The Family Squeeze: Surviving the Sandwich Generation

Elaine Porter is an associate professor of sociology at Laurentian
University.

Although this book was not written as a scholarly text, it is liberally
sprinkled with academic material cleverly disguised as advice. The
book’s main focus is the kinds of stresses faced by married mothers
who care for their elderly parents; in a rather unnecessary effort to
distinguish informal from formal caregivers, the authors call these
caregivers “souciaires.” As an adjunct to their very general
discussion of the “sandwich generation” in the first chapter,
readers are referred to resources in the bibliography that provide
further information about the phenomenon. Appendixes include information
on organizations in Canada and the United States that provide various
kinds of help for caregivers.

Written for North American women who are involved in the issues
relating to elderly caregiving, The Family Squeeze combines practical
advice, a feminist perspective on the unpaid labor involved in
caregiving, and suggestions for the development of working relationships
between family and formal organizations. (The book could also profitably
be read by employers and decision-makers who want a quick overview of
the impact of unpaid family caregiving on women and their families.) The
material is organized around an extended case study based on a
hypothetical family and written in the first-person voice of a
“daughter-mother-wife.” Although this approach limits the focus to a
particular family type, the dramatization of dilemmas of caregiving
identified in the research literature enables the authors to portray the
range of emotions that family members feel as they deal with the
stresses of caregiving and seek solutions that suit their unique needs.