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For Teal Scioldo, soft summer nights seem tailor-made for leisurely motorcycle rides with her husband John, but more often than not, her nights—and days—are anything but leisurely.
"I kind of thought once I got my kids in college that it was going to be our time. That didn't happen,” says Scioldo, who lives in St. Bernice, a small town near the Indiana-Illinois state line. Instead, she is “sandwiched” between caring for grandchildren and aging parents.
Scioldo gets up weekday mornings at 5. By 7 a.m., she's preparing bottles for her grandson. Throughout the day, she juggles a baby, housework, doctors' appointments and the needs of her 84-year-old mother-in-law or her own mother. After dinner, Scioldo and her husband head out to one of the parents' homes to tackle whatever odd jobs need to be done.
"If I had more time, I'd probably go on a few more motorcycle rides with my husband,” she says. “And I'd do more things my way. Now, everything is always on someone else's terms.”
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Tom Dougherty |
Scioldo isn't the only person to feel the squeeze from generations on both sides. A 2005 Pew Research Center survey found that 71 percent of baby boomers have at least one living parent. Two in 10 boomers provide some financial assistance to a parent, while about 13 percent are sandwiched, providing some financial support to a parent and either raising or financially supporting a minor or adult child.
"The sandwich generation comes from having three or more generations alive,” says Judith Myers-Walls, a Purdue Extension human development specialist. “The fact that people are living longer than they used to has increased the number of people in the sandwich generation.”
A helping hand
Stress is common among sandwiched caregivers. “I feel like I am 49 going on 80,” Scioldo says. “I wring my hands a lot, and I make a lot of phone calls.” One important call was to ask for help. Scioldo turned to Linda Reynolds, a Purdue Extension educator in Vermillion County.
"Sometimes people just need someone to listen to them,” Reynolds says. “That's a big deal to someone as busy as Teal. She needed certain types of educational materials to know what to do with her parents, and that's where Purdue Extension can help.”
"Linda's helped me enormously,” Scioldo says about Reynolds, who directed her to information about everything from Social Security benefits to managing stress. One of the Purdue Extension programs that Reynolds first suggested to Scioldo was Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.
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