Caught in the Middle : Boomers who are raising young children and caring for aging parents say their own lives have been ‘knocked completely out of whack.’

Debra McClain fears the worst--that one day she’ll simply keel over and crumble into a heap of flamed-out, care-giving, child-rearing rubble. Were that her fate, she worries, what would happen to those who need her?

McClain pauses as she plays back in her mind--and considers the consequences of--the events of that day last summer that thrust her already-accelerated family life into a wild speed weave.

On Wednesday, July 29, McClain’s 78-year-old mother, Ovelia Cruse, was found unconscious in her Long Beach apartment after suffering a massive stroke. Paramedics rushed Cruse to St. Mary Medical Center, where, after three weeks, she emerged from a coma. That’s about the time McClain’s real estate career, peace of mind, and theretofore “normal” existence with a husband and 9-year-old son hit the skids.

“I went straight to the hospital when I heard about Mom,” says McClain, 40, who lives in Pasadena. “I called my husband and left a message for him to pick up our son from school.

“I was gone.”

Nine months later, she’s still gone much of the time. Off on 24- or 48-hour shifts (she rotates with two sisters) at her mother’s bedside in the Long Beach apartment. She sits with Cruse, who is partially paralyzed and bedridden, taking blood-sugar and blood-pressure tests and giving her mother 10 doses of medicine a day.

“I’m exhausted after 24 or 48 hours,” McClain says. “And when I finally get home, my son runs up to me and says, ‘Hi Mom, let’s go do something.’

“Some days I feel like I’m going to collapse.”

McClain is a classic example of the “sandwich generation,” those weary souls stuck between caring for aging parents and growing children. People caught in an intergenerational bind, burdened with feelings of guilt and pressing responsibilities all around, from cleaning bed pans to changing diapers. Their own lives are disrupted--or “knocked completely out of whack,” as one 40-year-old describes it--to meet the needs of others.

Family researchers say people caught in the human sandwich typically are women who delayed having children and whose parents are living longer. Experts predict that as the number of aging parents increases, more daughters--and sons--will be caught in the middle.

“It is growing simply because there are a lot more older people,” says Dr. Edward Schneider, dean of USC’s gerontology center. “And there will be even more. It will get really big as the baby boomers continue to age. It’s an inordinately taxing situation.”

It’s difficult to quantify the sandwich generation, Schneider says, because levels of care vary from case to case. “One person may be caring for a parent continuously,” he says. “Another may take his parents to dinner once in a while.”

This much is known: the U.S. Census Bureau estimated in 1991 that 35% of the country’s population had aging parents and children at the same time. The Washington Post reported in 1990 that nearly 4 million people had a frail elderly parent and a child under the age of 15. Many experts expect that number to increase as the whole population continues to age.

Because people are living longer, “in the years ahead, there will be more 3-, 4-, 5-generation families than ever before,” says Vern Bengston, a professor of sociology and an intergenerational specialist at USC. “But for individuals in the middle there are positive social aspects that go with the hassles.”

McClain, her husband, George, and son, Jason, know all about the benefits and the baggage.

“Sometimes, I’ve felt guilty about not being able to do everything for everyone,” McClain says. “There have been times when my son asks, ‘Mom, when are you going to come home?’ or he’ll say, ‘Aw, Mom, do you have to go back to Grandma’s again tonight?’

“It’s been hard on him.”

“Debbie used to be Jason’s buddy,” says George McClain. “She used to take him everywhere she went. Now, she’s not there a lot. We’ve had to adjust at home. It’s been a roller-coaster ride. But seeing Debbie in a situation she has no control over is the stressful part for me.”

No control and stress are buzz words for people stuck in the middle, according to Jean M. Grun, executive director of Children of Aging Parents, a nonprofit organization in Levittown, Pa., that provides support for those caring for older adults.

“These people feel like they are running around inside a spinning wheel like a gerbil,” she says. “They have to divide their time in so many ways. Everyone and everything is pulling on them. They run as fast as they can.”

For Mariana Dubois, 37, the run has become a marathon.

Six years ago, Dubois, who works full time as a family and youth counselor for the city of Alhambra, invited her 70-year-old mother, Maria Herrera, to live with her, her husband, and their two small children. Herrera had just gone through a divorce. What’s telling about the ensuing years is that Dubois now regularly breaks out in hives, suffers from migraine headaches and back pain, and, in her words, “about once a year I go through a mental crisis where I think I can’t take it any more.”

