The Millennial Sandwich: A Podcast for the Sandwich Generation

Anita Chandra, MD and Zara Hanawalt
  • 5.0 (13)
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The Millennial Sandwich is a sandwich generation podcast about raising kids while watching their parents age. Hosted by geriatrician Dr. Anita Chandra and parenting journalist Zara Hanawalt, it explores what it means to be part of the sandwich generation: caring for aging parents, navigating motherhood, and trying to make room for your own life, too. Through honest conversations with experts and people living it, we talk about caregiving, family, friendship, and the questions no one prepared us to answer. For the generation holding it all together.

  1. 5d ago

    Why Are So Many Millennial Women Rethinking Our Careers? With Neha Ruch

    There are so many narratives about the intersection of motherhood and work. One tells us that "working moms" and "stay-at-home moms" are fundamentally different types of women, and that's there's no fluidity or common ground between the two. Another tells us that if you must pause your career, its best to do this when your kids are babies (and that the right time to return is when your youngest child starts kindergarten), Neha Ruch, founder and author of The Power Pause is here to challenge all those outdated narratives. This conversation couldn't have come at a better time: So many millennial women are reevaluating their priorities, their time, and their career trajectories.  Sometimes, we're reevaluating to spend more time with our kids; other times, we're doing it to focus on care for aging parents. Often, it's for both of these reasons (and so many more). In this episode we discuss: Why there's no "right" or "wrong" time to take a career pauseWhy so many millennial women are doing this in the middle stages of parenthoodHow millennial women are making the work of motherhood and daughterhood more visible through record-keepingThe constant minimization of women's work The challenges of choosing your prioritiesTopics covered: Career, working motherhood, stay-at-home motherhood, flexible work, freelance work, ambition, unpaid labor Send us Fan Mail Thanks for listening to The Millennial Sandwich! Don't forget to follow, subscribe and connect with us on social media  Get JubileeTV: https://getjubileetv.com/products/jubilee-tv-direct?utm_campaign=41986926-influencer&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=pod&utm_content=millennial-sandwich Leave us a voice note! We'd love to hear from you: https://www.speakpipe.com/themillennialsandwich

  2. Oct 21

    How Do You Talk to Kids About Death and Dying? With Jessica Correnti

    It's something nearly every member of the sandwich generation has thought about: What's the best way to talk to young kids — or older kids, or teens — about death, dying, and grief? Certified Child Life Specialist Jessica Correnti is here with practical, actionable tips. Her advice isn't prescriptive; it honors the fact that kids (just like adults!) process heavy things in a variety of ways.   But if you've found youself in need of guidance on how to open up these conversations, you're in the right place.  Find Jessica's books here. This episode touches on: How kids may express their griefQuestions that often come up when kids are dealing with a lossGood grief representation in pop culture Whether it's appropriate to take a child to a funeralHow we can prepare children before there's a death in the familyTopics covered: Death, illness, grief, child development, anxiety, loss, The Summer I Turned Pretty, millennial parenting, '90s tv, The Baby-Sitter's Club, millennial parenting Send us Fan Mail Thanks for listening to The Millennial Sandwich! Don't forget to follow, subscribe and connect with us on social media  Get JubileeTV: https://getjubileetv.com/products/jubilee-tv-direct?utm_campaign=41986926-influencer&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=pod&utm_content=millennial-sandwich Leave us a voice note! We'd love to hear from you: https://www.speakpipe.com/themillennialsandwich

  3. Aug 26

    Is This a Podcast or a Therapy Session? Our Season 1 Recap & Finale

    Season 1 of The Millennial Sandwich is officially wrapped!  From the first episode we recorded (which, spoiler alert, has still never been released) to this season 1 recap, we've learned so much, felt so seen, and found ourselves asking..."is this a podcast or a therapy session" over and over again. In this episode, we talk about what we took away from our first season, what you can expect from us down the line, and what we hope to deliver in our second season. But most of all, we just...talk.  We get into: -Why millennials need to be called out for their nostalgia obsession -How tradwife/girlboss binaries don't serve anyone -Why "working mom" isn't an accurate or inclusive label -The gfuests and episodes that surprised us most -Why it's Taylor Swift's world (we're just living in it) Want to join the conversation? Leave us a voicemail here! Send us Fan Mail Thanks for listening to The Millennial Sandwich! Don't forget to follow, subscribe and connect with us on social media  Get JubileeTV: https://getjubileetv.com/products/jubilee-tv-direct?utm_campaign=41986926-influencer&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=pod&utm_content=millennial-sandwich Leave us a voice note! We'd love to hear from you: https://www.speakpipe.com/themillennialsandwich

  4. Aug 19

    The Most Surprising Stat About the Sandwich Generation with Care.com's Naaz Nichols

    Naaz Nichols is Care.com's Chief Customer Experience Officer. She's also a sandwich generation caregiver — and that lived experience gives her the tools to fully understand what other caregivers truly need. In this episode, Naaz joins us to share the details of Care.com's first ever Sandwich Generation Report. She shares a statistic that may shock you. Naaz also gets deeply personal about her own experiences with sandwich generation caregiving. We discuss: How real-life caregiving makes you better at your job (even if your job doesn't involve serving caregivers)What it's really like to parent and care for aging parents under one roofWhy Naaz took a career pause (and came back to the workforce with an even richer professional perspective)How perfectionism isn't sustainable for sandwich generation caregiversWhat it really feels like to navigate the medical system as your parents ageTopics covered: Caregiving, career, career pause, Lewy body dementia, Alzheimer's disease, care policy, caregiver burnout Send us Fan Mail Thanks for listening to The Millennial Sandwich! Don't forget to follow, subscribe and connect with us on social media  Get JubileeTV: https://getjubileetv.com/products/jubilee-tv-direct?utm_campaign=41986926-influencer&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=pod&utm_content=millennial-sandwich Leave us a voice note! We'd love to hear from you: https://www.speakpipe.com/themillennialsandwich

