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If you are navigating the sandwich generation at work, you already know what it costs. If you are leading someone who is, chances are you have no idea what they are carrying. According to a 2026 report from Care.com, 87% of sandwich generation caregivers say their responsibilities are completely invisible to the people around them. That means the person across from you in your next meeting may have spent their morning scheduling MRIs, arguing with Medicare, texting an assisted living facility, and getting a teenager to driver's ed -- all before 9:00 a.m.

In this episode, I dig into what the Care.com 2026 Sandwich Generation Report reveals about the 53 million Americans simultaneously caring for aging parents and raising children. The numbers reframe how you see your team. The average person enters this season at age 34. They spend nearly 24 hours a week on caregiving. And 55% have turned down a promotion or opportunity because of that invisible caregiving load. Among millennials, it climbs to 61%. This is not a personal issue staying at home -- it is a talent issue reshaping the workplace.

I also share the reframe that stopped me cold: 99% of sandwich generation caregivers report personal growth from the experience. The top three qualities they gained are stronger empathy, greater patience, and clearer perspective on what actually matters. Those are not soft skills. Those are the exact qualities that define great leadership. The people carrying the invisible load are, in many cases, developing what no training program can replicate.

I walk you through five concrete takeaways -- whether you are the one in the sandwich or the one leading someone who is. From naming what you are carrying, to stopping the performance of being fine, to protecting recovery time like it is a meeting you cannot cancel, this episode gives you something real to work with.

Listen and catch the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch it and replay it on my YouTube channel, JanelAndersonPhD.

I'm in the sandwich generation. I'm still raising two teenagers at home, and my aging mother needs an increasing amount of help from me. Now I'm not alone in this by far. For most people living in the sandwich generation, it goes unnoticed at work and undiscussed.

Not because people are hiding it exactly, but because this is the kind of thing that lives entirely in the margins of your life. And unless someone asks you the right question, it tends to stay invisible, and if you don't know what the phrase "the sandwich generation" means, well, then bless your heart, as they would say in the South, you're apparently not experiencing it. You're either too young or too old, but either you're part of it or it's coming for you. The sandwich generation is the generation that is feeling the squeeze from caring for their children at the same time they're caring for their aging parents.

So you're in the middle of the sandwich, and you've got these two other generations who need a lot from you on either side. So that's where the name the sandwich generation comes from. If you weren't familiar, now this episode is all about what it actually looks like to be in the sand sandwich generation, and it's also about what the people around you are probably carrying right now that you can't see. Those folks who are in the sandwich generation.

Now they might be traveling that same path right alongside you, but you just don't talk about it that much. Or maybe you're not in the sandwich generation yourself. This is going to give you a lens through which to understand those folks that you do work with. Maybe they're your clients, maybe they're your coworkers, your boss, or your direct report.

In any case, this will give you some perspective on what they're carrying and some strategies for. I mean, there's not a lot of help to be had, but at least understanding and acknowledgement can really go a long way. All right, so there's this quote that often gets attributed to Plato, though historians will tell you that it actually came from a Scottish minister named Ian Maclaren in 1897. If you want to get all technical about it, but I'm sure you've heard the quote or some version of it.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. So I want you to keep that in mind. This this episode is all about exposing that battle, specifically the one that get this 53 million Americans are fighting right now, mostly in silence, mostly before nine a.m.

So we're going to dive into the sandwich generation again. We've already explained what it is, but we're going to look at the toll that it takes on the folks who are feeling the squeeze. Now let's go behind the scenes for just a second and explore some of the context of the sandwich generation before we get into some nuts and bolts about what we can do about it. So I want you to think of somebody on your team or in your office or maybe a client of yours who seems distracted recently, a little bit off, not quite present when you expect that they would be.

Now, before you start deciding that they weren't engaged, I want you to consider what their morning might have actually looked like. Your coworker or your client isn't just distracted. They're scheduling MRIs. They're arguing with Medicare.

They're helping mom with their online banking. They're texting the assisted living facility. They're taking their teenager to a driver's ed class. They're arranging an orthodontist appointment all before nine a.m.

