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More Gen Xers juggle jobs, parents' care
By: Stephanie Armour
USA TODAY, April 26, 2002
Baby boomers have long struggled to balance work with caring for aging parents.
Now it's Generation X's turn.
As the first of the nation's 76 million baby boomers reach retirement age, younger workers are finding that their graying parents need help with health or financial problems.
For example:
· A quarter of people younger than 34 are or have been caregivers, according to a study by Sage Products. Two-thirds of all caregivers also hold jobs.
Says Suzanne Mintz, president of the National Family Caregivers Association, "The thirtysomethings are much more affected by this than previous generations."
Angela Custer, a mother of three children, is also caring for her live-in grandmother, who had a stroke and a heart attack.
· "It's like having another child," says Custer, 27, of Manchester, N.H., who is also a nurse's aid. "It can be hard having the energy to keep going and not giving up."
· To be closer to her aging parents, Rebecca Hart quit her job in Chicago and moved her family to Jacksonville. Her father had a stroke, and she now helps care for him while raising two boys, ages 4 and 16 months.
"Like other women my age, I've been blessed to be quite successful in business," says Hart, 31, a principal at communications firm Hart & Partners. "Until my dad had his stroke, I felt I could fix anything."
It's the start of a looming trend that demographic experts say will have lasting implications for employers. Already, an estimated $29 billion in productivity is lost by businesses each year because of workers' caregiving duties.
"It's a big issue," says Donna Wagner, director of gerontology at Towson University in Maryland
They're laying the foundation for their career, and (caregiving) can be a very disruptive process," Wagner says. "Everything's put on hold."
Many of these caregivers are at the peak of their careers. Instead of focusing on work, they're taking time off and refusing relocations that are critical to advancement.
Adds Gail Hunt, executive director of the Bethesda, Md.-based National Alliance for Caregiving: "Employees don't want their employers to know. They're worried about confidentiality, and caregiving is just not viewed as a workplace issue."
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