Who’ll care for the poor, frazzled women of the sandwich generation?

As a paid-up member of the ‘sandwich generation’ — aged 35 to 55, with a mortgage, job and dependent children on one side, ageing parents on the other — I don’t have it so bad.

My parents are in excellent health, and my children, while having the obvious misfortune of being rancid teenagers, are better than many.

still, I’ve had my manic moments, most recently when both my father and son were hospitalised a few weeks before Christmas — and at a distance of several thousand miles from each other. (My parents live in Italy.)

so I worry about what the next decade will bring. and, as a report out this week from the Office For National statistics shows, I’m not alone.

More than a quarter of people in a similar situation experience ill-health, brought on by the pressures — financial, emotional and otherwise — of having to care for two sets of dependants at opposite ends of the spectrum.

The majority of sandwich carers are women. But whereas in the past they might have been able to carry out their duties — however exhausting — without the added pressure of holding down a job, these days there isn’t even that small comfort.

Now, all of us are expected to have careers — not least because life requires at least two salaries just to survive. Meaning that as well as pleasing everyone else — your children, husband, parents — you’ve also got to keep the boss happy.

Now, I don’t want to seem ungrateful — I love my job and consider myself privileged to have it — but can I just say that this was not how feminism was advertised.

Women’s liberation was supposed to open up endless new possibilities for the hitherto downtrodden female. But it seems to me many of us have just taken on new responsibilities — without jettisoning any old ones.

No wonder we’re all half mad with worry. No wonder alcohol consumption among middle-aged women is on the rise. Just call us generation joyless. all my female friends are in the same boat. Their lives — like those of countless women — are a relentless round of children, work, parents, children, work, husband, children, home, bills and admin.

and always, left to the last, under piles of dirty washing and homework and lost socks, is what remains of themselves. In most cases, it’s not some post-feminist super-being but a soggy, frazzled, wreck of a human, bleary-eyed and exhausted. Women on the verge, and on whose shoulders rests the entire edifice of family life.

Of course, there are times when being the centre of your own universe can be great. But it takes only one thing to fall out of place, and it can all implode. When that happens, who takes care of the carer?

What makes it worse is that, as far as society is concerned, we are all but invisible. Not only as women, too old to be of real interest in a sex-and youth-obsessed world, but also with regard to our contributions. If you added up the amount of money the sandwich generation saves the country, it would likely run into billions.

Not that you would ever know, since most government initiatives are aimed at youth and minority interest groups — as opposed to the women who are the backbone of Britain and just get on with it.