Independent Perspective News

They live trying to satisfy both. They are between 45 and 60 years old. It's a global phenomenon, but here the crisis has deepened it: children don't leave home and many grandparents can't be economically independent.

They have children. They have parents. They have to take care and support both. Thus, they live overwhelmed by the huge demand and worries. They are between 45 and 60 years old. They work, are in charge of their homes, try to keep a good relationship with their couples and, besides, they have to raise their children and spend time and take care of their parents. Psychologists have already found a name for them: they call them the "sandwich generation".

"The terminology is not strictly scientific, but it's already become popular. And it's very clear. It defines the group of people who's in charge of both young and old children, and they are like the ham in the middle", explains psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Umberto Gobbi.

Susana Aguas, psychologist and a specialist in gerontology, says the term first appeared in a book by the American psychologist Quaeshi Walker, who used it to define the people who find themselves in the middle of a number of situations: taking care of their children, their parents, their marriage, their homes, their jobs.

The truth is now in the United States the definition sandwich generation is becoming more and more fashionable. Columns are being published in newspapers on this issue; there are specialized magazines and many Internet sites on the subject. There are even self-help groups offering lots of advice to keep calm when faced with so much responsibility. And in other first-world countries, such as France, there are fiscal benefits for those who belong to the génération sandwich.

In Argentina, the psychological aspect of this "middle age crisis" is made more complex by a special trait: the economical crisis that has changed the middle-class families' habits and aspirations. "Until a few years ago there was a welfare state that used to provide those families with medical and social care, and the pensions were decent. Today, our elders are paid paltry sums and so it's their children who must support them. And everything gets ever more complicated when grandparents move in with their children's families, because not everybody adapts to that situation", says Gobbi.

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But there's also the problem of the children... Today it's very usual that twenty-something youth stay in their parents' house because they find it impossible to support themselves. The majority can't find a job, even when they have a university degree, and those who work earn salaries that don't cover a studio's rent.

Parents feel their children's frustrations as their own and do anything to help them.

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According to Leopoldo Salvarezza, professor of the Elderly course at the School of Psychology of the UBA, the rise in the life expectancy is an important factor in the problem of the "sandwich generation". "More years are added to life, but life is not added to those years".

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