I was in the middle of helping my mom out of her hospital bed to the bathroom when my son called and couldn’t find his cleats. Both of these tasks would have been manageable, except for the fact that my work email inbox had just passed 100 “unread” messages again. Each was occupying space in the back of my mind, and the word “drowning” kept flashing in front of my eyes, like a warning on a bomb that was about to explode.
But the emergent and exhausting situation I found myself in, taking care of both the older and younger generation, doesn’t have a term for how you feel like you might drown or explode at all. Instead, we’ve coined the phrase “sandwich moms.” Or, even cuter, Lauren Wittenberg Weiner, PhD, author and business therapist in Tampa, Florida, calls it the “panini generation.”
“The panini generation means pressures not just from above and below—parents and kids—but from all sides… I have two amazing kids, both of whom play competitive ice hockey (and frequently break themselves, on and off the ice),” she says. “My parents live down the street, and my mom has advanced Alzheimer’s. My dad has Parkinson’s, severe osteoporosis and glaucoma, which is a particularly bad combination of poor balance and sight, coupled with bones that are fragile, so he also breaks himself a lot.”
When forced to choose between work and caregiving, sandwich moms often make a tough sacrifice they shouldn’t have to: moving their career to the back burner, back seat or back of mind or, quitting altogether.
According to a 2022 survey from Pew Research, 54% of Americans in their 40s have an aging parent 65 and older and also have a child they are raising or helping support. The 2025 Career Optimism Report from the University of Phoenix found that 59% of the sandwich moms surveyed felt that being a dual-caregiver held back their career. Additionally, 62% reported feeling that having a career while a dual-caregiver was a luxury. Sandwich moms also experienced higher levels of stress (59%) compared to non-sandwich moms (48%), along with frustration and isolation.
Role Strain
Many mental health experts will tell you one of the first secrets to understanding a phenomenon in your mind is to name it, and the same is true of sandwich moms. Dr. Daniel Glazer, a clinical psychologist in London shares the clinical term for that maxed out feeling is “role strain.”
“[It’s] a state where competing demands keep the mind on standby even when the house feels calm. This background vigilance drains attention, heightens irritability and often leaves people wrestling with a steady sense of guilt because nothing ever feels fully done,” he says. “Simply naming these reactions helps; studies show caregivers who identify their stress response are more likely to ask a relative to step in for an evening or to use a brief adult day service, and these short breaks reduce the incidence of depressive symptoms.”
Glazer says this level of stress isn’t sustainable or without consequences — “prolonged stress reshapes the body.” He says sandwich moms struggle to fit in exercise, get a real night’s sleep (as they are in a hypervigilant state), rely on convenience foods and increase the risk of multiple conditions in the process. “Persistently elevated cortisol raises blood pressure, weakens immune surveillance and aggravates conditions such as migraine or diabetes,” he says. “It can be reversed when stress exposure falls and health routines improve, so a 20-minute walk or an uninterrupted lunch are therapeutic acts, not luxuries.”
Sandwich Momming Isn’t Cheap
If you feel like you’re draining your wallet in addition to your energy, it’s because you are. Grabbing those prescriptions for your parents, making sure your kid is signed up for sports or childcare and picking up fast food for yourself when you realize you haven’t eaten all day adds up.
The 2025 Career Optimism Report also found that 70% of sandwich moms use savings to pay for childcare and 47% reported they’d have to postpone their own retirement to support their parents and children. The survey found that 52% of sandwich moms’ paychecks go to caregiving costs, whereas 51% of sandwich moms report they’ve left their careers to handle caregiving responsibilities.
The irony is it’s hard to support two generations if you have to scale back or quit your job, furthering that “role strain.” One of the ways some sandwich moms are preventing this cycle from repeating is preparing their own affairs so their children don’t have the same issue.
