The Sandwich Generation
Dramatic improvements in health care can be seen as more people are living through illnesses that would have cut short a life a generation ago. Pair this phenomenon with people putting off starting a family until careers are well under way and it is no surprise that adults can be caught in the squeeze of caring for older adults and children at the same time. Baby boomers and the generations that follow them into retirement will be faced with the challenge of dealing with their elderly parents while they still have children in the home to care for. Many of these individuals do not want to put their aging parents in a nursing home, but find it difficult to care for their elderly parents while trying to earn a living through full-time work.
To deal with the challenge of caring for elderly parents, the next generation of retirees will be exploring options such as:
Shared living residences
Co-housing
Communes
Aging in place models
Congregate housing
Planned communities
One trend for helping people stay out of nursing homes is to deliver support services to where they live. The thinking behind this is that a person who can remain in the familiar surroundings of a home has a better quality of life.
Boomers have been mobile throughout their careers, and many own vacation homes. The notion of how “home” is defined may evolve to be the place where they most enjoy being, or the locale of the latest of their stops in multiple moves for work. “Aging in place” might just morph into “home place of choice.”
Public health initiatives, such as visiting nurses or Meals on Wheels, were developed to enable older people to remain at home. What these programs failed to address is the danger of living in increased isolation. Depression and loneliness can creep up with loss of mobility, losing friends to death or relocation, or the effects of illness or its treatment.
