In the West, those who are forced to simultaneously take care of grown-up, but not thinking of leaving the family nest children, and elderly parents, are called the «sandwich» generation. Their life passes in a vice between “should” and “should”, and there is often no place for themselves, their desires and hobbies.
When I was five or six years old and in the evening I cheerfully jumped around the room, my father and mother told me: “Sit still! There are neighbors down there, they came home from work, they are tired, you are bothering them!” And I tried to sit still. Here I am in my sixties. In the apartment upstairs, children jump loudly in the evenings. But if I ask their parents to do something, they tell me with politely hidden indignation: “These are children!” It is difficult to understand what is more here — the holy conviction that the freedom of the child should not be limited, or elementary parental laziness. But what difference does it make to me? I try again to sit still.
My generation was squeezed between the «adult-centrism» of the XNUMXth century and the «child-centrism» of the new millennium.
I remember very well how children almost under 12 years old were not allowed into rest homes; I, already almost a teenager, was sent to the dacha with my grandmother, and my parents went to the Caucasus or Latvia. It was very embarrassing! Then the age limit was slightly lowered, and my wife and I began to take our little daughter to the sea. But to take a five-year-old child to a restaurant — such an idea did not even occur to us, it seemed wild and ridiculous. This is quite an adult entertainment, they drink, smoke, dance there!
Now they go to the restaurant with babies even in the evenings, especially since smoking is prohibited there. In the restaurant, parents will be given a high chair, pencils, books, toys — great! Children, as children are supposed to, scream, cry, dig in juice, throw rattles on the floor. Mothers try to calm them down. The rest of the restaurant guests sit with stone smiles: I wanted to dine in comfort, but — «These are children!».
In short, we, who are now 50+, have not lived in pleasure. In childhood we tried to please the adults, now we try to please the children — more precisely, the parents of these children.
The squeezed generation is also a demographic reality: people began to live longer, but give birth later.
More recently (by historical standards, of course!) By the age of 45, people managed to raise and send their children into an independent life — and bury their parents. A third of their lives people lived under the care of their elders, the second third — they themselves took care of the children, but on the other hand, a third third no longer looked back at anyone.
Now everything is different — a man of about forty has become a symbolic figure of the era, who with one hand rolls a baby carriage with a two-year-old baby, and with the other hand drags a wheelchair in which his eighty-year-old father is dozing. Therefore, modern young people, as if anticipating their «squeezed» fate, strive — of course, with the help of their parents — to prolong the years of caressed childhood and carefree youth. They are in no hurry to start a family and have children.
But here is a trap. Comprehensive and long parental care will certainly turn into their close and demanding attention to the life of matured children. It cannot be otherwise: any investor, sponsor and even philanthropist always requires an account. There is only one way to break out of the clutches of generations — to flutter out of the nest as soon as possible.