Sandwich generation
The sandwich generation refers to the generation of today's 40 to 60-year-olds, who are like a sandwich "sandwiched" between the obligations for themselves, the pensioner generation (through pension contributions or care benefits) and the costs of their own children well into student age .
In a different, narrower usage, the term describes the group of those people who take care of their own elderly relatives, mostly their own parents, and who are also responsible for the care and upbringing of their children.
As a political catchphrase, the term plays a role in a number of socio-political questions:
Simultaneous care and upbringing
Women in particular bear a double burden due to the simultaneous care of parents and child-rearing.
Empirically, however, this case is rare and occurs even more rarely in combination with personal employment. In addition, these sandwich constellations have no systematic negative effect on life satisfaction.
Intergenerational justice
The sandwich metaphor is used to describe the (lack of) intergenerational justice. Due to the extension of training times, the extension of the lifespan and the demographics , the middle generation bears the costs of the aging society through higher pension and care contributions, but at the same time has to save privately for their own pension, since the statutory pension insurance does not allow an adequate pension to be expected .
Financial obligation for children and parents
Under certain conditions, German social law provides for maintenance obligations for children of full age and their own parents. This also brings the middle generation into the "sandwich constellation".
The legislation or case law on the conditions of the maintenance obligation is therefore often commented on with the term sandwich generation. examples are
- The decision of the BGH on parental maintenance
- The discussion for a maintenance obligation for parents of young unemployed people in the context of unemployment benefit II
In general, the willingness to provide voluntary services to parents and children is high. In the private sector, the "small generation contract" works. The conflicts mentioned are recourse claims by the social welfare offices against the 'sandwich generation'.
In fiction
- Jane Rule : The Sandwich generation , in Ed. Robert Weaver , Small wonders. New stories by twelve distinguished Canadian writers. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , Toronto 1982, pp. 97-108 (first a radio feature)
swell
- ↑ Harald Künemund: The "sandwich generation" - typical stress constellation or only occasional accumulation of employment, care and childcare? Journal for Sociology of Education and Socialization , 22, 2002, pp. 344–361
- ↑ BGH, judgment Az. XII ZR 266/99 of October 23, 2002 = openJur 2010, 8656
- ↑ Motel, Andreas, Szydik, Marc: private intergenerational transfers, results of age-Surveys, in: Research on Aging and resume at the Free University Berlin, Research Report 63 April 1998th