The Sunday Read: ‘The Agony of Putting Your Life on Hold to Care for Your Parents’
The Daily30 Apr 2023

The Sunday Read: ‘The Agony of Putting Your Life on Hold to Care for Your Parents’

In January 2022, Randi Schofield was a 34-year-old single mother who, not long before, left her full-time job of eight years as a personal bailiff to a local judge. She pulled $30,000 from her retirement savings and was planning to give herself all of 2022 to expand the small catering business she had always dreamed about. This would be the year she bet on herself. Then, that month, she received the news that medics were pulling her father out of his car.

The collision splintered the bone in his left thigh down to his knee; three days later, a metal rod held the broken pieces together. Until his leg recovered from the surgery, he would not be able to walk without assistance. In hindsight, there were warning signs that her father’s health could upend Schofield’s life. But he was also youthful and spirited, and it was easy to believe that everything was fine, that he was fine and that if she were to take care of him some day, it would be occasional and in a distant future. She didn’t see this day coming the way it did, so abruptly and so soon.

Increasing numbers of adult children are taking care of their parents, often shouldering the burden with no pay and little outside help — making their meals, helping them shower, bandaging their wounds and holding them up before they can fall. The social-work scholar Dorothy A. Miller once described this as the “peculiar position” in the modern American nuclear family, between the care people give to their aging parents and to their children. Today’s “sandwich generation” is younger than the version Miller described four decades ago, but it faces the same “unique set of unshared stresses” that she warned of then: acute financial strain, a lack of reciprocated support and “fatigue from fulfilling the demands of too many roles.”

This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Episoder(2692)

Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017

Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017

From fateful call to resignation, the 47-day fall of President Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. We tell the whole story. Guest: Matthew Rosenberg, a national security reporter for The New York Times who has known Mr. Flynn for years. For more information on today’s episode, visit http://nyti.ms/2l7w8ls. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

15 Feb 201717min

Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017

Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017

America and the Middle East in the Trump administration: deep, personal ties and an emerging plan for peace. Guests: Jodi Kantor, a reporter for The New York Times; Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, who write The Times’ Interpreter column. For more information on today’s episode, visit http://nyti.ms/2kFDqvC. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

14 Feb 201720min

Monday, Feb. 13, 2017

Monday, Feb. 13, 2017

Where did Stephen Miller come from, and how will his views on immigration influence the presidency? Also, farmers torn between support for President Trump and fear that he might deport their employees. Guests: Glenn Thrush, White House correspondent for The New York Times; Caitlin Dickerson, a reporter for The Times; and Jeff Marchini, a radicchio farmer in California. For more information on today’s episode, visit http://nyti.ms/2kiWbsF. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

13 Feb 201720min

Friday, Feb. 10, 2017

Friday, Feb. 10, 2017

Is President Trump’s travel ban headed to the Supreme Court? Did the boy in the photograph make it to America? Plus: your stories about living through history. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

10 Feb 201720min

Thursday, Feb. 9. 2017

Thursday, Feb. 9. 2017

Is Senator Warren actually a danger to the Democratic party? And what does Trump’s election mean for the markets? We discuss. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

9 Feb 201718min

Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017

Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017

The travel ban litigation, live-streamed. And why the 60-year-old words of the novelist James Baldwin captured in the film “I Am Not Your Negro” are so resonant right now. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

8 Feb 201720min

Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017

Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017

Why the nomination of Betsy DeVos for secretary of education is President Trump’s most controversial appointment in an already controversial cabinet. Plus: the meaning of four hardback chairs in the Oval Office. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

7 Feb 201719min

Monday, Feb. 6, 2017

Monday, Feb. 6, 2017

What single figure connects the 2008 financial crisis, the creation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the Tea Party movement, Donald J. Trump’s election and, now, the potential dismantling of the biggest safeguard against America’s economic ruin? His name is Gary D. Cohn. Also, a Times investigation goes inside the world of the Islamic State and finds that terrorists no longer have to cross borders to carry out their attacks. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

6 Feb 201719min

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