Abstract:

The sandwich generation is the people raising their children while having to care for their aging parents at the same time. There are trend in increasing number of sandwichers in recent years. A dual breadwinner paradigm is increasing resulted from the economic change that requires most families to have two incomes for economic viability. Besides that, this working people also need to taking care their parent or parent in law in addition to their own children due to lack of preparation of elderly age. This group of people is classified as ‘sandwich generation’. Nowadays, between 1 out of 8 households with an adult aged 30 or older is comprised of dual-earner or sandwiched generation couples. The outcome from multiple caregiving duties is inequalities in psychological, physical, employment, and financial outcomes of the family institution. A review of literature in the past 20 years is summarized in this paper. The literature shows positive and negative benefits for caregivers too. Policy, health, and research implications are included. It is possible that multi-generational caregiving responsibilities will continue to rise for the children of baby boomers as life expectancies continue to go up, people continue to have children later in life, and continue to support those children to older ages.  Policy and clinical supports must be put into place to facilitate the highly necessary and valuable caregiving responsibilities of this population. The outcomes of the present study will spur the economic development and assist the development of health promoting programs in accordance to the local context. Besides that, it also provides guidelines to policy maker and health professionals in maintaining quality healthy lifestyles of the nation.