That's the sandwich generation, and according to a very recent 2026 report that came out from care.com that surveyed over 1000 people living through this, it is far more common and far more demanding than most people realize. So here are a few of the statistics that came out of that study. These are a few numbers worth just sitting with, just being with, and seeing how they land with you. The average age when dual caregiving-that sandwich generation caring for younger, you know, your younger children, or whether they're your offspring or you're their guardian-but those that younger generation, as well as your parents, or they could be other older people, aunts and uncles, and so on, who fall within your care, begins at age 34.

Get that 34, not 54, 34, and the people in this survey had already been managing it for an average of 6.4 years by the time they were surveyed. Now I've been managing it a lot longer than 6.4 years, and I'm also a lot older than 34. You'll hear a little bit more about me and my particular sandwich situation here in a few minutes. But 80% of the people in this study said the onset was sudden and it caught them completely off guard.

Now I'm pretty sure that's the parental part of the sandwich, the older generation part of the sandwich because I think their children. I mean, we all know going into pregnancy and childbirth and all of that that they're going to take a lot of time, attention, money, all the things. So I don't think it's the children that's get that are catching them off guard. I think it is the agent aging parent thing happening sooner than they expected and demanding more of their time than they expected.

So again, 80% said the onset was sudden, caught them completely off guard. 86% in fact, said they were entirely unprepared. Okay, now I did mention I was going to allude to my specific situation. I am an OG sandwich generation person, so at the beginning of the sandwich. I mentioned I was going to talk about me for just a bit.

I am an OG at being in the sandwich generation. When my dad passed away more than 20 years ago after an illness that required tons of doctor visits and trips to see experts and hospitalizations, and in fact, the hospital was two miles from my house at the time, so my house was home base for all things hospital. My oldest child at the time was six years old, so I was juggling playdate with prescription management 25-26, years ago, and here I am, more than two decades later, taking my mom, who lives partway across the state, to buy groceries and to eye doctor visits, and then racing home to get my youngest child to driver's ed or baseball practice or some such sort of thing. So it's a season that I know well.

Now it hasn't always been like that. I mean, my dad's care took a lot at the time when he was really ill, but then between the time he passed and more recently, my mother hasn't needed a ton of care. I mean, there's been the occasional hip surgery here or knee replacement there, but now things have picked up a bit, and so I feel I'm feeling the squeeze of that sandwich generation more. So again, it's a season that I am intimately familiar with, and I know that sometimes it's harder, and sometimes it's a little bit less in terms of less taxing on your schedule.

When the recent Care.com study came out, it really got my attention, and I knew immediately that I needed to share it with you because you're either in it yourself, or your coworkers, or your direct reports, or your clients, or somebody close to you at work is so the average sandwich caregiver, according to the study, spends 23.8, almost almost a full 24 hours a week, almost an entire day of their week, arranging, managing, and providing care. For mothers, that number is even higher. It's 27 hours, more than a full entire day of your of your like waking and sleeping hours, is spent arranging care and giving care. That's a part-time job on top of everything else.

And here's the number that's stopped me cold: 87% of people in the sandwich generation say that their responsibilities are invisible to the people who are not living through it. 87%-that's almost all of them. That's more than three quarters. So this means that the people around you, your coworkers, your manager, your direct reports, maybe even your closest clients or your closest friends at work, almost certainly have no idea what you are carrying if you are the sandwich generation person, and likewise you to them if they are in the sandwich generation, you probably have no idea what they're carrying either. Okay, so why does this matter in a podcast about leadership and workplace communication?

Well, because 55% of people are in the sandwich generation and have turned down a promotion, a raise, or a new opportunity because of their caregiving load, and among millennial millenniums. And among millennials, that number is 61% So this is dramatically impacting the contours of the workplace. Now, if you're not putting your name out there for a promotion now, this is going to have negative ripple effects on your income earning potential down the road, because that promotion now is going to have compounding impact on your ability to earn as you get older. Because almost always your raise is a percentage of your existing base salary.

