Today, Explained - Burnout sandwich

Episode Date: April 26, 2026

How to manage the squeeze of taking care of your kids and your parents at the same time. This episode was produced by Danielle Hewitt and Peter Balonon-Rosen, edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Brandon McFarland, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Three generations of a family. Photo by ANDRE PAIN/AFP via Getty Images. You can find AARP's Care for the Caregiver guide here. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail] to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Explain It to Me comes from Starbucks, vibing to the hook of your favorite song, stepping outside and immediately feeling the sun on your face, sipping a refreshing drink. Those are the moments that energize us. And if that third one sounds particularly enticing, you might be due for a new energy refresher from Starbucks. It's the flavors you know and love,

and now with a boost of energy. Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks. I do have aging parents, and that's a whole conversation over two beers and three pizzas. There's a uniquely American burnout crisis in families. I can't control the diseases my loved ones have, but I can control my own mindset. More than 63 million people in America are caregivers, of kids, of parents, and other loved ones. and nearly half of caregivers under the age of 50 are taking care of a parent and a child at the same time.

Maybe you're one of them. Maybe you're also trying to hold down a job and handle everything else life throws your way. And maybe it's got you feeling spent. So how do you handle burnout when the call is coming from inside the house? When you just can't walk away? I'm Doug Glenn Hill, and this week Unexplained to me from Vox, we talk to people who've been there and who have made it through.

Alyssa Quart runs the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She's also a member of what's known as the Sandwich Generation. You've probably heard the phrase. It was coined in the 80s to describe people in their 40s through their 60s, caring for their parents while raising kids. But a growing number of people like me, Gen Xers and millennials are now joining in this generation. A few years ago, Alyssa's mother was diagnosed with cancer.

So we were getting infusions daily and radiation after that. And meanwhile, I have this 14-year-old daughter who kept calling. You know, would I be able to go to her volleyball game? Would I make dinner? Would I go over her homework? And at a certain point, she too got sick. And at one point she was even hospitalized. And so I was like caring for both of these people that I loved so immensely at the same time.

Walk me through what it was like taking care of your mom. What did a typical day look like for you? So her treatments went on for five or six hours. And then there was lots of weights like between blood draws, fusions, doctor visits. And, you know, there was a lot of physical struggle for her. She's 90. She's in pain. She's incredibly anxious about what's to come. You know, she gave me this phrase that was by the author Lori Siegel.

No one teaches us how to live or how to die, but we all figured out, don't we? And that was the vibe. It was existential. You know, I'm an only child, but it was also physical, like how, you know, I'd run up in the morning to the hospital, and then we'd go home. And I was caught in this time space continuum is what I call it, where, you know, all stages of life occur simultaneously. So I felt very alive, but in a kind of dark way. What was it like just sort of trying to balance like, okay, my mom needs me,

but also I'm a mom and my kid needs me. Like, how did you navigate both of those things? Well, you know, I joke that there's a dark game, which I was playing, which family member will I disappoint today? You never feel like you're doing enough for, anyone. And it was something that when I wrote this piece for The Guardian about this, the way, it was cathartic to interview whatever, 10, 15 people who were dealing with their parents and their children and that level. You know, one of them said to me, it's a multi-layered sandwich of shit.

I had the burden of, you know, applying for medical leave and, you know, calling MetLife and this kind of stuff. But that, that's not that bad. But when I talk to people whose parents, had Alzheimer's or in other ways unable to do it were first generation and didn't speak English. And so they were being told to do things that they didn't understand. It could take such a toll. Like one of my friends who was also caring for an elderly parent who wound up passing away was struggling to secure adequate care for him. And he was first generation.

And she created a QR code of his medical history to force doctors to pay attention. and she'd put it on her cell phone and wave it around when they came in the room. And that sort of, to me, that was a metaphor for how much work it takes. And energy and innovation caregivers have to, of parents and children have to do to get their needs met. You wrote this piece, and in it you called yourself one of the lucky ones. You know, your mom had good insurance, so you were able to handle a lot of what came at you. You also have sort of like institutional knowledge. you know how to navigate the system, what are some of the factors that are making it hard for most people to handle sandwiching?

