You’ve likely heard the term “sandwich generation,” which describes those of us who have young kids at home as well as aging parents, both of whom need a labor-intensive level of care. I’m knee-deep in this sandwich, although I wouldn’t call it that. “Sandwich” makes it sound almost pleasant. The meat and cheese are gently placed below some lettuce, and a tasty condiment is slathered on two fluffy buns. It’s tight quarters, but each component is distinct.
That’s not what I feel like is happening to me and my cohort. This isn’t “almost pleasant.” What we’ve got is more of a “burnt panini generation.”
The burnt panini generation has the kids at home and the elders somewhere in the country, either nearby or far-flung. We also have full-time jobs, are battling screens in our children’s lives, and have our own relationships with our phones. We have to worry about inflation, increasing unemployment, rising health care costs, inexplicable tariffs, a climate crisis, a war in Iran, an energy crisis from that war in Iran, and . . . microplastics.
The list goes on. The panini’s elements are fused together, and the ciabatta is indistinguishable from the prosciutto. The mozzarella is a shadow of its former self—and all of it is charred.
It was 1981 when Dorothy Miller, a professor of social work, coined the term “sandwich generation.” Miller noted that belonging to this cohort meant being “subjected to a great deal of stress.” She also pointed out that, at the time, elderly folks needed services that were “only beginning to be met by the helping professions.”
It’s fitting that the phenomenon was newly observed back then. Americans had begun to abandon multigenerational living and seek independence in the 1950s and 1960s. The suburbs were in full bloom. The scattering of families had steadily increased since industrialization—if you didn’t work on a family farm, you had to get a job. Social mobility meant jobs could take you anywhere in a large country full of promise.
The independence and growth were exhilarating and cemented what became known as the American Century. But what was left were grandparents living apart from their children, who in turn had time-consuming little ones. That meant the disintegration of familial networks that could, in a word, help.
“A great deal of stress” was fitting for 1981. Children required some work, but according to every movie from that time, you mostly just threw them on bikes and let them ride around discovering aliens in the neighborhood on their own. The 1980s didn’t know about the vast excess of helicopter parenting we do today. They didn’t care about building a seven-year-old’s elementary school résumé to be competitive for middle school applications.
In the 1980s, people didn’t know a phone could cause so much distress. Or that a single megalomaniac would suck up the world’s capacity for news. Or what “incel” and “manosphere” meant. They didn’t know that parents would (thankfully) have a rising life expectancy, but with it might come increasing rates of dementia, cancers, and other ailments that threaten the dignity of life.
In 1981, people didn’t know that you had to read the back of a package of food to find out if it was laden with a bunch of chemicals that were technically edible but also possibly poisonous over time. Mass opioid addiction was but a glimmer in a drug manufacturer’s lab. The weather was an afterthought.
We know a lot more now. We’re able to detangle the ravages of modernization and implement processes that lead to less destruction. We know more about longevity and the human body than ever before. We also know that there is elegant simplicity to most of our needs: The burnt paninis need even more “helping professions,” as Miller put it.
When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, announced their plan for universal preschool for two-year-olds, I squealed. My kid is no longer two, but that’s the kind of thing that would have taken a little heat off this pressed panini. The answers to this population of the scorched sammitch do not require rocket science. Though her original coinage didn’t quite capture the gravity of our current situation, Miller’s solution was clear-eyed. We do need more helping professions. Simply put, we just need more help.