with some of these solutions. The child tax credit and childcare tax write off are currently jokes. You want people to have more children give them the tax relief vs. giving it to the rich.

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"People raising kids + dealing with elderly parents, simultaneously. There are 80 million such people in the U.S. alone."
Where does this 80 million number come from? Per and older (2013) Pew Research report, 1 out of 8 adults aged 40-70 provide…

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