‘I never see my friends’: the midlifers caring for parents, kids and grandkids

Anna*, 65, from Oxfordshire, is a legal PA working four days a week, and doing one day a week of childcare for her two-year-old grandson. At weekends and one or two weekday evenings, she visits her elderly mother, a 25-minute drive away, who needs support, and she also helps with her mother-in-law, who has dementia. “I’m beyond exhausted,” says Anna. “I’m someone who can handle a lot, and not much phases me, but I’m so shattered by all the parts of my family who need help, and trying to fit it all around work.” Anna told her son and his wife, before their baby was born in 2024, that she would love to help with childcare once her daughter-in-law went back to work. “I know how expensive life is for new parents today, and so I want to help them any way I can,” she says. “It’s been so special, my time with my grandson, and I’m so lucky to have the family I do, but this has definitely been the most plate-spinning I’ve done in my life.” In the last year, her mother, 88, has become suddenly far more frail after two falls. Her husband and his sisters organise their own mother’s care, but Anna is still very much involved. “She’s been my mother-in-law for almost 40 years, she’s been good to me, and I want to be around for her, but also to support my husband. At the same time, I go to bed and my mind is swimming with stuff. I barely see friends, or have any down-time. I feel like I’m being pulled in a zillion directions.”We have long known about the sandwich generation – the mid-lifers juggling caring for their ageing parents, while bringing up their young children. The term was first popularised by US sociologists Dorothy Miller and Elaine Brody in 1981. Miller wrote of “adult children” who were exposed to “a unique set of unshared stresses in which giving of resources and service far outweighs receiving them.” Yet there’s a new, growing cohort of people – like Anna – who are caring for their elderly parents, supporting their adult children, and looking after their grandchildren. An extra layer, three generations at once. The sandwich has become a club sandwich. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it is on the rise. People in their fifties and sixties are finding their parents living longer, which is great news, but as a UCL study in the Journals of Gerontology found, the bad news is they’re living in worse health than previous generations. They subsequently need more care and involvement from family, in a social care system that faces chronic staffing shortages and underfunding. Another new trend is that people are taking on more childcare for their grandchildren. More than half of UK grandparents provide some sort of childcare during the working week, doing more than four hours a day on average, a 2023 survey found. Research found that largely it’s because they enjoy it, but there is also the desire to help in the context of high childcare and housing costs. While some take on this caregiving in retirement, many are doing it on top of their careers. After all, people in the UK are working longer into older age, with the employment rate for adults aged 50 to 64 reaching 72.2 per cent, and only one in six UK adults expecting to fully retire. All of that can make for a very busy, complicated and high-pressured life. Dr Teri Apter, psychologist at the University of Cambridge and author of Grandparenting: On love and relationships across generations, says that it is important to acknowledge the positives experienced by those in the club sandwich generation. “People find they’re able to give back to their parents,” she says. “They’re at high levels of personal, domestic, organisational competence, and they like exercising that. They like being relevant to their adult children, who might have previously had less use for their parents by this age. “This is a generation of grandparents who themselves experienced the difficulty of pursuing a career while having young children, and they often want to protect their children and children-in-law from the demands and conflicts and compromises that they have to make. “They also see that the costs of childcare and housing have gone way up, and there can be pleasure in helping with this. There are also, of course, many benefits to being with grandchildren. There can be huge joy in that. All this builds confidence, and makes people feel needed and useful, and involved.” Yet, says Apter, that’s not to say it’s easy, or optimal. “It all comes at a cost,” she says. “People of this age might find themelves facing some of the same dilemmas that they experienced in earlier parenthood – how much time to spend on themselves versus their loved ones? How selfish versus selfless should they be? They’re facing these inner-conflicts in ways that can frazzle them, confuse them and worry them just as a parent with very young children is confronting practical and emotional dilemmas every day.” Deedee Moore, a grandmother who founded grandparenting publication More Than Grand, regularly hears from readers in the club sandwich generation. “It’s a lot for them, both emotionally and physically. Many of us have a strong desire to spend time with the people we love and to help where we are needed. But we are also ageing, and few of us can keep up the pace we did in our thirties. Being needed from multiple directions is draining, and leaves little time and energy for the things that refuel us: hobbies or time with friends.” Deedee Moore hears from the club sandwich generation about their struggle to balance everything, and still find time for themselves Moore recently had a message from a UK reader saying; “I would love some wise words on balancing meeting the care needs of aging parents, supporting adult children with young children, having time and relationships with adult children who don’t have children, while also establishing relationships with grandchildren, while also having some life for myself and my husband. My retirement does not look like I planned.” The problem is, that for those feeling overwhelmed by caring responsibilities, self-care is often the first to go. “Not only exercise or what you eat,” says Apter, “and not only getting yourself dressed and coiffed, which can bring pleasure and delight, but also there are internal conflicts of, ‘How much do I have to do?’ “There is also something gendered about the obsession with, ‘Am I being selfish?’ and it is largely women worrying about this.” In one 2020 US study, researchers interviewed working grandmothers; the participants described being so busy caregiving that they had no time for medical appointments or tests, even though they could feel themselves aging and their body changing. There are more women than men in this position – of the five million people providing unpaid care in England and Wales, 59 per cent are female. Women are four to seven times more likely to have to reduce their working hours, step back from their careers, or drop out of the labour market entirely due to caring responsibilities, according to Trades Union Congress analysis. Many of these will also be grandparents, helping out their adult children in some form. Yet that still leaves a huge number of men taking on caring roles, and their mental health can be hugely impacted, too, often having less of a social circle to confide in, or seek support from. “Men in this generation experiencing these pressures can often feel isolated,” says Apter, “and quite depressed. Everyone feels conflicted about where to focus their time and energy.” While grandparenting is good for health, boosting brain function, emotional well-being, and physical activity, heavy or full-time care can cause stress, according to research published in Psychology and Ageing. Anna’s son and wife have another baby due in early 2027, and Anna won’t – for now, at least – commit to regular childcare in the way she has done for her grandson. “We will make sure we’re still involved grandparents,” she says, “and I’m so excited, but my husband and I need to save some energy and time for our mums, as they deserve our love and care as they decline. It all feels impossible sometimes, it really does, but we will get through it.”