Notes on Caregiving Emotions, Part 2: Resentment and Guilt

…in caring for older family members

Author’s photo: My pianist father playing for my mother and others at her nursing home

Helping our older parents takes time and energy from other areas of our lives — and sometimes we feel resentful.

As an adult child of older adults, you likely have a fully formed separate life. You are committed to other relationships, a job, a home. When issues with a parent’s health and wellbeing start to take your time and energy, other aspects of your life may suffer, whether they are your work, your marriage, your children, taking care of your own health, or engaging in fun, enriching activities.

The notion of the “sandwich generation,” first published in 1981, refers to mid-life adults caught up in caring for children or teens, homes and jobs, while also facing new dependencies in their aging parents. The late Elaine Brody, a well-known gerontologist, went on to write a book about the experiences of women in this situation, Women in the Middle, in 1990. As more elders live long lives because of better health care, medications, and lifestyles, while at the same time they have fewer children than in generations past, the sandwich generation is more relevant today than ever.

There are so many people, many of us daughters and daughters-in-law, at ages from our 30s well into our late 60s, raising or helping…