Apparently I am thinking a great deal about the elderly lately because the idea of the "sandwich generation" is on my mind.
To be perfectly honest and blunt, I find the idea of a sandwich generation to be a creation straight out of the egos of the baby boomer generation.
It seems like the baby boomers have always had the idea that their generation is the first to deal with issues. That is a load of horse pucky. Sex? Drugs? Strange music? Weird lifestyles? Redefining roles of women? Sorry, boomers. Generations before you also dealt with these issues in many ways. The suffragettes were trailblazers too. Drugs were a cultural issue one hundred years before the boomers came of age. Sex, well, that has been experimented with for centuries. Alternative lifestyles have always been around too.
It seems like every time the baby boomer generation encounters something new for them, it is suddenly new altogether and requires a name, a definition and advice on how to deal with it.
The idea of caring for aging parents as well as children is nothing new. For goodness sake, in 1936, my grandmother got married and moved in with her new husband to start their life together. She immediately began caring for her new father-in-law and sister-in-law, and she was their caretaker about the next twenty years, throughout the years of raising her family too. This wasn't anything she defined, anything that she went to support groups on, anything that was written articles about. It was part of being a family, it was what people did. Was it easy? No. Mom asked her about it once, and grandma clearly replied that some days were very, very hard.
Here's the thing, though. Life is not meant to be easy all the time. Doing the right thing isn't always fun. Sometimes in life, you have to suck it up, doing what it takes for the people that you love, and keep moving forward. Period.
We can keep on doing that things that our foremothers did without having to resort to self-help books and fancy labels (Club sandwich? Open face sandwich? Oh yes, people are even defining different demographics within the new idea of a sandwich generation). Smaller family sizes and being spread out geographically are added challenges, but this is also nothing new. I guarantee you that pioneer families or immigrant families were spread out, and even if a family had six kids survive to adulthood, only one or two cared for the the aging parents.
I'm not looking forward to having to care for my in laws or my parents some day, but you know, I'm prepared for the idea because I know it is going to happen. It is kind of a no-brainer, people. People age, they need help in the end of their lives.
I think we need to stop looking for what makes us so very special in our place in time and look instead at historical connections and similarities. The idea that the generations currently alive in the US are so very special is kind of like the idea that more than half of the kids in a school are "gifted". Sorry, not buying it.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Spread some mayo on me; I'm facing the sandwich years
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4 comments:
Exactly. My grandparents, born in 1916 and 1919, took care of my great grandma for a few years in the early-mid 1980s. This grandpa just moved in with one of my aunts, last month. He's 94.
And heck, from 2001-early 2003, I helped take care of my other grandma once a week--she was bedridden for 3 years before she died in late 2003. I had a toddler at the time and was in my late 20s. What kind of sandwich person was I?
I agree that taking care of aging parents while juggling ones own family is nothing new, and I agree that the baby boomers often feel they're the first to experience things, but I also feel there's some validity in publicly talking about how stressful it can be. Its always been stressful, but the large amount of people dealing with it at one time (all those boomers) affords caretakers with more opportunities and resources to reach out and get support while they deal with that stage of life than people of previous generations had.
Because of longer lifespans its not uncommon for that "sandwich" person to be taking care of both an aging parent *and* and aging grandparent... add that to a very busy and fast paced lifestyle, and it can be a recipe for stress overload if there isn't some acknowledgement of how stressful it all can be. I don't look at it as boomers thinking they are so special, but as a large demographic of people talking about how to cope with the life stage they are finding themselves in.
Most things in life are not new, to us or anyone else. But it is a new experience to whomever is experiencing it. I am one of the boomers and I believe it's just that there's a lot of us, so whenever we do something it seems like we act like it's a first. But I do think we are more likely to talk about our life experiences and look for support from others who have gone through some of the same things. I know that I like many other boomers respect those that have come before us and hope to be able to help thosse that come after. A thoughtful post, thank you for expressing a valid point.
Hey Vicki, thanks for posting! My mom and aunts took care of my grandmother during her struggle with ALS in the early '90s, and now I'm looking ahead to what is coming my way.
Anonymous and One Woman's Thoughts, thanks for stopping by and posting. The large number of boomers going through an experience does make it a topic, but still I feel an institutional ego-centrism from the generation as a whole. I'm a GenXer raised by one of the earliest of the Baby Boomers ('47). Dad always expressed disgust for the selfishness and hyper-ego of many of his generation, and I know that his take on his generation colors the way that I see the Boomers to this day.
While I can see some validity in offering support for others going through these circumstances, I see some people who spend so much time asking for, getting and giving support that they forget to embrace life as a whole, instead becoming defined by this role as caretaker.
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