Sandwiched Marriages: The Implications of Child and Parent Relations for Marital Quality in Midlife

The well-being of the “sandwich generation” is presumed to be affected by simultaneous relations and exchanges with adult children and aging parents. The implications of intergenerational involvements for marital relations in midlife is analyzed for a sample of 2,129 married persons forty to fifty-nine years old from the National Survey of Families and Households. Being a parent or child is common, though variable by age, but helping both generations is relatively unusual Intergenerational exchange has little association with reported marital quality for either women or men, though quality of relations with children and parents is more consistently related to quality of marital relations. It appears that the generally high satisfaction found in midlife marriages is sustained despite occasional intergenerational burdens.