Caring for other people is a horrible, painful privilege. Yes it gives meaning to life, yes it perhaps is what we exist on earth to do, etc, but also, it can be messy, upsetting and dull, often all at the same time, and often at night. There is nobody who knows this better, nobody who knows it with their every cell, their every tooth, than a middle-aged woman who is responsible for the care, not just of their young children, but also their old parents. A 2022 poll estimated that 6 million Britons consider themselves to be in this “sandwich generation”, with increased longevity (a recent study confirmed that people born in the 1940s and 1950s are living longer than their parents) leading to a further descriptor. People in their 40s-60s who care for their children, grandchildren and parents are the “club sandwich” generation, the chicken right up in there next to the bacon, cut into quarters, speared with sticks.
If you’re not in the thing yourself, then you have surely seen at least what it looks like. What it looks like is a woman in motion. It’s not always a woman, but mostly it is – a study in February found that the burden of family care falls disproportionately on women. Women on the phone to the hospice while they’re driving a kid to swimming while the slow cooker’s on while fielding emails from their employer about their holiday allowance and can we have a quick chat on Monday? Four different stress headaches battle for attention and must be dampened with paracetamol that swims dusty and undone in the bottom of a tote bag, and jobs fail and marriages fumble, and adult children live in what was meant to be the home office, and they really don’t want someone to die, but sometimes they might say they do alone in the silence of their own throat where it can be swallowed again, and moved on from. Motion, motion.
