Aging Out: The Hidden Cost of Caring Across Generations

Released July 14, 2026 from Flatiron Books, Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old is Lucy Schiller's stunning and deeply personal investigation of the American eldercare industry. As the LA Times noted just yesterday, Schiller — a millennial caregiver — writes with a reporter's precision and a daughter's heart about the invisible labor of caring for aging parents while raising the next generation.

The Sandwich Generation Squeeze

Schiller identifies the "care sandwich" — the financial and emotional vise that grips the 29% of American caregivers who are simultaneously responsible for children under 18 and parents over 65. In a 2026 economy where childcare costs have hit record highs and eldercare remains a patchwork of Medicare gaps and private-pay chaos, Aging Out is essential reading for any family navigating the care economy. The NYT calls it "compelling and stubbornly human."

Lessons for the Sandwich Generation:

• The Care Continuum: Understanding how childcare and eldercare are not separate crises but a single economic challenge.
• System Navigation: Practical strategies for threading the needle between Medicare, private insurance, and family resources.
• Community as Infrastructure: Building networks of mutual aid that span generations and reduce individual burden.

The ChildCost Verdict

Aging Out is the definitive book on the caregiving crisis of the 2020s. Schiller proves that the way we care for the old shapes the way we raise the young — and that both require a revolution in how we think about family economics.