Women of the "sandwich" generation and multiple roles: The case of Russian immigrants of the 1990s in Israel

It has been suggested that adding elder care to the list of women's multiple roles may significantly jeopardize their well-being and mental health. This study explored the experiences with multiple roles among Jewish women who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s with their extended families. The thirty informants for the study (aged between 35 and 55) represented a variety of pre-emigration backgrounds. Their common denominator was in multiple roles (employment and caregiving to both children and ageing parents) coupled with the challenges of resettlement in a country swept by the mass influx of immigrants. Facing downward social mobility, marital distress, and problems with adolescent children, the women of this "sandwich" generation also had to support their uprooted parents. The growing dependency and declining health of the elders significantly burdened the women and hindered their occupational upgrading and social integration in Israel. Exhaustion and tight time budgets led to somatization and poor self-care among middle-aged women. Social services' role in elder care was minimal. The informants' social networks were mainly co-ethnic, and their coping tools drew on Israeli-Russian subculture. The study concludes that, even in the relatively egalitarian Russian-Soviet gender system, women function as principal caregivers, often at the expense of other life goals.