The sandwich generation - Research Paper Example

This research paper aims to state the social, psychological and economic problems that the sandwich generation usually faces during this phase of life, and how their actions can affect the rest of the two generations. In order to state the best and the most accurate conclusion, a few examples of actual sandwich generation couples are included as well. The Sandwich Generation Sandwich Generation (Zal, 2001) is the generation stuck between two generations who are supposed to take care and give support to the younger generation (their children) and the older generation (their parents) at the same time.

It is likely to suffer from a number of various psychological, social and economic problems are they do their job of prioritizing one of the generations over the other on different instances. The American Census of 2002 calculated that around 80-90 percent households in America provided assistance to aging parents, young children, disabled adult children and other relatives. The sandwich generations at most of the instances provided spiritual, emotional, physical, legal and spiritual support to the dependent generations.

The role of the sandwich generations in these families is very demanding, stressful and mentally straining, as they are most likely to suffer from financial and emotional insecurities (Roots, 1998). According to Carol Abaya (Funnel et al, 2008), there are three different kinds of sandwich generations in various families in general. First kind of the sandwich generation, known as the Traditional Sandwich Generation, takes care of their aging parents and young children at the same time. The second kind, known as the Club Sandwich Generation (Funnel et al, 2008), is of two kinds; one takes care of their aging parents, adult children and grandchildren, this group is likely to be in their 50s or 60s, the second group is likely to be of people in their ‘30s or 40s, providing support for their young children, aging parents and grandparents’ (Funnel et al, 2008).

In addition, the third kind is the one known as, Open Faced, this group, as describes by Abaya, consists of anyone else who takes part in care of elderly (Funnel et al, 2008). Younger Generation and the Sandwich Generation In a household, the younger generation is likely to be the most psychologically vulnerable to any sort of economic and social variables. As the children are likely to be in the initial socializing phase of their lives, whatever they experience is likely to create strong ideas and perceptions for them in return.

Therefore, while being in this phase of life, effective communication and proper socialization is essential to ensure that the children are learning the best values and ideas, which they are likely to internalize for a lifetime. Nevertheless, in a multi-generational family, where the time and resources have to be divided amongst two different generations, the younger generations are likely to receive less than what they actually deserve. According to the research carried out by Sharon Hamill in 1994, on multi-generational families and their impacts on children, the results stated that the children in such families are likely to suffer from problems relating to ineffective communication and incomplete socialization.

This caused the children to suffer from psychological problems and most of them ended up taking part in deviant and immoral activities like; being disrespectful to their parents, taking drugs, and participating in petty crimes like