"Clenched" generation

Father Bonnie Keen terminally ill, he was in '72; he lives on the East Coast. And her daughter three years, she had just approached the pre-school age, she lives on the West Coast.
Where is the search for the very Bonnie? "I'm somewhere in the middle," replies the 45-year-old psychologist from California State University. And it's just kind of a joke.
Because, like many other modern women, Bonnie Keen, PhD, was geographically and emotionally trapped between the needs and requirements of the outgoing and future generations. She belongs to a generation that demographers call "cramped", the generation of women caught between parents and children.
"This sociological phenomenon adds Dr. Keane, which appeared as a result of the collision of three different cultural trends parents live longer and suffer from chronic illnesses, women marry later and have children at the end of the third dozen or after forty years, the phenomenon of" clenched "American women quickly It leads to the fact that the most productive, the best years of a woman's life should be spent on all-consuming force convicts care work.
Women traditionally take care of family members who are either just leave the cradle, or closer to the grave, says Dr. Keene. But in the past they are not waiting in our society, that they will be working from 9 to 5 hours and take care of the old and young members of the family at the same time. Especially elderly people and children living in different places at a great distance from each other. "
Unfortunately, the requirements for women who find themselves in this situation, so large that they have to set aside their own plans professional or personal nature for later, choice they have.
When this happens, some women begin to think that their life is over, says Dr. Keane, although it just means that at some time you have to postpone their personal development. Within you is hard work. Most of the women come out of this period, or have already unable to fully recover, or with an impulse to the development of what they gain height like a rocket. "
What can you do to make the time spent in a state of stiffness, became a launching pad for you, not a one-way ticket back to where there is no return?
Decide. Be clear about your priorities, stresses Dr. Keene. You need to know who you are and what you want. Know what you want for their children themselves and their parents.
Evaluate the possible consequences. If you decide, for example, to take to his father, you would require additional time and money that you have to keep with their children. How this will affect the emotional health of children? Or on your ability to pay for their studies at the college?
Think of their limited opportunities. Although the commercial says, that in properly selected tights, we can do everything in real life it is not so. One of us did not have the patience, the other free time. Think about the possibilities, says Dr. Keene. If you constantly exceed them later, you just fall through and will suffer from feelings of guilt.
Talk about what you expect from each other. What do you expect from yourself as a daughter? What do you expect from your parents? In general, what is "good" daughter? This daughter, who invites old mother to come and live with her? Or a good daughter is negotiating with a neighbor, so that she came to her mother and fed her breakfast? Maybe it's the woman who put her mother in a nursing home? We all have different attitudes to their own actions and the actions of others, says Dr. Keene. The only way to understand what is the best solution for everyone is to sit down and honestly and openly discuss the situation.
Talk about money. Maybe it's easier to talk to their parents about sex and death than about money, says Dr. Keene. But you should do it before you take the kakieto obligation to care for them. Your relationships will suffer less if everyone will know what he can expect.
Set limits. Decide for yourself what you can and can not do for your family, then stay within these limits, regardless of what others say.
Plan a gathering of all the family members. Brothers and sisters easily forget that need to care for parents and grandparents, too. Collect all, list all types of care, which require parents to purchase products, visit the doctor, laundry, and then ask each quietly, that he can take over.
Share your experience. Across the country there are organizations such as "Children baking of elderly parents» (Caring Children of Aging Parents), reported Dr. Keene. You can find other people with similar problems, share experience in the care of their parents, to learn about new resources and release vapors that accumulate in women "bite" generation.