We are used to the fact that each generation has certain names that include the features of the time in which people live and develop.
Irina Berman
The term Generation Sandwich was coined by UK social workers. It’s applied to people whose own children have not yet become adults and independent, but at the same time their parents already require care and attention. This category includes the age of 45-60 years. How not to offend children in our desire to warn and prevent from trouble and at the same time give parents a sense of security and peace? Different cultural concepts and motives create different reasons for conflict.
The cause of this syndrome is global demographic changes. Today, the average life expectancy has crossed over 70 years. There has been a shift in childbearing. If earlier the first child was born at 24-27 years old, now young people postpone this process until 30 and later, and the second child can be born both at 36 and at 42 years old.
According to statistics, today's youth are slowly entering an independent independent life than previous generations. There are families where there are several children who haven’t finished school yet, and grandparents are already beginning to need attention and care.
In psychology, there is such a thing as inflict good. When communicating with parents, you can simply ask if you are needed here with your kindness and desire to do the “right thing”. And this comes from our naive belief that we know something and also from the belief that it depends on us that everything is fine with them.
How not to "gut" yourself to the end, being in this situation?
Non-judgmental communication with your parents from the position: “I accept myself and loved ones with shortcomings, mistakes of the past, I accept completely with intolerance, laziness, impulsive reaction and hasty judgments. In this radical acceptance there is a guarantee of peaceful communication with our closest people.” And you need to start with yourself.
Psychologists/coaches work with such requests and help develop algorithms to create harmony in your life. In my telegram channel and on the VK page, I talk about how working together with a coach finds the true cause of attitudes, anxieties, fears that prevent people from moving forward and getting the results they set for themselves.
The Sandwich Generation Syndrome cannot be defeated or overcome, but it can be alleviated. Our cultural roots and our habitual motivations explain why and how we behave with loved ones. The American philosopher and psychologist William James believed that each of us “...depending on the circumstances, can be a savage or a saint. A good person differs from a bad one only by choice.”