Your toddler’s cries wake you at 5:45 AM, followed shortly by a pounce on the bed from your first-grader. Your day is off to a roaring start, getting the kids—not to mention yourself—washed, fed, dressed, and ready to go out the door. You leave, tikes in tow, just after 8:00—first, to the daycare, then to the elementary school.
Drop-offs completed, you head to the office, hurrying to get updated deal points for a client you’ll be meeting with first thing. But immediately after, you get a call from your mother’s nurse at the assisted living facility. She’s just taken a fall.
Unfortunately, your brother lives two hours away, and your spouse is in meetings all day. You’ll have to go check on your mom over lunch and hope you can make it back to the office in time for an afternoon of 1-on-1s with your team.
Then: Ping! Your phone pops up with a reminder that it’s your daughter’s first day of soccer practice—and you promised you’d be there to watch the end and take her for ice cream… Can you possibly sneak away from work early and wrap things up late after the kids go to bed?
If this sounds familiar, you might be one of the millions of employees in a growing and often overlooked group: the sandwich generation. These individuals are simultaneously raising children and caring for their aging parents, creating amplified pressure amidst navigating careers, finances, and their own wellbeing. And now, the sandwich generation is being squeezed harder than ever before.
This demographic plays an important role in workplaces everywhere. When they’re pushed to the brink, that impacts organizations too, leading to declining productivity, higher absenteeism, and greater turnover. Employers have a critical opportunity and, in our view, an imperative to improve the support they provide these employees to not only demonstrate compassion and innovation, but also to retain valuable talent and improve the health and productivity of the organization on the whole. A key component of that support? Expanding benefits to families.
Here, we dive into what defines the sandwich generation, the challenges they face along with the impacts of those challenges, why it’s important for employers to take action to better support these employees, and how to make it happen in your organization.
What is the sandwich generation?
The “sandwich generation” includes adults who have at least one parent 65 or older and are either raising one or more children under 18 or providing financial support to an adult child. According to Pew Research Center, nearly 24% of American adults now fall into this category, including 54% of adults in their 40s, 36% in their 50s, and 27% in their 30s. That’s nearly 60 million Americans.
These caregivers are managing doctor’s visits, coordinating medications, helping with school pickups and homework, paying bills for them and their parents, navigating insurance, preparing meals, and providing emotional support—and often doing all of this in the hours before or after a full workday. In fact, on average, sandwich generation caregivers spend as much as 18 hours per week caregiving. That’s equivalent to a part-time job.
The compounding strain and challenges of dual caregiving
But caregiving doesn’t just take time; it also takes a toll, physically and emotionally. Switching constantly between nurturing parent, child-caregiver, employee, and financial planner roles can leave individuals feeling mentally frayed. Caregivers in this position commonly experience decision fatigue, burnout, guilt, anticipatory grief, and a relentless feeling of falling short at work, at home, or both. And time for rest and self-care? Often nonexistent.
These pressures show up in the data. In Principal Financial’s latest “Well-Being Index” of American businesses, investment management and insurance firm reports:
- 69% of sandwich generation employees report mental health concerns, compared to just 45% of the general workforce;
- 60% fear burnout;
- More than 20% have already left a job because the demands of caregiving became too great.
Financial strain adds another layer. Caring for two generations often requires covering expenses that aren’t subsidized—childcare, eldercare, medical bills, transportation, and more. As a result, sandwich caregivers are twice as likely to report financial hardship as those who care only for an aging parent.
Women, who comprise 60% of caregivers, are hit particularly hard. Milken Institute reported that in 2023, caregiving responsibilities caused 1.9 million women aged 55 and over to leave the workforce—seven times more than men in the same age group. This gendered imbalance reflects broader cultural norms around caregiving, as well as structural inequities in the workplace that make it harder for women to stay and grow in their careers while managing family responsibilities. This has long-lasting ripple effects, too: fewer opportunities for advancement, lost income, and significantly reduced long-term savings and retirement security.
Access to care is yet another challenge. According to the Helpr “2025 Blueprint for Better Care Benefits,” 51% of Americans live in childcare deserts, where affordable, professional care is scarce or nonexistent. Add to that the shortage of paid caregivers for eldercare—where turnover rates are an estimated 40–60% annually—which means many families have no choice but to shoulder the work themselves.
And today’s sandwich generation faces unique economic and cultural headwinds:
- People are living longer, often with more complex health needs.
- By 2030, the Baby Boomer generation will all be 65 or older, adding to the growing elderly population.
- Millennials and Gen X, now the core of the sandwich generation, are contending with higher debt, lower savings, and rising costs across the board.
- Cross-cultural and intergenerational expectations, especially in immigrant or multigenerational households, can lead to additional emotional strain and family friction.
- Return-to-office mandates post-pandemic often conflict with caregiving schedules and emergencies and make it less feasible for sandwich generation employees to manage their caregiving responsibilities with work.
Why This Matters for Employers
It’s easy to think of caregiving as a personal issue, but its impacts on sandwich generation employees simply don’t go on pause during business hours. The mental fatigue, scheduling conflicts, and emotional toll walk into the workplace with them every day, affecting focus, performance, attendance, and retention—which can have enormous business implications.