“Once, I went to my doctor and told him I was going to snap,” she says. “I wanted to scream.”

Recently, Dubois sent her mother to stay with a sister so she could enjoy a mental-health week, free of care-giving responsibilities. The break would have been great were it not for a wave of guilt that swamped her after she sent Herrera packing.

“I felt terrible,” says Dubois, who has taken a total of three weeks off from taking care of her mother during the six-year stint. “How was she supposed to take it? ‘Go Mom, take off, I need a break.’ I always feel guilty taking time for me.”

“There’s a lot of stress and guilt that goes with (grown children) taking care of parents,” says Jodi Olshevski, care coordinator for Senior Care Network, a department of Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. “We try to help them realize what their limits are. That there are limits to what they can provide.

“A care-giver may want to do everything, but when they have children, a husband, a job, and (parent and adult child) live close together, it can be harmful.”

The emotional fluctuations can be equally challenging from 3,000 miles.

John Van Maanen, a sociologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lives with his wife, Colleen, and three children in a Boston suburb. A fourth, their oldest son, is away at college. Their fifth child, as Van Maanen refers to her, is an 83-year-old woman living in her home in Arcadia. Van Maanen’s mother.

Van Maanen had visited his mother during summers and stayed in touch with regular phone calls but last June, his mother suffered a stroke. He considered moving her back to Boston, but she resisted, preferring to stay at her home where she has lived for 45 years.

He decided to try long-distance care (frequent telephone calls, regular visits) which, he says, is frustrating and, at times, discouraging.

“She’s making slow progress,” Van Maanen says. “But she needs round-the-clock care. She needs help getting up and down, cooking, shopping, getting to the doctor, doing therapy, and everyday companionship.

“We’ve hired different people to go in and help, but there’s been a lot of turnover. It’s not the best job. We go through periodic crises. She was back in the hospital a couple days ago. That’s hard to track from back here. I’m on the phone a lot.

“There are days when I think, ‘I’ve got this thing down,’ and others when everything falls apart.”

Adds Colleen Van Maanen: “We’re always on 24-hour guard. Every time the phone rings, there’s a tension there.”

Van Maanen says his mother worked until late in life and saved her money. “Financially, she’s not hurting,” he says. “But some of the services she needs don’t exist.”

Van Maanen contacted Olshevski’s Senior Care Network, which coordinated a number of services for his mother. Support systems are available, Olshevski says, through various nonprofit organizations around the country. Some community-based agencies and senior-center groups provide multilevel support at low or no cost.

Van Maanen says he was unprepared for the care-giver’s role. He and others advise the sandwich generation to get help and make plans early for the eventuality.

“This can wreak havoc on a family,” says Bob Roberts, a professor of sociology at Cal State San Marcos who has studied the aging family. “People should plan for it, talk about it, decide who will be responsible for what.”

Van Maanen, an only child, had no other family members to help him other than his wife and children. Still, he says, they’ve managed--so far.

Van Maanen and his wife try not to be divided or consumed by the ordeal or the guilt they feel for not being bedside. They also make a point of not having it adversely affect their children.

“We don’t want to consume the other side of the sandwich,” John says.

Guilt and hassles notwithstanding, Van Maanen says there are significant benefits to being stuck in his situation.

“There’s a full-circle thing that hits you,” he says. “You think, ‘Gosh, she did this for me when I was a foot tall.’ There’s an emotional closeness that comes with it.”

It’s that same emotion, experts say, that fuels the turbo-charged efforts by care-givers in the first place.

“I know all the stuff we’ve been through has been worthwhile,” says Dubois. “I love my mom, the kids love her. I realize she won’t be around forever and I’ll remember this time.”

A week ago, on the same day Debra McClain escorted Ovelia Cruse into a hospital emergency room after her mom indicated to her that she was having chest pains, McClain took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“This has been a pain, but I’d do it all over again,” she says. “We may lose her, but this has given me more time to be with her.

“There have been times when we’ve had a meeting of the eyes, a squeeze of the hands. That’s very powerful. That has made everything we’ve gone through worth it.”