Gen-X Women Are Caught in a Generational Tug-of-War

According to Amy Goyer, AARP’s national family and caregiving expert and the author of Juggling Life, Work, and Caregiving, women in Generation X face unique challenges compared with their predecessors. “More women are working. When you’re trying to work while juggling caregiving, and trying to have a life and maintain your primary relationship, it really affects you,” she told me. Our parents and grandparents are living longer than ever before (my 102-year-old grandmother just entered hospice). Goyer explained that these older adults may have complicated, chronic health conditions that require expensive and time-consuming treatments. “There are more treatments, more medications, more things to be looking out for,” she added. “It’s a lot of pressure.”

And caregiving is often very expensive. When a woman leaves work to care for a sick relative, the potential cost of lost wages and Social Security benefits could average $324,000 during her lifetime. “Boomers weren’t great about saving,” Goyer said. Gen Xers “may find themselves contributing more and more toward their parents’ care and finances … and the costs of care are on the rise.” Caring for an aging relative costs $7,000 a month on average, but increases when the relative has dementia or lives a long distance away. In addition, the divorce rate peaked in the 1970s and early ’80s, meaning that many Gen Xers are children of divorce—something that can complicate caring for parents now.

If Boomer parents are pulling on one end of the rope in a game of tug-of-war, Millennial and Gen Z kids may be yanking on the other. Gen Xers’ delay in childbearing means that many may find themselves either struggling with infertility or raising little kids in their 40s. Generation X is downwardly mobile as costs are rising, but we’re working hard to give our children advantages that we didn’t have. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2015, the estimated cost of raising a child born to middle-class parents from birth to the age of 17 was $233,000, not including college tuition. The amount rose 40 percent from 2000 to 2010. One friend of mine told me the other day, “I grew up an ‘at-risk youth.’ My Barbie clothes were all made of scraps of leftover fabric. My daughter goes to French-immersion school.”

Goyer told me that she believes women’s 40s and 50s are ideally a time to find their true calling and focus on themselves, but that today, many “women are too busy to even think about it.” AARP reports that although men do more these days to take care of the elderly and children, the average caregiver is a 49-year-old working woman. And the demands of caregiving seem likely to only increase. In 2010, the ratio of possible caregivers to people needing care was 7 to 1, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute. By 2030, the ratio is predicted to be 4 to 1; and by 2050—about when we will be needing care ourselves—the ratio will be 3 to 1. If nothing changes, this caregiving crisis is likely to hit Millennials and Gen Z even harder than it has hit Gen X. Knowing that I’m right in the center of my generation’s caregiving struggle is some comfort. At least I’m not alone.