In this article
- Lesson #1: Build in breathing room
- Lesson #2: From loss to gratitude, you’ll feel every emotion—and you need to be able to express them
- Lesson #3: When you feel like everyone needs you at once, give yourself space
- Lesson #4: Even in the toughest moments, there will be blessings
As Americans continue to have kids later than they did in previous years, the number of adults in the so-called “sandwich generation”—who are simultaneously caring for an aging parent and minor children—grows. Butcom’s 2026 Sandwich Generation Caregiver Report, many (87%) say they feel like their responsibilities are invisible
Nearly three-quarters (72%) of sandwich generation caregivers report feeling lonely even though many people depend on them, according to the Care.com 2026 Sandwich Generation Report. They’re also more likely to report experiencing substantial emotional difficulties, with 80% feeling mentally overloaded from making care decisions and 77% saying they are too often very stressed, the report found. Moms are especially impacted with 80% reporting that they’re especially likely to miss out on downtime/”me-time” as a result of dual care.
Not having social support—or even the cultural language to describe why dual caretaking is so hard—can make everything feel heavier. We spoke to four women who are dual caregivers about what it’s really like to be a member of the sandwich generation. Here, they open up about the challenges they face, where they find gratitude, what they wish more people knew about sandwich caregiving—and the lessons they’ve learned along the way
Lesson #1: Build in breathing room
When Lisa McCarty’s father’s health began to fail, she stepped into a primary caregiving role that lasted over a decade. This meant taking on additional tasks, including doing her dad’s grocery shopping and laundry, picking up his prescriptions, managing his doctors’ appointments. It would have been a lot to add on to anyone’s schedule but this was especially true for McCarty, who had a toddler, a part-time job and a partner who often traveled for work
“People don’t seem to have a full grasp on what it means to manage it all as a sandwich generation caregiver,” says McCarty, a 47-year-old journalist based in Washington, D.C. “While I was grateful to be able to help my dad for so long, it was also stressful, exhausting and emotionally draining.”
McCarty describes navigating the schedule and needs of a parent, while caring for a small child and trying to handle her own needs as “challenging.” Often, she felt like she’d have to let one task slide in order to accomplish another. And breaks were hard to come by. She says there were days that even managing to eat lunch or go to the bathroom was hard
With no breathing room between tasks, McCarty started feeling chronically exhausted.
How micro-pauses address overwhelm
So, she adopted “micro-pauses,” a practice that helped her feel less overwhelmed. “It’s sitting alone or pausing from doing, to breathe and just be, without the guilt,” she explains, adding that she tried to take one or two “micro-pauses” a day.
McCarty first started incorporating these mini-breaks into her routine organically, after a draining series of days that left her feeling burnt out. She began to realize that she was giving so much to her dad and child that there was nothing left for herself. So, she started taking advantage of times she found herself alone, spending just a few minutes intentionally sitting in the moment before rushing off to her next to do.
“When I was caregiving for my dad, this would look like dropping his clothes off at the dry cleaner and sitting in the car for an extra five or 10 minutes in silence.” It was a simple step, but giving herself permission to “pause” her day and take time to herself helped keep her from feeling completely lost in her sandwich caretaking arrangement.
McCarty also had to work on communicating, delegating and setting boundaries so she could fit in self-care. She asked her husband to take one or two tasks off her plate, like picking up his prescription or dropping off his groceries. She would tell her dad she was going to visit an hour later than normal so she could fit in a walk. Voicing her needs helped her minimize burnout. “It gave me the time to take care of myself or my child,” she says.
Ultimately, any moment she was able to find to recharge allowed her to better support her father. “There was one afternoon, in particular, after a night of no sleep with my daughter, that my husband offered to bring my dad dinner at his apartment,” she remembers. McCarty says when she returned the next day, she felt more well-rested and able to perform her regular duties as a caregiver and also to better show up as a parent. “It was a relief to finally let someone help me.”
“It was a relief to finally let someone help me.”
— Lisa McCarty
Lesson #2: From loss to gratitude, you’ll feel every emotion—and you need to be able to express them
Ren Drakes, a 47-year-old consultant based in British Columbia, Canada, says being a single parent adds “a little more complexity” to her role as sandwich caregiver to her 17-year-old son, who is neurodivergent, and her 72-year-old father, who has Alzheimer’s.
As a single parent, many of the tasks other sandwich generation caretakers might be able to delegate to a partner fall on Drakes, which means she’s often juggling more than what one person is meant to carry.