So some of these things that make things hard are the cost of care. It is the absence of long-term care. There's also literally, if you're taking one trillion out of Medicaid, it's going to be really hard for people who are dependent on Medicaid, which is different from Medicare. Medicare. Medicaid is what people who had lower income work now rely on. And this is what the current administration is trying to kind of strip there. Last week's show was about burnout at work. And we had the writer Jonathan Malesc on, and he had this really interesting definition of it. Burnout is the result of a long-term mismatch between our, I think, deals for work and the reality of our jobs. And when those things get out of alignment for a long enough time, then you kind of stretch between them. You're trying to fill this gap with a

self that's not quite big enough to do it. Do you think that holds true for burnout when it comes to caring for the people you love to? Oh, yeah. And I think there's a theory of the individualization of risk by Ulrich Beck. And he writes that health risks under an American framework are cast as every single person's responsibility as opposed to understanding health and elder care as a public good. We are asked to create our mini-care economies against this backdrop.

And, you know, we may have limited access to food and vaccines, paid sick leave, and family leave laws. So we may have limited access to these things that we need. Yet we have to take on all the risks and the labor of care. We have to remember that, at the very at least, if things are not changing in terms of policy,

that we are doing something that we shouldn't be doing alone. We should be doing it collectively. And so at the very least, we can be destigmatizing it. I fell for it. I thought, why is this so hard? the stretch that you're talking about. You know, why can't I handle this?

But it was just too much. It was not something that people are supposed to be doing alone, especially now when you have caregivers, you know, being taken away by ice, preschools and daycares, and next will be nursing homes. There's just too many layers now that we're stretching between. At the right things are going, those layers, players are just going to keep multiplying. That's next.

Support for Explain It to Me comes from Starbucks. There's a papable energy to storytelling, and it's an energy we harness to bring you a special series like this one. With that in mind, it's worth remembering the little things we do in community to energize ourselves, like sharing a cool, brightly flavored drink over conversation under the afternoon sun. It's a refreshing ritual that could be perfectly captured by the Starbucks new energy refresher. It comes in great flavors.

Mango dragon fruit, strawberry assayi, mango strawberry, plus a handful of tasty variations with lemonade or coconut milk like the pink energy drink. The point is, nobody is immune to a little slump in energy, especially in the afternoon. The science is clear on that. The key is remembering there's always a path forward to feeling renewed and re-energized. Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks. I'm John Glyn Hill. This has explained it to me. So the sandwich generation is when you care for your kids and your parents.

But we're living longer, which means grandparents are getting added to the sandwich too. Basically, it's becoming a club sandwich. A lot of people are now taking care of their aging parents, their adult kids, and their grandkids. Faith Hill covered this phenomenon over at the Atlantic where she's a staff writer. And in qualitative research studies and their interviews with grandparents and And they really say, like, I'm aging, I'm tired, and I'm needed by everyone at the same time. Like, I don't even know who to prioritize. So people are, you know, they want to be involved with family and they want to help, but they're just being stretched to their limits.

Researchers talk about this bean pole effect where family trees are kind of getting longer and skinnier. And this is because people are living longer on average. so more generations are alive at one time. But they're also getting thinner because people are having fewer children on average. So that means fewer siblings, fewer cousins. And now family bonds are kind of being defined by these up and down bonds between grandparents, parents, children, great-grandparents. And those are absolutely beautiful in their own way. But they tend to be sort of more formal.

You know, there's more of a hierarchy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And with families needing so much help, you know, they also are really a lot about care these days. How have the expectations for what parents are supposed to be doing for their children changed? And how does that factor into all of this? The expectations kind of keep rising. You know, there's this term intensive parenting, which sort of refers to a parenting style that is very expensive and very time-consuming. And I think it's also just becoming more common to kind of surveil kids all the time.