“The care that our parents often need exceeds their income, and I have been lucky to be able to financially offset the difference needed to provide the required and necessary care needed,” says Cassie Zebisch-Schienle, founder of CMZPR, a PR and media relations firm in Los Angeles. “But I have taken the necessary steps to ensure that I don’t place my children in the same financial situation down the road. Long-term health care [insurance] is something many don’t think about until they need it and at that point, it is often too expensive to afford.”
A Workplace Equipped for Sandwich Moms?
What would a workplace equipped to keep sandwich moms not only employed but successful look like? Leah Miller, a marketing strategist at Versys Media and a sandwich mom, knows. She has two young children under 10 and cares for her mother with dementia. “Juggling these personal responsibilities alongside a leadership role at a global digital agency has been the defining challenge of my career. In 2021, when my mother had a fall that briefly hospitalized her, I seriously considered stepping away from work,” she says.
But her team rallied around her, and even allowed for a change in how she structured her time, helping her get (all) her jobs done well without burning out. “I transitioned to a more project-based cadence, leaning on async collaboration and delegating execution-heavy work to trusted team leads,” she says.
She says finding balance is an hour-to-hour struggle. “Some days it’s 80% caregiving, 20% strategy. Other days, I’m leading client presentations while my toddler naps and my mom’s caregiver checks in,” she says. “Mental health is non-negotiable now; I have biweekly therapy sessions and I block out weekly no-call windows to recalibrate. I had to let go of perfectionism, and as I tell my clients, consistency outperforms intensity over time.”
Her team has even formally adapted policies to allow “flexible caregiver support,” she says, and she has changed how she leads others too—“more empathetically, more efficiently and with deeper boundaries.”
“Research on organizational psychology finds that flexible schedules and genuine remote work options improve retention among this sandwich generation, and employees who set transparent boundaries preserve both productivity and morale,” says Glazer.
If your workplace isn’t interested in a flexible schedule, it might be time to look for another company. For example, Elizabeth Miller, founder, speaker and caregiving coach at Happy Healthy Caregiver in Marietta, Georgia, first changed companies to one with less travel and more predictable scheduling requirements. Eventually, she resigned her corporate career, instead becoming a full-time entrepreneur as she cares for her brother with multiple disabilities and conditions.
Prioritizing ‘Micro-Investments’
Tell a sandwich mom she needs some “me” time and you’ll likely have her laughing at your misunderstanding of her situation. But, Weiner says, it is possible for moms to reclaim their own identity through “micro-investments.”
“You are not simply the roles you play for others, and one of the priorities must be some time for yourself. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to plan a luxurious spa weekend with your girlfriends, although that would be heavenly,” she says. “Giving yourself time can be as simple as getting a coffee with someone in your life who needs nothing from you other than your company. Find those micro-investments in yourself and add them to your priority list.”
Examples might be:
- Taking the long way home with a favorite drink and a podcast.
- Buying or making yourself a meal that you can sit and eat while it’s still hot
- Scheduling a standing phone call with a friend to help you feel less irritable
- Breathing from your diaphragm, and making it a practice before heading into your house
Watch For Red Flags
Caregivers’ burnout, including physical and emotional tolls, is becoming more openly discussed. “One of the earliest danger signs is a feeling that your emotional range has flattened. You notice that joy, frustration and sadness register more as a muted buzz rather than a full experience, and you may catch yourself snapping with very little provocation,” Glazer says, adding it’s more than having a “bad week.” “The body often broadcasts its own warnings, such as frequent tension headaches, an irritable bowel that flares without dietary changes and a string of minor viral infections, which show that the autonomic nervous system is stuck in high gear while immune surveillance wanes.”
He hopes people noticing these patterns build “intentional recovery periods” into their calendars, including one weeknight off. “Protect it with the same firmness you would a medical appointment.
“Recovery is rarely dramatic; it arrives through steady attention to mental, social and biological cues until the nervous system relearns a calmer baseline.”
Photo from fizkes/Shutterstock.com
