Life is an exhausting juggle for Brisbane's Tasha Macknish — physically, mentally and emotionally.
Not only is the 51-year-old a human resources manager with a major IT company, she's been a single mum for decades, raising her two boys solo.
Now she manages the financial, physical and mental wellbeing of her much-loved mother, Carole Jones, who was diagnosed with vascular dementia five years ago.
"I would never not do it … that's what we're supposed to do. But yeah, it's a lot alone," said Ms Macknish.
"You can't walk away and say, 'I don't want to do it anymore' … you just have to keep pushing through and do the best you can."
Both of Ms Macknish's sons are now in their early 20s and have careers of their own. Only the younger one remains living at home.
Ms Jones, 79, once the powerhouse who "was always there" when her daughter's family needed her, now lives in aged care and calls her daughter up to 18 times a day.
Ms Macknish had tried to care for her mother at home until there was a fire, and she realised it was beyond her.
The guilt and responsibility weigh heavily.
"As a woman, trying to have a full-time career, trying to be a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a colleague, there is a lot of guilt of trying to be everything to everyone," Ms Macknish said.
"I feel like I'm always on call — the aged care facility might ring at three o'clock in the morning, saying Mum's had a fall or Mum's a bit confused ... and that's like being a mother."
"You can't really establish your own life to a degree because you just always feel like you might be needed."
The swelling sandwich generation
Ms Macknish is not alone. An increasing number of Australians are "sandwiched" between meeting the needs of growing children, ageing parents and work.
That's partly because young people are staying in the family home for longer and the needs of the elderly are greater, because they are living longer.
The proportion of men, aged 18 to 29, living in the parental home increased from 47 per cent in 2001 to 55 per cent in 2020, according to the 2022 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey.
Over the same time period, the proportion of young women staying at home jumped from 37 per cent to 48 per cent.
The "sandwich generation" is not a new concept. Coined in 1981 by American Professor Dorothy Miller, it was generally regarded as the domain of middle-aged women.
Brisbane researcher Megan Godwin has found the "sandwich" now stretches from adults in their early 30s to those in their 60s.
"The sandwich generation really can occur for women at all ages of their life depending on the different conditions of their environment," Ms Godwin said.
The one thing that hasn't changed, is that women feel the squeeze more than men.
"What remains the same, with all of the development in the world … is that there's this gendered nature of care," Ms Godwin said.
Figures from the 2022 HILDA survey show females are "considerably more likely" to be carers than males, with 10.3 per cent of females over 15 providing unpaid care compared with 6.3 per cent of males.
It also revealed that women, aged between 50 and 69, were the biggest providers of unpaid, ongoing care, "with over 12 per cent caring for a person with a disability or an older person".
'Self-care goes to the bottom of the list'
Ms Macknish thinks women are brought up to believe they must assume care roles.
"Whether they want to be a perfectionist ... want to be it all or want to be seen to be the good girl, I don't know," she said.
"I don't want to let people down. I think there's a huge responsibility within me to care and to look after others."
Ms Godwin, a PhD candidate with the Centre for Behavioural Economics at QUT, has spent recent years studying the wider health implications of multiple care roles and work commitments on Australian women, using data collected in the 2020 HILDA Survey.
Her research found a dip in mental health and wellbeing over the course of women's lives.
"It's a U-shaped curve," she said.
"So, you're happier when you're in your pre-30s and then you go down to this dip.
"Now that coincides with children, extended work hours or perhaps your parents are getting older, but then your mental health drives back up in those older years."
Additionally, in an intensive three-month study during the COVID pandemic in 2020, she found women's ability to cope declined — especially those with multiple responsibilities such as working from home, home-schooling and keeping tabs on the health of elderly relatives.
Ms Godwin believes the sandwich generation is widening because women are pursuing careers and choosing to have children later in life.
"You had that real power push in the 1980s … you can do it all … and that's been passed on through generations," she said.
People are also living longer and requiring more care in their later years.
"The gendered nature of care, along with the requirements of the workforce push together and it becomes very difficult.
"We started with the young women – what happens to the women and their health behaviours when they first have a child and they re-enter the workforce.
"Then we looked at women who had children, they were in the workforce and they were caring for at least one parent."
Sleep 'significant' to women's wellbeing
Ms Godwin said women in these life stages tended to have more daily "hassles", which draw on their economic and health resources.
"What we found was that sleep is so significant and important to women's wellbeing throughout different stages of their life course," she said.
Ms Godwin said when women are time-poor and stressed, they get less sleep. And this has a flow-on effect.
"Think about when you don't get enough sleep — can't eat well — throw the exercise out the door," she said.
"What happens if that becomes a habitual pattern over months or years?
"Similarly with financial behaviours — it might be OK to push off the insurance forms for a year — but what happens when that behaviour becomes difficult to change?"
Ms Macknish is very familiar with the pattern of behaviour.
"Self-care just goes to the bottom of the list … over the last five years my weight's fluctuated and my health's fluctuated," she said.
"The last three years have been particularly hard with COVID — mental health plays a huge factor."
Rising cost of living
While Ms MacKnish works for a supportive and flexible employer, other women "sandwiched" by care roles are struggling with current cost of living crisis.
In a 2022 report into Poverty and Disadvantage in Australia, Professor Alan Duncan, the director of the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre wrote that poverty has a greater and more persistent impact on women — particularly if they are carers.
"Raising children and young people or caring for ageing parents becomes dramatically harder with poverty – and the knock-on impacts to the wellbeing of others is increased," Professor Duncan wrote.
Ms Godwin said more support and scaffolding are needed to help caregivers, because they're unlikely to seek help until it's almost too late.
"No-one's really interested," Ms Macknish said.
"So you just suck it up, and you just do it … you don't want to be a martyr by any means, because I don't … I'm not asking for the support from anyone else. But it would be nice if we did talk about it more openly, and just recognise that there's a lot that people have to do and many hats that we have to wear."