We're very worried about children's safety. So where it used to be more common to kind of leave kids alone or with older children, kind of let them play around in the neighborhood without adult supervision all the time, it's just not as common anymore, which means that there's just so much work involved in parenting. And at the same time, you know, there's rising costs of child care. It's very, very expensive and not accessible for a lot of people. So people are relying on family to help out with that. And as, you know, people are living longer and might be a little bit more fit and able,

a lot more is expected of grandparents. You know, it can be good and bad. Of course, a lot of grandparents really want to be involved in their grandchildren's lives. It's very meaningful for a lot of people. But it also can be very physically taxing. I mean, even though people are living longer, It gets harder and harder. I interviewed a lot of grandparents who said, you know, I can feel the physical difference.

Like when I was a parent, I was running around, and I just felt more capable, and now I can really feel how tired I am. You know, there's also a cost in terms of what grandparents are not experiencing in their own lives in that time. A lot of adults, you know, they work their whole lives for so many decades. They raise kids. They put so much into that. and then this is kind of the time that they've been waiting for to focus on themselves. But that time is really getting delayed and in some cases, you know, just sort of pushed back until it's not going to happen at all. Because a lot of grandparents, you know, are being involved in child care until the point at which they wouldn't be healthy enough to travel or they are kind of losing some of those opportunities they might have had.

Yeah, you know, on one hand, this does sound new. But I also know a ton of people who are like raised by their grandmas. Who is this new for, you know? Yeah, certainly it's not the first time that, you know, grandparents have been involved at all. But I think it's just becoming sort of more and more common and to a more extreme degree. And, you know, that's partly because there are now more working parents. There are more single parents. You know, those numbers are rising.

So I think it's just becoming sort of more common for people to, assume that they will lean on their own parents for help. In a lot of ways, it sounds like a lot of these older caregivers are experiencing the same kind of burnout younger caregivers are. But I wonder, like, is there a difference in the way these two groups of people are coping and handling this? I actually started looking into this story because I kept hearing about the idea that, like, grandparents today aren't doing anything.

Oh. There was a lot of, you know, kind of like complaining going on on social media and articles about this even, you know, that people feel like boomer grandparents are very self-involved and they just want to kind of go and enjoy their retirement and drink on the beach. Someone commented yesterday that the only thing worse than boomers as parents is boomers as grandparents. They want a grandparent on their terms when they feel like it when they want to. Not when like you really freaking eat it. But what I found from looking into it is that I think that narrative is how to be it. happening just because parents need so much help that they still feel like they're not getting enough. But yeah, I really came to see this as like, I wish that the parents and the grandparents,

you know, could kind of come together about this and not have the tension that I think can be common because they're really, you know, the same trends are causing, you know, the similar shifts for both of them, just a ton of work and burnout. Is this a distinctly American problem? Like, How are people in other countries coping? I certainly wouldn't say it's only the U.S., you know, where this is happening. But I do think that there is something particular about the American situation in that, you know, child care costs are so high and they're rising and just the combination of, you know, all these ways in which families are kind of having to rely on themselves, relatives rely on each other.

It's a lot of pressure. I think it can be hard on family relationships. I talked to one sociologist who has been doing research in Sweden for decades. So he's kind of spent a lot of time there, gone there, and just made relationships and observed what's happening. And when he first started doing research there, he expected that family bonds might just be a little less strong, a little less central to people's lives because the government significantly subsidizes child care. But what he found was actually that the relationships were still completely important to people. They were almost like, you know, able to be a little lighter, though not less central, because they didn't always have this stress on their back. And I think, you know, that allows people potentially to see each other, you know, as human beings and as individuals and not just as their family roles, which I think, you know, is a real risk in the U.S.

So that although it's really beautiful to depend on each other, we also don't want to see each other only as sort of sources of help. The way our system is set up means that we'll need to keep depending on each other. But how do we do that and care for ourselves at the same time? That's up next. This is advertiser content from Starbucks. Johnclan, I think of you as the queen of answering questions. Oh my gosh, thank you.

What question do you have for me today? Okay, talk to me about energy levels. Why is it that it's sometimes I feel total ways of exhaustion? So, like, you can't focus, you're falling asleep, that kind of thing? Exactly. And then at some points, I'm just totally fine. Why is that happening? And is there anything I can do to help it?