The Helpr report data shows that nearly half of all sandwich generation employees take time off to handle caregiving responsibilities, and over half have considered quitting their jobs to do so. In fact, the report estimates that inadequate family care benefits cost U.S. employers up to $1 trillion annually, due to absenteeism, reduced productivity, and voluntary turnover.
However, when employers step in with real support for employees and their families, the benefits are tangible:
- 86% of working parents say they’re more likely to stay with an employer that offers family care support.
- Care benefits can reduce absenteeism by up to 16 days per year per employee.
- Employers gain a return of up to $4.25 for every dollar spent on childcare, with retention gains covering costs even if only 1% of eligible employees stay.
In other words, supporting caregivers doesn’t just do good; it also makes good business sense.
What Employers Can Do
To meet the needs of the sandwich generation, organizations can adopt several practical, inclusive policies:
- Offer flexible scheduling and remote options. Allow employees to attend doctor’s appointments, school events, and emergencies without penalty. Let them have autonomy of their schedule, where possible, to give them the mental and logistical bandwidth to handle all their competing priorities without a strict, confining 9-5 schedule.
- Provide generous paid leave policies. Paid family and medical leave is a top request among caregiving (and non-caregiving) employees, with 71% of caregiving employees saying it’s “extremely valuable” to them. If and when emergency and intense strain hits, it’s crucial for these employees to know they have the option of doing what they need to do to take care of their family and themselves for a short period without losing their jobs.
- Create caregiver-friendly benefits. Dependent care FSAs, resource hubs and lists for employees by region, meal delivery partnerships, emergency backup care options, life insurance, and navigation tools for appointments and bills all go a long way.
- Build caregiver-specific peer support networks. Employee resource groups (ERGs) and Slack channels dedicated to sandwich generation caregivers offer sources of connection, validation, and more avenues for resources and help shared between employees in the same position.
- Embed caregiving equity into your DEI strategy. Recognize that low-income families, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ employees often face compounded caregiving burdens due to the health implications of systemic discrimination and populations historically underserved by the American medical system.
- Highlight and promote your mental health services. Caregivers need proactive, ongoing support to manage the emotional weight of their roles. Yet many don’t think of EAPs as mental health tools—or they’ve tried to use them and found them too limited or slow. Make sure your EAP provides adequate proactive mental health care and amp up your efforts to cultivate a culture where mental health is openly discussed and supported throughout your organization. Journey’s Proactive EAP is built to make proactive mental health accessible, normal, and part of the fabric of organizations.
- Extend your mental health benefits to your employees’ families and loved ones. This is absolutely crucial, and it’s something we prioritized with Journey’s Proactive EAP. Too many employers limit their mental health benefits to employees alone, or to their immediate families. But the mental health of any employee is greatly impacted by the mental health of those around them.
How Journey Supports the Sandwich Generation and Their Families
Journey offers a scalable, proactive mental health solution designed to support not only employees but their loved ones, too. Journey’s Proactive EAP model flips the outdated, reactive approach on its head. Instead of waiting for someone to hit a breaking point, Journey meets users where they are, offering:
- Daily mental health nudges and wellness tips via email and app
- On-demand content tailored to diverse needs—grief, burnout, anticipatory loss, multigenerational caregiving, etc.
- Fast, personalized access to care, with clinical support available in as little as 3 days—10x faster than the industry average
- Outreach during key life events, such as family loss, promotions, or new children
- Inclusive support in over 100 languages and culturally responsive content
Because Journey’s services can be extended to family members and dependents, the aging parent struggling with grief or early dementia, or the teenager showing signs of anxiety, or the overwhelmed partner can all access the same high-quality care and resources as the employee themselves.
As Erin Young, Director of Health & Benefits at WTW, shared with Journey CEO Stephen Sokoler for his book, The Mental Health Advantage, “Mental health isn’t just about individuals—it affects people’s family and home life, too. Employers need to recognize that when they support an employee’s mental health, they’re also supporting their family’s wellbeing.”
Why does this matter for businesses? Because improving the mental health of all those surrounding a sandwich generation employee helps ease their mental and emotional burden and allows them to stress less, focus more, and show up with greater presence. Moreover, it helps them be able to thrive throughout this busy and complex period of their lives.
A More Compassionate Path Forward
The sandwich generation is growing. As Americans live longer, Baby Boomers continue to retire, and multigenerational households expand, more and more employees will continue to take on complex caregiving roles. These employees are the backbone of many organizations. They’re leaders, parents, professionals, and caregivers, all rolled into one. And they need help.
Organizations that acknowledge this reality by offering family-inclusive benefits, flexible policies, and proactive mental health care through partners like Journey will be better positioned to attract and retain top talent, foster loyalty, and build resilience into their workforce. Because when we support the whole person, we support the whole business.
Ready to support your sandwich generation employees—and their families?
Learn more about how Journey can help your company extend mental health benefits that truly make a difference.