So if you're not putting yourself out there for the raises, the promotions, the additional responsibility because of your caregiving responsibilities, again, it's going to have negative repercussions on your earning potential down the road. Now, that's not the only reason that I'm concerned about this. I'm just thinking about talent in general and how talent is holding itself back, and that is not only a detriment to your earning potential down the road, but it's also a detriment to the organization that you're part of because you might be a fantastic manager were you given the chance, were you promoted into that role, but right now you're just not taking that on. And again, that is going to show up as a talent deficit in your organization because somebody else is going to get the role, and they might not have been as good as you.

Okay, so I mean, and and that's just like the tip of the iceberg. But there's lots of reasons. This is very very nuanced. Now it gets even more I don't know disparaging.

I don't mean to make this like a terrible downer episode, but also that Care.com study reported that 72 of people who are experiencing this are feeling lonely, even though all these other people are depending on them. Okay, so just because you're needed doesn't mean that you're not lonely. You could be incredibly lonely in the midst of taking care of those youngers and those olders. Now, 80% of folks feel mentally overloaded from making care decisions again.

That is taxing on the other decisions that you need to make at work. And 80% say they need a break, but they don't know how to take one. Okay. Another reason this is relevant is because the person sitting across from you in a meeting might be one of them, and they might seem distracted.

They might be looking at their phone more than you think they should be during a meeting, they might have a whole host of other things going on that is taking their eyes off of whatever your top priority for them happens to be. Now, this isn't a personal problem that stays at home. It walks into the office with you. It sits in beside you in your one-on-ones.

It shapes how you show up as a leader, how you experience being led if you are again, regardless of whether you're the sandwich generation person who is the the direct report, or you are the leader of somebody who is the sandwich generation. It shows up all over the place. Now, here's the reframe because I promised you one. I'm always going to give you a different way to think about things in this podcast, and hopefully some actionable tools that you can take with you.

Now, the Care.com report asked people in the sandwich generation whether they'd experienced any personal growth as a result of caregiving. Okay, personal growth. 99% of the people who were surveyed said yes, they have experienced personal growth. Not some, not most, nearly absolutely everybody. So the top three things that they said that they had gained out of being in the sandwich generation and doing all this caregiving: number one, stronger empathy.

Over three quarters of the folks who were surveyed said they had stronger empathy as a result of being in the caregiving situation. 75% said they had greater patience, and another 74% said they had a clearer perspective on what actually matters. These are not small things. These are the exact qualities that separate good leaders from great leaders. In fact, let me go through that list again, and I want you to think about it now not through a caregiving lens, but instead I want you to think about it through a leadership lens.

Okay, whether this is somebody who's leading from the side, or whether this is somebody who's leading from a different place on the org chart, where they have people reporting to them, maybe even a lot of people reporting to them. Let me go through those qualities again. Strong empathy. We want our leaders, whether they're leading from the side or the top of the org chart, to have strong empathy, don't we?

Yes, we do. Patience. Greater patience. Okay, again, whether leading from the side or leading from the top of the org chart, we want leaders to have patience and a clear perspective on what actually matters.

Okay, when you and again, whether you're leading from the side or whether you're leading from the top of the org chart, a clear perspective on what actually matters. These are important qualities. These are absolutely important qualities. And so, the folks who are in that sandwich generation, who are experiencing this on the daily, are saying, "Yes, I'm absolutely experiencing all of this, and it's taking somewhere between 24 and 27 hours, depending on whether I'm a dude or whether I'm a woman, and I'm personally growing from it.

I'm better as a result of it. I'm a better leader as a result of it. At least that's the way I want you to interpret it. Now, again, I also want you to give some grace and space for the folks who are experiencing this because it is taxing, and the sandwich generation-it isn't just a burden; it's also a teacher.

It's a brutal, exhausting, and frequently thankless teacher. But it is-it is a teacher, and the people who are in it right now doing this unglamorous, invisible work-well, they are developing something that no training program can replicate. They are developing empathy, patience, and a clear perspective on what actually matters. And you know what?

Just like they don't leave their caregiving for their youngers and their elders at home, nor do they leave those particular qualities that they're developing-the empathy, the patience, and the knowing what actually matters-and that clearer focus on what actually matters. They're not leaving that at home. Okay, so they're bringing both to work. We can't check those things at the door.