“There have been many days where I’d be on a phone call with a nurse on my dad’s healthcare team, and while I’m on the phone with them I get a call from my son’s school about an issue that needs urgent intention, and then, when I hop in my car to drive to the school I get another call from the pharmacy with an issue about my dad’s medicine,” Drakes says. “You can’t even afford to have an emotional moment because there are things that need to get done.”
“It’s normal to feel a sense of loss”
In the midst of sandwich caregiving, Drakes has also lost one person who would normally be a majorth your mind a little bit. I’m caring for this person who’s my parent, but I can’t rely on him for emotional support when things go wrong with his grandchild or even myself,” she says
But the difficult emotions that come with sandwich caregiving—such as exhaustion, guilt, resentment and loss—need an outlet. And in Drakes’s experience, people without direct experience as a dual caregiver often don’t understand what she’s going through.
“People tend to have an attitude of, ‘It’s your responsibility, so suck it up, and don’t complain about it,’” she reflects. “But it’s normal to feel a sense of loss around [the life you thought you’d have], and people should be allowed to feel that way without being judged or told they don’t care about their loved ones.”
Close friends and community health support have made a world of difference
That’s where community can be helpful. Drakes has several close friends who have parents with dementia, and while they may not always have a full understanding of dual caregiving they’ve helped validate some of her more complex feelings.
“They were able to even give me a heads up about certain things [I might experience down the road], such as changes in their personality or the inevitable moment where your parent looks at you with confusion, and you realize they don’t recognize who you are,” she says.
They also gave her a chance to vent the messier emotions, such as resentment and loss, that come with caregiving without judgment. “I can say the quiet part out loud because they get it and can say, ‘That’s totally normal, and I have the same feelings.’” Drakes says.
She’s found community health support—in the form of dedicated healthcare personnel and services provided by the local health authority—for her father as well, which have helped to lighten her emotional load
“You can’t even afford to have an emotional moment because there are things that need to get done.”
— Ren Drakes
How prioritizing self-care preempts resentment
Drakes knows that advice to “put the oxygen mask on yourself first” can sound cliched. But as a single parent and dual caregiver, she’s found it essential to prioritize her own well-being, even when that means letting something she needs to do for her son or father wait. “A lot of people feel guilty taking time to focus on themselves,” she says. “But it’s so important because that’s what allows you to then show up for them in the best way that you can and not to have any resentment about the situation.”
Drakes has learned that there is another emotion that sandwich caregivers may struggle to talk about: gratitude. As difficult being in the sandwich generation can be, she still feels grateful every day that she’s in a position to be able to be a caregiver.
“I have gratitude that I’m self-employed, which gives me the flexibility to drop everything I’m doing and rush to my son’s school in 20 minutes. Or if something happened with my dad, his caregivers know they can always reach me,” she says. “I haven’t seen a silver lining, but I do have a lot of gratitude. And it is a privilege to be able to say I’m able to take care of the people that I care about.”
Lesson #3: When you feel like everyone needs you at once, give yourself space
Andee Silva’s first child was only a few months old when she asked her mother to move in. Her mom was dealing with mobility issues that were making it difficult for her to live alone, and the 38-year-old Silva, a stay-at-home-parent based in Texas, knew she could use the financial support too. That was nearly four years (and a second child) ago. But, in some ways —particularly when it comes to getting used to sharing a space with her mother while caring for a newborn and toddler—Silva is still adjusting to serving as a sandwich generation caregiver.
An uneven tradeoff
There’s a lot Silva appreciates about the living arrangement. While her mom’s mobility issues make it impossible for her to take on more physically demanding child care, such as chasing after the older child at the park, she can offer some limited help with the kids, like holding the baby for a few minutes so Silva can take a call.
She also believes her kids benefit from simply having their grandmother around. “I didn’t really grow up close to my grandparents, and I always kind of envy people that got to do that. So it is nice that we’ve created an opportunity for her to be close to my mom,” she says. “My daughter will grow up and always think fondly about movie nights with grandma and pizza. It is really beautiful to see my mom have such a good relationship with my daughter.”
But in some ways, living with her mother has amplified that “everyone-needs-me-at-once” feeling that so many in the sandwich generation experience. For instance, Silva recalls a recent night when she was trying to respond to a text message, but kept getting distracted. First, her toddler wanted her attention, then her baby started crying. On top of that chaos, her mom started asking her a question. The text message, a task that should have taken five minutes, was forgotten
It’s not just the caregiving-related to-dos that end up on Silva’s plate, such as needing to drive her mom to doctor’s appointments or help with her errands. Even when her mother doesn’t need help, simply having her around can be disorienting.
