GROUP: ASIANS
WHAT THE AARP REPORT SAYS:
◆ Seventy-three percent of Asian
Americans believe that children in
their families should care for elderly parents, compared with 49
percent of the general population.
◆ Foreign-born Asian Americans
are more likely (74 percent)
than their American-born counterparts ( 65 percent) to believe
they are expected to care for
older relatives.
A READER’S STORY:
“I am the youngest of six children of parents
who immigrated here from Hong Kong and
China in the mid-1960s. My mom is
approaching 80 and lives alone. Like my siblings, I have moved away and started a family. I
am a very involved parent of two young children, ages 2 and 5, and I am the primary caretaker of my mom’s health and living matters.
“As a Chinese American, I feel the need to
fulfill two roles—that with more traditional
Chinese values that my parents taught me and
that of an acculturated American. In the
Chinese culture, we revere our elders. So, caring
for our parents is expected and certainly not
questioned or debated. I agree with that and
abide by those values. At the same time, I want
to be a very involved parent. My career is
demanding, and that adds many challenges to
being a member of the sandwich generation.”
HENRY CHIU, LEAD PLANNER-MARKETING, KEYSPAN
GROUP: LATINOS
WHAT THE AARP REPORT SAYS:
◆ Latinos are more likely (75
percent) to have parents who
are still alive, versus the gener-
al population ( 70 percent).
◆ Forty percent of Latinos
support their elders financially,
versus 27 percent for the gen-
eral population.
A READER’S STORY:
“My children are still small and
my parents are not very independent. I think Latinas in particular have a difficult time
handing off responsibilities to
agencies for childcare as well as
eldercare. We just figure out a
way to do it ourselves. In my case, I work full time and do not use daycare. My husband and I
work opposite times of the day, meeting in the Aetna parking lot in the afternoon to switch cars
