In This Article
Sandwich generation. The cohort of adults, typically in their 40s and 50s, simultaneously providing care for aging parents and for their own children at home. A documented and growing demographic in the US: Pew Research Center estimates approximately 23 percent of US adults are in this position in any given year.
Where the term comes from
The phrase was coined by social worker and academic Dorothy Miller in a 1981 paper in the journal Social Work. The term spread through the gerontology and family-policy literature in the 1980s and 1990s and entered mainstream usage by the early 2000s. Pew Research Center began publishing periodic measurements of the population in 2013, providing the most-cited demographic data.
How it shows up in real life
A 48-year-old project manager has two teenagers, a job, and a father whose late-stage Parkinson's care has shifted to her over the past 18 months. Her week now includes school logistics, after-school activities, hospital and pharmacy runs, conversations with her father's nursing facility, conversations with siblings about that facility, and her actual paid work. The phrase sandwich generation is a precise description of this load, and the phrase being precise is part of why it stuck.
Common misuses
The most common misuse is applying the term to anyone with both children and living parents. The diagnostic condition is active, regular caregiving for the parent, not the existence of the parent. The other common misuse is treating the phrase as descriptive only of women; the demographic is roughly evenly split between men and women in Pew's measurements, though the labor distribution within sandwich households remains gendered.
