Read the Book(Uploaded) and write about the questions(each 1150~200 words)
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The “Sandwich Generation” and Elder Care The “sandwich generation” refers to people who find themselves sandwiched between and responsible for two other generations, their children and their own aging parents. Typi- cally between the ages of 40 and 55, these people find themselves pulled in two different directions. Many feel overwhelmed as these competing responsibilities collide. Some are plagued with guilt and anger because they can be in only one place at a time and have lit- tle time to pursue personal interests.
Concerns about elder care have gained the attention of the corporate world, and half of the 1,000 largest U.S. companies offer elder care assistance to their employees (Hewitt Associates 2004). This assistance includes seminars, referral services, and flexible work schedules to help employees meet their responsibilities without missing so much work. Why are companies responding more positively to the issue of elder care than to child care? Most CEOs are older men whose wives stayed home to take care of their children, so they don’t understand the stresses of balancing work and child care. In contrast, nearly all have aging parents, and many have faced the turmoil of trying to cope with both their parents’ needs and those of work and their own family.
With people living longer, this issue is likely to become increasingly urgent.
Divorce and Remarriage The topic of family life would not be complete without considering divorce. Let’s first try to determine how much divorce there really is.
Ways of Measuring Divorce You probably have heard that the U.S. divorce rate is 50 percent, a figure that is popular with reporters. The statistic is true in the sense that each year almost half as many di-
vorces are granted as there are marriages performed. The totals are 2.2 million marriages and about 1.1 million divorces (Statistical Abstract 2011:Table 129).
What is wrong, then, with saying that the divorce rate is about 50 percent? Think about it for a moment. Why should we compare the number of divorces and marriages that take place during the same year? The couples who divorced do not—with rare exceptions—come from the group that married that year. The one number has nothing to do with the other, so these statistics in no way establish the divorce rate.
What figures should we compare, then? Couples who divorce come from the entire group of married people in the country. Since the United States has 60,000,000 married couples, and a little over 1 million of them get divorced in a year, the divorce rate for any given year is less than 2 percent. A couple’s chances of still being married at the end of a year are over 98 percent—not bad odds—and certainly much better odds than the mass media would have us believe. As the Social Map on the next page shows, the “odds”—if we want to call them that—depend on where you live.
Over time, of course, each year’s small percentage adds up. A third way of measuring divorce, then, is to ask, “Of all U.S. adults, what percent- age are divorced?” Figure 10.13 on the next page answers this question. You can see how divorce has increased over the years and how race– ethnicity makes a difference for the likelihood that couples will divorce. If you look closely, you can also see that the rate of divorce has slowed down.
Figure 10.13 shows us the percentage of Americans who are currently divorced, but we get yet another answer if we ask the question, “What percentage of Americans have ever been divorced?” This percentage in- creases with each age group, peaking when people reach their 50s. Forty percent of women in their 50s have been divorced at some point in their
324 C h a p t e r 1 0 M A R R I A G E A N D F A M I L Y
This fanciful depiction of marital trends may not be too far off the mark.
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