In fact, a lot of those things, those caregiving things have to happen during business hours. You can't argue with Medicare at 8o'clock on a Saturday morning. There's nobody there to answer the phone. Okay, you can't get somebody's bank password reset.

Well, actually, you probably can get their bank password reset at 10 o'clock at night, but they might the the person that you're caregiving might not be awake at 10 o'clock at night, and they need to be on that call too when they need to get their their password reset for their online banking. Trust me on this one. Okay, so I want to give you some takeaways as as we wrap this episode up. First of all, name what you're carrying.

Name it to yourself first. If you are in that sandwich generation, most people in the sandwich generation never actually have taken inventory of everything they're managing; it just accumulates. But start there. Write it down, and in fact, writing it down not just to like share it with everybody.

I don't want you to do that, but write it down just so you can see it clearly. And in fact, it may help because there may be some open loops out there that you've forgotten to attend to. Again, speaking from personal experience, I do an inventory of my open loops in my personal life and my work life and my caregiving life on the regular because there is always the appointment I forgot to make, the email I forgot to return, the phone call that needs to be made, all of that. So write it down.

It will help you identify some of those open loops. It also helps you be straight with yourself about the load that you're carrying, because you cannot manage something that you haven't named, and you cannot ask for help with something that you haven't acknowledged. Once you have written it all down, you could actually start to parse things out and see, like, is there a sibling who could do this? For those of you who are caregiving elders who have siblings in the mix, so is it something that you can hand off to a brother or a sister, if it's a caregiving thing for somebody in your family, is it something that you could ask your spouse or an older child in the family to do?

Is it something you could hire out? Until you have written it all down, it's just this amorphous, you know, never-ending list of things to do that are floating in your head and literally taking up headspace. So write it down and be brutally honest with yourself first, so that you know what you're carrying. That's step one.

Step two is stop performing fine. Okay, 87% of sandwich caregivers say that their load is invisible to others, and you know how that shows up when people say how you do it, and you say fine, I'm fine. Okay, you're probably not fine. Now, some of that invisibility is circumstantial, but some of it is self-imposed.

You don't have to just say fine all the time. Now, to the person that you don't know well, yeah, you probably don't want to unload everything on that list that I just had you make. But there might be something that you that you that you do share with them, and you say like, I'm a little tired because you know I was running somebody to a doctor, an early doctor's appointment this morning before before work started, or whatever it is. Like you can let on a little.

Don't don't be vulnerable with the whole dang list, but just figure out what what what does it feel safe to share, and what might actually strengthen a relationship, or open a door in a conversation with the other person, if you did share it, because if you're pretending to be fine all the time and you think that that's what's expected of you at work, you're spending energy that you don't have on managing a performance of being fine to other people, and that is not serving you. That is just one more thing that is emotional labor on your plate, so you don't have to disclose everything, but you can stop actively hiding everything. Number three, find your one person. You don't need everyone at work to understand what you're going through.

You just need one person. This could be your work BFF, who maybe already knows some of it. Maybe it's your manager, who maybe doesn't know any of it yet. It could be another colleague who gets it.

Maybe you're not all that close with them, but you know that they're going through some of the same things. Maybe it's somebody in HR or in your employees employee assistance program. If if you don't have anybody specific to talk to, but it's just somebody that you can say it's been a hard week, without explanation. They know the context.

Okay, so this isn't necessarily that I'm telling you that you have to tell them all the minutia, but just let them know that you're dealing with youngers and elders that you're giving care to, and that you don't necessarily want to go into all the details of it. But sometimes you're going to have a week that's harder than others, and it would just be helpful if they knew. Okay, that's all. That's all that they need to know.

But that one person changes the texture of your experience at work. And if you're in a leadership role, consider whether the people on your team have a version of that, whether it's with you or whether it's with somebody else on the team. And if you are a leader of a team. I think this is worthy of mentioning at your next team meeting, and maybe directing the folks on your team to this episode of the podcast so that they have more empathy for others.