“It’s so weird. I’m a grown adult. I have two kids and a husband. Yet a lot of the time I feel like I’m a teenager again because my mom’s there,” she says. “Her intentions are good, but it feels almost like having an audience.”
That feels especially hard to Silva while parenting for the first time. “I’m learning and navigating, and I’m just never by myself.”
That feeling is only exacerbated by having two young kids who need a lot of support.
Silva believes the lack of multi-generational households in U.S. culture is partially to blame for the lack of support for the sandwich generation. The assumption seems to be that parents live individually or in supportive living environments. Houses aren’t set up to accommodate more than one generation of family, and Silva says even her friends treat her situation as abnormal. “There’s not a lot of people in my circle who are doing this,” she says of splitting her attention between her kids and her mom. “I feel like the odd woman out.”
“I feel like my brain is this rotating to-do list”
Silva knows that as her children get older, the household dynamics will likely change, and she’ll feel more independence again. For now, she says her “biggest coping mechanism” is simply getting out of the house and taking her kids to music class, art class or storytime at the library.
“When I’m home, I feel like my brain is this rotating to-do list. I’m trying to be in the moment and enjoy and it’s hard because I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I need to do this laundry,’ and ‘This floor is disgusting.’ You’re just thinking about all the things that you need to be doing but can’t because your hands are full, and there’s no one else to do them,” she says. “Staying out and about has been such a good tool for mental health.”
“A lot of people feel guilty taking time to focus on themselves. But it’s so important because that’s what allows you to then show up for them in the best way that you can and not to have any resentment about the situation.”
— Ren Drakes
Lesson #4: Even in the toughest moments, there will be blessings
Brittany B. and her two sisters first noticed something was off with their father in 2021. There were small but definite shifts in his personality, mood and language. They slowly became more involved in his care, and, as they spent more time with him, they got a clearer picture of his symptoms—and became convinced that he definitely needed more support. By the time he was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in April 2024, the three sisters had taken a much more active role in his caretaking.
At the time, Brittany’s two children were 2 and 5. One of her sisters also had a 5-year-old child
Brittany, now 40 years old, says she felt constantly pulled to be in two places at once: on call with her father for doctor’s appointments or emergencies and present with her young children.
Last year, Brittany even switched careers, taking a more flexible job that allowed her to be more available to her kids and father. But even so, she often had to make hard decisions about which area of her life was taking top priority.
“To celebrate my daughter finishing kindergarten, we let her pick out a restaurant and our family went out to eat,” recalls Brittany. “But while we were there, I got a call that EMS was on the way to my dad’s house because he’d had a neurological change. I had to leave my daughter’s celebratory kindergarten dinner. I was happy to do it because I wanted to see if my dad was OK, but I was also very torn because I wanted to spend that time with my daughter.”
Blending all the parts of her life together
As much as she could, Brittany tried to bring those two parts of her life together.
“Someone’s first instinct is often to completely shield their children from the hard or ugly parts of caring for aging parents. But I think there’s benefit in allowing them to experience some of those moments alongside you,” she says. “I tried to bring my kids around my dad when it was appropriate. I brought them to the skilled nursing facility, for example. My dad loved it, and I felt like it was important for them to see as well.”
Brittany leaned heavily on her faith during her years in the sandwich generation, especially when her father’s health began to decline leading up to his death earlier this year. “It’s terrible seeing someone you love go through something like this, but I do believe that there are ways that blessings show up,” she says.
Throughout this entire experience and, especially as her father needed more support, her husband stepped in to provide extra support with their kids and emotional support for Brittany, so she could be more present with her dad. She was also grateful that she and her sisters remained “a very strong unit” through her father’s health issues.
Finding beauty in the struggle
Brittany says she was even able to find beauty in the toughest moments toward the end of his life, including when he needed assistance feeding himself.
“My dad was a very strong man. To see him in such a vulnerable state was very hard, but it also opened up some really, really sweet moments with him,” she says. “That was really big for me—being able to see my dad in those moments and to serve him in the ways that we did, like helping him eat a meal. It made me upset but, at the same time, it was an honor to care for him in that way. Those are some of the bittersweet moments that came out of that time.”
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