Yeah, so the peaks and slumps throughout the day, we have all been there. So that's mostly because of our circadian rhythm. It's basically the cycle our body goes through in a 24-hour time period, and it controls things like metabolism, hormones, and energy. So that's like the reason I feel tired before bed and well-rested in the morning. It's our circadian rhythm. It's a totally natural biological response. So when I want to just close my eyes and put my head down on my desk,

what can I do about that? According to my research, one of the best things you can do is get up and walk around, get your blood flowing. Maybe call up a friend and grab a coffee or a tea. That sounds really nice right now. You want to go do it? Yeah. Yeah. Long story short, we all need moments throughout the day to refresh and Starbucks has you covered with their new energy refreshers, your go-to lift to help you stay energized throughout the day. Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks. It's explained it to me. I'm JQ. One of the things that can make caring for our loved ones in a crisis so hard is managing something.

something called secondhand stress. That's when you absorb the anxiety or sadness or frustration of the person you're caring for, sometimes without even realizing it. My name is Amy Goyer, and I serve as AARP's national family and caregiving expert. Amy has been a caregiver for most of her life, beginning in her 20s, first for her grandparents, then later for her parents. But during that time, I was also primary caregiver for my sister, who was 2,000 miles. away. At one point, Amy was flying back and forth across the country to be at different

doctor's appointments. I always felt like I was living four people's lives. The thing is, you start to absorb what other people are going through. When you have someone, especially someone that you love, who is going through so much, and it's physical stress, it's emotional stress, financial stress, you know, every type of stress you can think of, you may be absorbing that. And that's on top of the normal stress of caregiving. It's like the membrane between the two of you kind of gets thin. Last week, we talked about burnout at work. And the thing about work is that it may not be ideal, but ultimately you can walk away. You can walk away. You can. you can quit if you absolutely need to. But with caregiving for a loved one, that's not really the

case. You can't just really walk away the way you would in another situation. Yes, and wanting to walk away is one of the big red flags. You know, when you start having these thoughts, I can't do this anymore. I just want to walk away. Even though you think I would never do it, I want to, that's a red flag, you know. I have a philosophy that I developed during those years when I was caring for so many people at once. I was driving my car. And again, you know, I'm so busy. I'm working. Everybody's going to the doctors and the hospitals and everything. And I realized I was on fumes. I had no gas. So I went straight to the gas station and I was so, you know, that feeling like I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to make it. And, you know. Yeah, like, oh my gosh, I should have listened to my mom and not let it go below half and look at me now.

Yes, exactly. That's what my dad always for me. So I made it to the gas station. And I was so relieved that I didn't break down and fill the car up. And as I pulled out of the station and started driving, I thought, wow, you know, it makes a, the car runs better on a full tank of gas. Like, I could feel a difference in how the car was driving. But that was my aha moment. I was like, oh my God. I expect myself to run on empty all the time and be just as efficient. That doesn't make sense. So I thought, what fills my tank? What fuels me so that I can keep going? It's a little quick fill-ups. Like you may not have, what is it now, $60 to fill your tank, but you got $10. So maybe I have 10 minutes.

And I'm going to, you know, do some stretches. or jumping jacks or walk around the block or I'm going to get a good cup of coffee or tea. I'm going to call a friend. I'm going to text with someone. I'm going to go in an online caregiving group. I kept fresh flowers in the house. That filled me up. So there is things I have to do to keep my sanity as a caregiver.

And one of them is to eat privately alone. I make them their plate and dinner and then I make mine. Keep a running list on your phone of small, specific things. that someone can actually help you with. That way, when someone offers, you're like, oh, yeah, actually. I am going to call my family members and say, hey, I am planning on going such and such and such place and such and such date for such and such time.

Someone needs to take over. I had Pilates once a week. That was kind of my deal breaker. I only canceled for a true emergency. And so you know what those premium phyllis are for you. The other big thing that I learned as a caregiver is that I can do anything, but I can't do everything. Yeah.

