Читать книгу Counseling the Contemporary Woman - Suzanne Degges-White - Страница 124

Midlife is typically a period in life in which a woman’s children are now leaving home and creating space in a woman’s life to focus on new activities or in new directions. Many women, however, assume the role of caregiver of the older adults in their families. As lifespans have lengthened, so have the caregiving responsibilities of the women in each generation. Women may take on the role of caregiver voluntarily or as a result of geographical proximity or some other practical circumstance. Women in the caregiving role may face a significant number of challenges to their own well-being as they often feel that they must sacrifice their own needs for the needs of others (Halinski, Duxbury, & Higgins, 2018).

It was in 1981 that the term sandwich generation was coined to describe adults caring for their parents while also caring for their own children (Danson & Hardill, 2006). A new variation, the “club sandwich generation,” describes those women who care for their parents but also are heavily involved in the lives of their adult children and their own grandchildren. It probably isn’t a surprise, but researchers found that if a woman is caring for only one other generation, it is less stressful to provide childcare than it is to provide eldercare (Halinski et al., 2018). With children, parents have much more authority than they might with their own or their partners’ parents.

Caregiving for others when a woman has reached a point in her life at which she believed she might finally have time for herself can be an emotionally charged challenge. For more information on working with clients who are caregivers, please refer to chapter 20. In addition to caregiving role changes, other family relationships may also shift.