The term sandwich generation refers to middle-aged adults who have to care for both their elderly family members and their children who still live with them. This overburdened life situation aroused our interest, and we sought to find out what religious and non-religious people think about caring for elderly parents. We carried out a comparative micro-sociological study in which we asked members of the religious and non-religious sandwich generations about their decisions regarding the care of their parents. We were interested in the similarities and differences between the narratives of the two groups. Overall, we found that there was no significant difference in the willingness to help between the two groups. However, we found important differences in the details. Religious people spoke of helping their elderly parents as more emotionally charged, involving more and longer dilemmas. They were constantly ‘self-monitoring’ the quality of their helping role, doubting whether they were helping enough? In contrast, non-religious people were more rational about questions about caring for parents. Caregiving tasks were planned in advance. While the thinking of the religious group was more focused on soul-searching about good caregiving, members of the non-religious group were more interested in problem solving. It is important to stress that the difference between the two groups studied was in the attitude towards caring, not in whether one group would or would not take on the responsibility of parenting.