I can do, I did things I never thought I could do, you know, but I can't do everything. That's not realistic. So what are the things I can outsource, you know, have somebody else do? What are the things that have to be me? Yeah, you know, there are so many solutions and it's great when it's like, okay, let's get the caretakers going. What can I offload? What can I not? But, you know, the cost of care is just so.

expensive. And, you know, that can be stressful and it gets harder over time. I wonder, can you get into the finances of caregiving and sort of the role that plays? And for me, the finances were one of the most stressful things. You know, my parents, playing on, they had a financial advisor. They did the best they could. Their budget paid for caregivers while I was working. And I started absorbing the, uh, the costs above their budget. And when they moved in with me, you know, I paid the mortgage, I paid for all the food, I paid for their clothing, and it added up as their needs increased. And after more than, you know, about a decade of this very intensive caregiving, my mom passed away in 2013. My sister passed away the following year, and I had to empty her house

and manage her estate and ended up. Oh, that's so much, Amy. And still caring for dad at the same time. And the upshot is by the time he passed away, I had so much credit card debt that I was using to try and catch up with things. And I kept thinking, I can handle this. I'll dig out. And I ended up in bankruptcy.

And I can tell you that's one of the most difficult, humiliating, terrible experiences. But I talk about it openly because I know I'm not the only one. And I know many, many caregivers are struggling financially and nobody talks about money. You try to look at any benefits they may be eligible for. I eventually got my dad enrolled in veterans benefits, which was a huge help. See if your loved ones have long-term care insurance that might help pay for some things. find out if, you know, for some people they may qualify for help just paying their heating and cooling bill, their energy bills. You can contact your area agency on aging and ask about any type of help with benefits and case management and care management.

They will connect you with who can help you with those kinds of applications. This can be a lot to process. Are there resources and tools that people can turn to when this part of life? becomes emotionally overwhelming. Yes, emotionally overwhelming is kind of the biggest piece of it. Lots of great resources. I just wrote a Care for the Caregiver Guide for AARP this past year, and it's free. You can get counseling.

I think counseling and some type of one-to-one therapeutic environment could be really, really helpful. Even if it's not ongoing, it's for periods of time that you need it. So I really recommend that. As caregiver support groups, I think connecting with other caregivers is maybe your top priority because we get it. You know, we understand each other. And it is a relief sometimes just to talk about it. Yeah, if you could go back in time and like say one thing to the version of you that began caregiving, what would you say to her? Oh, that's such a good question.

So many things. I think I would say chill out a little bit. You know, I can't control the diseases my loved ones have or what happens to them helpwise, but I can control my own mindset. And I think that's the most important thing. I've seen thousands and thousands of caregivers across my career. And people will have very similar situations, but they have very different. attitudes and they come through it differently. You know, it's not even the resources they have. It's their mindset about it and how supported and at peace they feel with it. And the biggest difference is their mindset.

That's it for us this week. You can find a link to that guide Amy mentioned in our show notes. We want your help with an upcoming episode about clean beauty and the products we put in our hair and on our bodies. Is safety something you think about when you're, choosing what to buy? Have you ever learned that lesson the hard way? Call 1-800-618-45 or send an email to AskVox at Vox.com. And consider becoming a Vox member. Vox members get special newsletters and you get to listen to this and other Vox podcasts, ad-free. Go to Vox.com slash members to find out more. This episode was produced by Danielle Hewitt and Peter Ballin-on-Rosen. It was edited by Jenny Lawton,

fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch and engineered by Brandon McFarland. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy, and I'm your host, John Quillan Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Also, congrats Patrick. Bye! Support for Explained It to Me comes from Starbucks. Burnout can happen to anyone, but there's always a way to get your flow back. Take your afternoon slump, for instance. It's a phenomenon we all know too well. Sometimes all it takes is a reassuring word from a friend.

or a sip of a refreshing drink. So the next time you're looking to refocus and re-energize, you can hit up a friend and grab a Starbucks new energy refresher together. Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks.