Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 22, 1993 TAG: 9302220054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GENE MEYER THE KANSAS CITY STAR
DATELINE: KANSAS CITY, MO. LENGTH: Long
`BOOMERS' CAUGHT IN MIDDLE
MEMBERS OF THE "sandwich generation" often find themselves struggling to care for college-age children, who are living at home longer as a result of a stagnant economy, and their aging parents, whose lives have been lengthened by medical technology.
As President Clinton talked Wednesday night about tough choices in America, Darlene Gutshall of Kansas City was living one.
That day, Gutshall had driven her increasingly frail 85-year-old father to a nursing home, where he probably will live out his life.
Her dad, his perceptions skewed by Alzheimer's disease, was not taking the move well.
"It's the most difficult decision I've ever made in my life," said Gutshall, 55.
But it's just one of many heart-wrenching decisions people in their 40s and 50s face today, as their generation finds itself caught in a situation unprecedented in this nation.
If you were born between World War II and the Beatles' arrival in the United States, you are a candidate for what sociologists are calling the sandwich generation.
It's not a comfortable place.
On one side are your children and maybe even their children. They need more help, longer, to cope with what seems an intractably sluggish economy, new census statistics suggest.
On the other side are your parents. Medical science has added years to their lives, but has not yet cured chronic diseases caused by aging that can deplete life savings virtually overnight.
The sandwichers are in the middle, frustrated by the dual demands. And since last week, they've become frustrated by a third force: President Clinton's call for more sacrifice.
That's because those in their 40s and 50s are more apt than many people to feel Clinton's tax bite. Many forty- and fiftysomethings have received enough promotions, achieved enough seniority or saved enough of what they've earned to raise their income to higher tax levels.
Now there's tension in the ranks of both young and old. Some sandwichers' children, seeing their parents' plight and fearing their own, are speaking out. They say the oldest generation is getting too many breaks.
They argue that the generation in its 20s has little chance for prosperity because of politicians' reluctance to cut the benefits for senior citizens.
Indeed, the gap in wealth between young and old is growing wider. With Social Security checks indexed to the rate of inflation, the income of people over age 65 grew by 21 percent in the last decade. The median income for Americans younger than 25 declined by about 10 percent during this period.
More young adults are living with their parents now than at any time since the Great Depression, according to the U.S. Census. Since 1979, real income for adult men younger than 35 has dropped more than 20 percent.
But older Americans are frustrated, too. Howard Deets, executive director of the American Association of Retired Persons, denies that his group wants an unfair advantage.
"Older Americans have sacrificed many times in past years and are willing to pay their fair share for the sake of their country," Deets said.
But the organization will resist any call to pay more than a fair share, he said. That includes higher taxes on the Social Security benefits received by well-off retirees or new taxes for Medicare.
In Lee's Summit, Bill Davidson, a resident of a retirement village, offers another view of the tangle.
Many retirees have provided for their own financial security, he said. Many of them function quite independently of their children and are proud of it.
And while they are willing to make some further sacrifice for the good of the country, "that's going to reduce what we can leave for our children, too," he said.
\ `Something had to go'
Though tension is often high at the extremes, those sandwiched between young and old seem more resigned to their fates. They are making tough choices.
Gutshall, for instance, quit her job as a Lee's Summit Hospital department head two years ago when her father's health worsened. She needed the time to make the 100-mile round trip to the family home in Adrian, Mo., to provide help he needed while he continued to live there.
"It was one of those decisions you accept rather than choose," she said.
As her father's affairs became increasingly time-consuming, she became unable to deal with those, find time for her own family and still hold down the outside job, she said.
"Something had to go. I couldn't throw Dad away, I couldn't throw the family away, so I threw the job away," she said.
\ An aging population
The difficult choices are sure to increase, because of a series of trends.
First, we're living longer.
"It is increasingly likely that more people in their 50s and 60s will have surviving parents, aunts and uncles," said U.S. Census Bureau analyst Cynthia Taeuber in a recent report on the changing lives of Americans 65 or older.
"The four-generation family will become common. Children will know their grandparents and even their great-grandparents, especially their great-grandmothers."
It's a statistically sure bet those four-generation families will be older than families are now, her report continued.
The fastest-growing part of the nation's population during the last decade was the number of people age 100 or older. That number doubled to just fewer than 36,000 between 1980 and 1990.
And while centenarians are still relatively rare, one in 35 Americans is at least 80 years old now, and that figure seems likely to reach one in 12 by the year 2060 if trends continue, Taeuber said.
But longer lives can bring problems that neither families nor national leaders expect.
"In 1950, relatively few people had to worry about caring for the frail elderly. There is no historical precedent for the experience of most middle-aged persons' having living parents," Taeuber said.
That is changing rapidly. Census analysts estimate - they say conservatively - that at least 5 million adults in the United States provide at least some care for a parent.
One study estimates that the percentage of middle-aged women who are caring for older parents has more than doubled in the last four decades.
\ A generation resists
Family help runs two ways, too. Taeuber's report estimates that 3.2 million children younger than 18 are cared for primarily by grandparents, even in the 70 percent of those households where at least one parent lives as well.
Still, it's hard to find sandwichers who are preparing to assume responsibility for an aged parent's finances, said Wayne Starr, a financial planner at Jerry R. Neill & Associates Inc. in Kansas City.
"The biggest thing for people in their 40s generally is the education issue. College funding for their children generally is first and most important to them," Starr said.
Planning for their own retirement is a close second. And with people starting their families later, college costs and retirement planning almost simultaneously consume a lot of attention, he said.
The economic pressure on the sandwichers is strong. They are in a race, of sorts. B. Douglas Bernheim, a Princeton University economist who recently released a study on baby boomer finances, notes that many of those born between 1946 and 1956 have saved barely a third of what they will need to retire comfortably.
The surprise comes when their parents - perhaps because of enormous health-care costs - need assistance.
"The parent issue doesn't seem to be a big deal yet. Either it's way down the list of priorities or they just don't realize the potential problem," Starr said.
Plus, there's some sociology to remember. Many retirees now in their 60s and early 70s simply don't seem comfortable talking about their financial situations with their children.
"So a lot of people are sort of shooting in the dark," Starr said.
Even so, Starr said, it's prudent for families heading toward their own career peaks to begin planning now to help their parents if necessary.
"As a beginning, you've got to have communication with parents. And you've also got to take stock of the situation relative to any brothers or sisters who might be involved."
Such changes almost never are easy ones, said Chaplain Paul Budd, who has been through them with his own family and with families of village residents.
The biggest challenges are the emotional ones, he said. Many sons and daughters find it difficult to assume responsibility for parents who always were seen as towers of strength.
And some family members feel guilty about the way they reconcile caring for their parents with the other obligations.
There are ways to cope with the upheaval, of course. But even good advice can be hard to follow sometimes, Budd said.
"I know that when we were going through this in my family," Budd said, "there were some days I felt just like an Old Testament scapegoat; my job was to take the guilt and go back to Kansas City."