China’s sandwich generation?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

China’s sandwich generation?

After picturing a sandwich and, especially, a double-decker sandwich in your mind, I’m sure you now understand how members of the sandwich generation feel squeezed (sandwiched) all the time.

Feel sandwiched, they are, in terms of both finance and time, and burdens coming from above (parents) and under (their own children and as in Wang’s case, their children’s children).

And probably in between, if you take into consideration sibling competitions and squabbles.

“Why do you have to care for your daughter’s baby?” People ask Wang now and then, whenever the subject of his domestic burdens comes up in conversation, which is often.

“My daughter cannot even take care of herself,” replies Wang matter-of-factly, “let alone her baby. Young people are simply good for nothing. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”

I want to give more examples of Wang’s caretaking troubles but feel I cannot do that without delving further into his pains and complaints and I don’t want to do that. Suffice it to say, I’m just overwhelmed with sympathy.

I’m so overwhelmed with sympathy – I don’t have children, you see – that I really don’t want to talk any more about my friend’s problems. They feel too close to home.

Instead, let’s read a few media examples and see how people who are a little distant from us feel about their life as a member of the “sandwich generation”: