How Do They Manage? Coping Strategies of the Working Sandwich Generation in Flanders

Abstract

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 34 women and men of the working sandwich generation (WSG) in Flanders, this chapter presents a taxonomy of nine coping strategies that the WSG uses to balance intergenerational care with a job: an acceptance strategy, a boundary management strategy, a help-seeking strategy, a planning strategy, a governance strategy, a self-care strategy, a time focus strategy, a values strategy and a super-sandwich strategy. Individuals of the WSG do not use just one strategy, but combine different strategies simultaneously or consecutively. Moreover, different strategies are also strongly linked to each other so that there is a certain degree of 'overlap'.

Explaining the Process of Caregiving by Sandwich Generation

“…Receiving social assistance, prioritizing oneself, allocating time for mental and physical strategies, and engaging in social relationships are among the solutions that were shared between the results of this study and other studies. But solutions such as the desire to be temporarily away from the family to reduce the pressure of care, the desire to live independently from the elderly, and mediation by previous studies, have not been confirmed or rejected [23,24].…”