This is the sandwich generation
For women caring for a parent with dementia while holding down work, family and everything in between.
She sits in the car park outside the surgery for a minute before driving off. Her mum's appointment ran over. She'd already taken a late lunch, told her line manager she'd be back by two, and hadn't told her she was taking her mum to the GP at all. Her phone has three messages on it. One from her son, who's eighteen and in Magaluf with his mates and isn't answering when she calls back. One from work. One from her daughter asking if she's remembered to pick up the dog food.
She hasn't eaten. She hasn't cried. She doesn't have time for either.
This is the sandwich generation.
This is what they're calling the sandwich generation
There are 1.4 million people in the UK like her, most of them women. Caring for a parent and children at the same time, holding down work, holding the household together. Often a pet or two she didn't want and now reluctantly loves.
More than one in four of these women report symptoms of mental ill-health. The figure goes up the more hours of care they're giving.
The figure doesn't capture the texture of it. The bit where she's the one who knows which medication her mum is on. The bit where everyone rings her first. The bit where her son thinks she's nagging and her mum thinks she's interfering and her boss thinks she's distracted and she's not sure any of them are wrong.
When the parent you're caring for has dementia
Every version of this is different. Yours might be a mum who still lives independently and seems mostly herself. Or one who needs help with everything. Or one you visit in a care home. Or one who is angry and difficult, and was that way before the dementia too. The grief is shaped differently in each. The shape of it is still recognisable.
There is a particular kind of loss that comes with this. Your mum is still here. She might still know your name. She might still light up when you walk in and tell you you're her sunshine. And in the same breath she might ask you the same question she asked five minutes ago, and pick up an object she's used a thousand times and turn it over like she's never seen it before.
This isn't the grief of knowing she will die one day. It's the grief of a relationship that's leaving in pieces while the person stays. The mum-shaped space is still there. A lot of her has emptied out of it.
You might still have the fun conversations, and my goodness they are medicine. You might not be able to have the proper ones anymore. The intelligent, complicated, two-grown-women talking-it-through ones. You miss them more than you thought you would.
And there is often a quiet agreement in the family that nobody is going to name what's happening. The repetition gets absorbed. The forgetting gets covered. Everybody locks arms around her and pretends. You might be the one who can see most clearly what is happening, and the one who is least allowed to say so.
Underneath all of that, you are also the one doing it. Holding the future of someone whose trajectory you can see more clearly than anyone else. Noticing the things nobody else is ready to notice. Carrying the conversation about what comes next in your head for weeks before you have it out loud. You are grieving her and quietly project-managing her at the same time.
It is exhausting in a way that doesn't have a name yet. create something meaningful together.
Why this kind of tired is different
There is a kind of tired that a long sleep fixes. This isn't that kind.
The official definition of burnout is workplace-based. Yours isn't. That is part of why none of the advice you've already read has quite fitted.
Most burnout advice assumes you can stop. Take a break. Take a holiday. Get some space. The trouble is, you can't. Your mum will need you tomorrow. Your daughter will text tonight. Your son will eventually answer his phone. Your grandchildren, if you're there yet, may even need picking up on Tuesday. Work is not going anywhere. The cat is harassing you for its own needs. The dog needs walking.
There is no finish line. Dementia doesn't have one. Your kids don't really either, even when they technically grew up. The thing every burnout book tells you to do, which is rest until you feel like yourself again, doesn't work when there is no version of next week where less is being asked of you.
So you keep going. You get reasonably good at functioning at sixty percent and pretending it's a hundred. You stop noticing the small things. You stop sleeping properly. You snap at the people you love most because they are safe to snap at. You wonder if you are becoming someone you don't recognise.
Most of the women I work with arrive thinking this is a personal failure. It is not. It is what twenty-five years of working in dementia and burnout has shown me happens to women carrying a load nobody acknowledges.
What actually helps
A few things, in roughly this order.
Naming what is happening. Out loud. To yourself first, then to the people you trust. You are a sandwich-generation woman caring for a parent with dementia while holding down a career. That is not a description that gets used much in everyday life. Using it to yourself is the first move out of "I should be coping better with all this".
Knowing what is actually available. Most women in this position don't know what they're entitled to. Carer's Leave became a statutory right in the UK in April 2024. One week of unpaid leave a year, available from day one of a job. You may also be eligible for Carer's Allowance or Carer's Credit depending on hours and circumstances. Worth ten minutes of looking up.
Dementia UK runs a free Admiral Nurse helpline staffed by specialist dementia nurses. It is one of the most useful resources in the country and most families don't know it exists. Carers UK runs a helpline and a forum where you will find other women in exactly your situation. Age UK has local services that vary by area but are often the route to practical things like befriending visits and day services. Alzheimer's Society has a Dementia Connect support line and online community.
Finding people who can hold you while you hold them. This is the bit that often gets missed. Friends mean well, but often don't have the specific reference points. Therapy helps some women, but doesn't always know dementia. What helps is someone who knows both. What burnout looks like in a high-functioning woman, and what dementia caring actually involves on a Tuesday afternoon. That is a smaller pool of people, but it exists.
Looking at how you are working, not just how you are caring. Most of the women I work with are doing a demanding job alongside everything else. The job is rarely the cause of the burnout, but the way it is being held is often part of what is making recovery impossible. Same hours, different relationship to them, is usually the change that matters.
Starting somewhere small. Not a five-year plan. Not a complete life overhaul. One conversation. One phone call to a helpline. One hour booked in for yourself in the next week. The women who recover from this don't do it by reorganising everything at once. They do it by one small move that breaks the pattern of always being last.
Who I am & how I work
Who I am and how I work
I'm Laura. Twenty-five years of working in mental health and dementia, originally as a mental health nurse. I co-founded a dementia organisation. I have trained thousands of people in dementia connection and coping strategies. These days I work one-to-one with women in exactly the situation this page describes.
What I offer is not a quick fix. It is a relationship with someone who has been in the room for a lot of this, and who knows that what works is small, specific, repeatable changes rather than a complete life overhaul.
The Last One On Your Own List is a free guide for women who are always last. It is the gentlest place to start.
If you are past the point where a guide will help, and you want to talk to someone who knows both worlds properly, the RESTORE 1;1 programme is where most of the women I work with start.
She sits in the car park outside the surgery for a minute before driving off. Her mum's appointment ran over. She'd already taken a late lunch, told her line manager she'd be back by two, hadn't told her she was taking her mum to the GP at all. Her phone has three messages on it. One from her son, who's eighteen and in Magaluf with his mates and isn't answering when she calls back. One from work. One from her daughter asking if she's remembered to pick up the dog food.
She hasn't eaten. She hasn't cried. She doesn't have time for either.
This is the sandwich generation.