  5. Aug 12

    How to Notice Your Parents' Signs of Aging Before There's a Crisis

    If you're a millennial, there's a good chance you've noticed some changes in how your parents function. Maybe they're moving differently, or they're repeating themselves more, or they're simply just...not as confident as they used to be. But if you're in the sandwich generation, noticing those changes in how your parents behave is especially complicated — because while you want to stay on top of those changes, you're so busy raising your kids, you barely have time to consider what they could mean.  Co-host Dr. Anita Chandra, a geriatrician and expert in aging weighs in on  -Those signs of aging and what people can do when they notice them -The difference between normal aging and a sign something may be amiss -Why we need to change our cultural perceptions of "old people" -What it truly means to "age well" -What our cultural obsession with independence is really doing to older adults -How adult children can care for their parents from a distance Topics covered:  Aging, longevity, The Golden Bachelor, midlife, middle age, millennials, baby boomers, the sandwich generation, caregiving, long-distance caregiving Send us Fan Mail Thanks for listening to The Millennial Sandwich! Don't forget to follow, subscribe and connect with us on social media  Get JubileeTV: https://getjubileetv.com/products/jubilee-tv-direct?utm_campaign=41986926-influencer&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=pod&utm_content=millennial-sandwich Leave us a voice note! We'd love to hear from you: https://www.speakpipe.com/themillennialsandwich

  6. Aug 5

    The Myth of 'Doing it All' with Multi-Hyphenate Hitha Palepu

    Personally and professionally, Hitha Palepu wears a lot of hats. She's a mother of boys (but not a boy mom), a daughter of immigrants, and only child, a pharma CEO, a content creator, an author, a speaker...and that's not even an exhuastive list. It's easy to look at someone like Hitha and wonder how she does it all. But here's the thing: She doesn't.  Hitha talks us through how she makes her multi-hyphanted life work...and also, what she doesn't do. Because doing a lot is not the same as doing it all. We discuss: -The pressures daughters of immigrants face -The systems that help her streamline her personal and professional commitments -Why taking care of herself is so important -How watching reality TV is cultural anthropology Topics covered: Aging parents, caregiving, sandwich generation, motherhood, reality TV, Love Island, boy mom culture, immigrant parents, south asian daughters Send us Fan Mail Thanks for listening to The Millennial Sandwich! Don't forget to follow, subscribe and connect with us on social media  Get JubileeTV: https://getjubileetv.com/products/jubilee-tv-direct?utm_campaign=41986926-influencer&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=pod&utm_content=millennial-sandwich Leave us a voice note! We'd love to hear from you: https://www.speakpipe.com/themillennialsandwich

  7. Jul 29

    Why is Everyone Still Treating Care Like it's Worthless? with Elissa Strauss

    Care work has value, economically and beyond — yet both our systems and our culture refuse to acknowledge this.  Nobody understands this deep devaluation better than Elissa Strauss, who (literally) wrote the book (When You Care) on the true value of care.  In this episode, Elissa, Anita & Zara discuss: The longheld idea that motherhood shouldn't "take over" your identityThe interdependency of policy and culture where caregiving is concernedThe biggest misconceptions people have about care workOur cultural obsession with independence and preservation of youthThe caregiving secrets many of us keepHow tradwife and girlboss narratives fail caregiversTopics covered: Caregiving, care work, dementia care, motherhood, economic value of care, gender, feminism, wage gap Send us Fan Mail Thanks for listening to The Millennial Sandwich! Don't forget to follow, subscribe and connect with us on social media  Get JubileeTV: https://getjubileetv.com/products/jubilee-tv-direct?utm_campaign=41986926-influencer&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=pod&utm_content=millennial-sandwich Leave us a voice note! We'd love to hear from you: https://www.speakpipe.com/themillennialsandwich

  8. Jul 22

    What Will the Midlife Crisis Look Like for Millennial Women?

    Millennials are preparing for their midlife era...and it's bringing up a lot of questions.  For example... Does every generation feel this way at this age?Why do we feel so much younger *and* so much older than we actually are?What do I actually want to be when I grow up?I've done all the things I set out to do. Now what?And, perhaps most importantly...do women even get to have a midlife crisis?Anita and Zara are getting into all of it...and exploring the wild identity shift that comes when you're 40-ish. Women in midlife are almost always denied main character treatment, but we're here to change that.  Caregiving (for both our kids and our parents) complicates our ability to fall apart in midlife. We don't really have a roadmap for what a midlife crisis actually looks like in a woman, but we're setting the stage for what may come. Key topics: Millennial midlife, middle aged millennials, pop culture, gender, marriage, aging, beauty, career, success, ambition Send us Fan Mail Thanks for listening to The Millennial Sandwich! Don't forget to follow, subscribe and connect with us on social media  Get JubileeTV: https://getjubileetv.com/products/jubilee-tv-direct?utm_campaign=41986926-influencer&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=pod&utm_content=millennial-sandwich Leave us a voice note! We'd love to hear from you: https://www.speakpipe.com/themillennialsandwich

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About

The Millennial Sandwich is a sandwich generation podcast about raising kids while watching their parents age. Hosted by geriatrician Dr. Anita Chandra and parenting journalist Zara Hanawalt, it explores what it means to be part of the sandwich generation: caring for aging parents, navigating motherhood, and trying to make room for your own life, too. Through honest conversations with experts and people living it, we talk about caregiving, family, friendship, and the questions no one prepared us to answer. For the generation holding it all together.

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