Friday 16 September 2016

The Sandwich Generation and Self-Care

Following on from my post yesterday, there's some interesting research going on with people like me called the 'sandwich generation'. The ‘Sandwich Generation’ - originally coined by social worker Dorothy Miller in 1981 - describes those who are “sandwiched” between looking after young children and aging parents, as their primary caregiver. This is a growing group as families are having children later and seniors are living longer. This is certainly true for me and apparently lots of other people in this 40-60 age group.

ABDO commissioned media agency, the Relations Group, to interview 2,000 members of the ‘Sandwich Generation’, asking them about how they look after their own health, that of their parents and their children. The research found that looking after their eyes was a key area that was sacrificed due to lack of time, with 7 per cent having not been to the optician for a staggering nine years or more.

As many as 1 in 6 (16 per cent) say they don’t have enough time to spend on their own health, while a quarter (24 per cent) are most likely to go to the optician for their child and 2 per cent for their parents, over themselves.



This again is very true for me. We’ve recently been doing some resilience training at work and the thing that stood out the most for me from the training was that the person I look after the least is me. I’m sure that the statistics above ring true not just for Parents but certainly for us in the sandwich generation. I’m very aware that I need to work on this

To find out more about looking after your eyes follow the link here.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post, words and opinions are mine but statistics were shared from ABDO.
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