Aug 7, 2026
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Add us on GoogleTaking on a caregiving role for an aging parent is a difficult job, and it comes with a uniquely difficult cocktail of hardships, taking a toll on your emotions, your body and your finances.
For those in the so-called “sandwich generation” — Gen Xers who are still caring for their kids, as well as for their aging parents — the strain of a dual-caregiver role can be overwhelming.
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If all that pressure weren’t enough, there is yet another factor that can complicate this already challenging role: What if you don’t have a good relationship with the parent you’re expected to provide care for?
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One TikToker is speaking out on the “impossible position” that some Gen Xers are finding themselves in.
“Present but absent”
“Let’s talk about the impossible position that so many Gen X daughters are in right now,” TikToker Leelo Ryan says in a video that has more than 300,000 views.
Ryan, a 59-year-old mom, says in the video that she grew up with a “present but absent mom,” who didn’t do things like read to her or play with her, and who “could not be bothered” to provide basic emotional care.
She says that, now, many Gen Xers are “now expected to care for these aging parents who never provided the same emotional care to us.”
“What if we cared for them the way that they cared for us? What would that look like?”
Ryan gives examples of this, such as telling a parent who says they are lonely to “go outside and come back when the streetlights come on,” or if they needed help navigating new technology, telling them to “just read the instructions on the box.”
“Or maybe they’re crying, and you say ‘Shh, I’m reading my romance novel,’” she muses.
Of course, Ryan is not being serious, but trying to make a point: “If we did that, people would call us heartless, and yet somehow when we were children it was considered normal. That is the point I’m trying to make — not revenge, but the double standard.”
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“The level of patience that they now need from us is the level of patience that they never had for us. We’re expected to become the emotionally available adults now that they never became for us,” Ryan added.
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Caregiving for a person who has hurt you
Roberta Satow, author of Doing the Right Thing: Taking Care of Your Elderly Parents Even if They Didn’t Take Care of You, told AARP that caregiving for anyone, whether you have a good relationship or not, can bring up mixed feelings.
“Doing the right thing doesn’t mean you have to love it or be happy to do it,” Satow told AARP.
If you’re in a caregiving role for someone who hurt you, it makes sense that old wounds could be opened, or that an old dynamic will rear its ugly head. If you’re able to identify certain triggers that always send you down an emotional rabbit hole, you can learn how to avoid those scenarios while also giving yourself grace for the times that you aren’t able to stay grounded.
Carol Bradley Bursack, author of Minding Our Elders: Caregivers Share Their Personal Stories, told AARP that you may find it helpful to learn skills that can help you emotionally detach from some situations. Bursack says that while this might seem like giving in, it’s actually just saving yourself, since arguing with an irrational person won’t get you anywhere.
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“If you don’t try to correct them and try to change their behavior, they have nowhere to go with their anger,” Bursack told AARP.
Protecting yourself from emotional damage
Although you may feel that it is either emotionally or financially impossible for you to care for an aging parent, you may not have a choice about it. Most states have some form of filial responsibility laws, meaning that adult children have a legal and financial obligation to care for their parents or pay for their care.
A 2026 report from the AARP Public Policy Institute found that the economic value of family caregiving in the U.S. exceeded $1 trillion in 2024.
This “invisible workforce” includes 59 million Americans, and the care they provide family members is “equivalent to the amount of work done by 23.8 million full-time workers,” the report says.
And that care comes at a cost: A 2025 joint report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving found that 47% of family caregivers “experienced at least one negative financial impact as a result of caregiving.” Some impacts include stopping or depleting savings, going into debt, or not paying bills.
And those with household incomes of less than $50,000 “are more often hit by these negative financial impacts,” including not being able to afford basic expenses. The report also found that Black and Latino caregivers “more often experience most of these impacts compared with the total population of family caregivers.”
If you are caregiving for a parent whom you don’t have a good relationship with, try to build skills that can help you distance yourself from their hurtful behavior, past or present. Building up your own emotional support system, with friends and trusted loved ones, can also ensure that you have people you can lean on when the stress of caregiving is overwhelming.
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Rebecca Payne has more than a decade of experience editing and producing both local and national daily newspapers. She's worked on the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, Metro, Canada's National Observer, the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press.
