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Amanda Singleton had just gotten married and bought her first home when her mom was diagnosed with brain cancer. Essentially overnight, she went from being a 30-year-old just starting a new phase of her life to being a 24-hour caregiver. “My mom couldn’t walk, she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t eat,” Singleton said.
Singleton spent her days driving hours between her home in St. Petersburg, Florida, clinics for her mom’s chemo and radiation treatments, and her job as an attorney. The stress was constant. “As soon as you think you have a handle on what’s happening, things can change,” she said. “Medications can change, symptoms can pop up, there’s another specialist to see, there’s another thing to do. I felt like this conductor of a runaway train.”
For many, taking on the affairs of a parent or senior relative will add pressure on top of pressure. Americans are having kids later in life, meaning they’re more likely to find themselves in a “sandwich generation,” caring for elderly parents and young kids at the same time. Nearly 25 percent of American adults and more than half of people in their 40s are “sandwiched,” with at least one child to support and at least one parent over 65.
Tomorrow’s caregivers will also face unprecedented career and financial challenges. Women, who have historically done the bulk of both elder and child care, are more likely than ever to have careers and be breadwinners. Many won’t be able to get time off work to provide the complex, ongoing assistance that many boomers will require. And they can’t afford to quit — faced with the Great Recession followed by the pandemic, younger workers, especially Black and non-college-educated millennials, don’t have the accumulated wealth necessary to cushion any prolonged period of unemployment or to shoulder a relative’s expenses.
“We are in a crisis of care,” said Carlene Davis, co-founder of the nonprofit Sistahs Aging With Grace & Elegance (SAGE). It’s a crisis that American society, with no paid leave, a fragmented care system, and minimal public discussion around aging and disability, is woefully ill-equipped to handle.
It’s a crisis that many people are finding themselves facing alone, with little support from policymakers, and little public conversation to tell them what to expect.
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