Because again, everybody is fighting a battle that we know nothing about, and if your team members start to think about that a little bit more, they may be more understanding, more empathetic themselves, more authentic in the way that they show up for one another, or how they listen, or just get it when somebody says it's been a rough week. Okay, number four, protect recovery time like it's a meeting you can't cancel. So, 80% of sandwich caregivers say that they need a break, but they don't know how to take one. Okay, that means you need some.

If you're the sandwich caregiver, you need some recovery time. And here's the thing: no one's going to hand it to you. You're not just going to magically find it on your calendar. You have to create it, and then you have to defend it. 20 minutes counts.

A walk after lunch counts. A meal that you actually sit down for that's not in front of your computer that counts. You're not going to recover from this season in one vacation. You need to recover in the small margins that you protect from everything else and everybody else who wants a piece of you.

So if there is something that you can say no to, if there is something that you can put off or delegate to somebody else or ask somebody else for their help with, so that you get a little bit more time to protect for you. Then do it. And number five, let the season teach you what it's teaching you. Again, remember what I shared from the from the study. 99% of the people in the survey said that they grew personally from caregiving, and they didn't grow because it got easier.

They grew because they were paying attention, the empathy, the patience, the clarity about what matters. Those things are available to you right now, in the middle of all the hard stuff. They're available to you right now, even if you're not in the sandwich generation. That doesn't make it any less hard if you are in the sandwich generation, but it means that this season is not only costing you; it is also feeding into you, and that's not lost on me.

When someone's distracted, when someone's late to a meeting with me, or drops the ball on a project that we're working on together, I try to picture where I am in the various plates that they have juggling. Of course, I can't necessarily know the answer to that. I don't know which plate I am that they have spinning, but it's enough of a jolt to get me out of being potentially upset with them and instead remembering that they are fighting a battle I know nothing about, or perhaps they're fighting the same battle as me-a battle I know a lot about since I've been doing it for decades. In any case, it reminds me to exercise that empathy and to give them some grace.

All right, my friends, here's where I talk to you about how to put it to work. This week, I want you to tell one person in your life, what your week actually looks like-not the filtered version, not the "I've been busy" version, but the real one. And again, you don't have to go into all the nitty-gritty details of it, but let them know the contours of what you're dealing with. So pick someone who can hold it-a friend, a partner, a sibling, a colleague that you trust at work-and just say it out loud.

Here's what I'm actually managing right now. You'd be surprised what changes when just one person actually sees you. 87% of sandwich generation caregivers feel invisible about all of that caregiving. You don't have to stay invisible, and if you're not in the sandwich generation yourself, I have a different way for you to put it to work. I want you to slow down and see someone who is in the thick of it.

Really see them. Acknowledging them for the invisible work that they are doing is going to be tremendously gratifying to them, and is going to strengthen your relationship with them. Now, if this episode resonates with you, please share it with someone. If you're a manager, share it with your whole team.

Just share the link with them. Talk about it a little bit in your next team meeting, and then just you know, if it resonates for them, they'll they'll go listen to it. So you could just share the show notes page. It's JanelAnderson.com forward slash 282 for episode 282.

Maybe share it with somebody that you directly know is caught in the sandwich generation. Maybe share it in a bigger way by posting it to Facebook or Instagram or writing a little post on LinkedIn and then sharing it there. Struggle is real, my friends, and it helps everyone when we know that we're in it together. All right, again, that's Janel anderson.com forward slash 282 for a very shareable way to share the the show notes on that page.

You'll also find an embedded player where you can play the episode right there, or links out to where you can get it on Spotify, where you can get it on Apple Podcasts. It's on all of the podcast syndication players. So wherever you get your podcasts, it's available there. If you are listening on a podcast player, please, please, please, please like and share this episode.

Give it a review if you're listening on a player that has reviews. It helps other people find it, and it certainly helps me with getting the message out about important topics like this. This one hits really close to home, as I'm sure you can tell. And again, it helps everyone when we know we're in it together.

It helps us feel less alone, and it gives us some support to draw on. All right, be well, my friends, and I will catch you here again next week. Take good care, especially those of you in the sandwich generation.

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