The Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently ran an opinion piece I wrote about the challenges faced by GenXers and older Millennials who are caring for aging parents, many of whom belong to the massive Baby Boomer generation that’s fond of drinking and predicted to develop dementia at higher rates than prior cohorts.

Here’s an excerpt:

All of us [GenXers] have arrived at the stage of our lives where we’ve become the glue holding the generations together. We host the holiday events. We keep everyone up-to-date on family news, like the family town crier. This being-the-glue-of-the-family seems to have happened slowly, then all at once. We went from being the ones with the lives built around raising our children and trying to advance our careers to the ones who’ve added parenting our parents to our to-do lists.

… Yet as we enter this new era of our lives, guidance is sparse. How-to books on raising kids tend to top out at the teenage years. There isn’t much guidance on how to give young adult children the support they need while simultaneously respecting their autonomy and trying not to anger them. Meanwhile, we’re doing the same thing with our parents, most of whom are living solo for the first time after decades of marriage. We’re trying to give them the support they need while simultaneously respecting their autonomy and trying not to anger them.

Read the full piece here.