baby boomers ..confused

[ZackyVengeance]

how can a baby born in the early sixties be one?
baby boomer
nouninformal
plural noun: baby boomers
a person born in the years following the Second World War, when there was a temporary marked increase in the birth rate.

[mikeyboo]

Generally defined as those born in the twenty years or so after the end of WW2, hence encompassing those born between the mid forties and mid sixties.

[ZackyVengeance]

its so odd. as they seem to be painted as people have had it easy

[wettunwindee]

as they seem to be painted as people have had it easy

We did

We had it much better than our parents. We had plenty of food, we weren't conscripted for a World War. We had the NHS and other benefits should they be needed during hardship.

Many of us have done well with pensions and liquid assets as well as enjoying massive increases in house prices. Our parents tended to do well with house-price increases and leave us fair inheritances.

If we had the intelligence, we got to go to university for free without leaving with a fuck-load of debt.

Summers were long and hot. Global warming, pollution, over-population etc weren't issues.

On the whole, people were relieved that we weren't killing our young men in France and bombing our women in cities.

As much as I dislike much of the 'millennial' mindset (and that may be the grumpy fart in me talking), I think they have it tough.

I'm an mid-era baby-boomer, for what it's worth.

[peaceloveandbiscuits]

Wettun excellent post.

[MrsJayy]

Baby boomers are the devils children on mumsnet they got all the cheap houses and big pensions

[WhereYouLeftIt]

I am an early sixties baby boomer, and yes I consider I have had it easy for all the reasons given by wettunwindee.

Although I do think over-population was worried about because they didn't know the boom would end (thank you, reliable oral contraception!). IMO sci-fi authors often channel the worries of the day into their work, in a way that allows it to shed a lot of its baggage and allow it to be considered in a less emotional manner. There was a shedload of overpopulation sci-fi back then (Soylent Green, TXH 1138 etc.).

I do worry for my son's generation. They are getting royally shafted .

[PunjanaTea]

Having it easy is a bit of a loaded term. Many baby boomers will have had to face their own hardships in life, however they grew up in a time where many of the odds were in their favour as wettunwindee has outlined.

[toofarfromcivilisation]

I was really pissed off to be included in the BBC Breakfast thing this morning as a Baby Boomer! FFS I was born in 1964! I'm not retired or living in a state of financial bliss!!!

[OpalFruitsMarathonsandSpira]

More than half the baby boomers haven't reached retirement yet though, too far.

I don't judge baby boomers. It's just a fact that the odds were in their favour.

[bigmouthstrikesagain]

You can ally you self with the Gen X'ers if you are born 60's -70's I am '74 so am totally disaffected and directionless and all that ...

[PlymouthMaid1]

I don't think I should fall into the category of a boomer although being born in 1962. I will never have a good pension, am just clearing mortgage now but have sacrificed holidays etc to do so. probably was easier to buy a home but it was still a massive struggle and i didn't have any proper furniture or carpets or a very long while whereas young people I see buying now cannot contemplate that idea. I had to move a long way from my home town to be able to afford to live independently so this is not a new phenomenon.

I didn't have student debt so that was obviously good but unemployment was rising in the eighties making getting a decent start hard. Mortgage interest rates were as high as 15 percent in the Eighties and went up three times in one day memorably. I didn't live in lovely shiny halls of residence or beautiful shared houses either as many seem to now... very scabby damp bedsits with meters for fuel.

I think myself and my peers are quite trapped between elderly parents needing care/expensive care homes and student offspring needing massive support into probably their thirties. When I retire I i will get state pension only (if they haven't abolished it) as private pensions were not a thing when I was younger and at mid fifties paying in now is prohibitively expensive for any worthwhile return. I also have to work longer than originally stated (as will all of us) .

Not disputing at all that it is tough now but I am not living, or going to be living ,this gold plated secure financial life which my year of birth apparently makes everybody think I have so i would really like the boomer years to be redefined a little.

[peaceloveandbiscuits]

I was born in 1985 and apparently I'm technically a "millennial", which upsets me as I see them as the current brand of under-25s who appear entitled.

I'm still fucked, whatever label I get given.

You may be a "baby boomer" but haven't reaped the benefits, which must be galling. But I suppose it's about the opportunities open to your generation, rather than how you were personally affected.

[BastardBernie]

I was born in the 80's, what does this 'make' me?

[OpalFruitsMarathonsandSpira]

Generation Y apparently

www.careerplanner.com/Career-Articles/Generations.cfm

[Lucked]

Are gen y's not called millennials now?

[MrsJayy]

I am Generation X apparently

[lanbro]

I was born in 1980. I bought the house I live in now in my early 20s and have made good money on it. Another year or 2 I'll be mortgage free. I had a relatively cheap university education. DPs and ILs all baby boomers who we will receive a decent inheritance off. I don't consider myself hard done by, or disadvantaged. What bracket do us early 80s kids fit into?!

[PigletWasPoohsFriend]

I think the difficulty is that the definition is so broad.

Those born directly after the war for example would have had a very very different childhood (where there was rationing) to those born in the 60s

[RiverdaleJughead]

I'm technically both a Milenial and a GenZ ... the amount of shit people say about us I tend to go for my Z category ( also known as IGen or Generation Homeland). I find it a bit silly to be called a millennial when I was only born 5 years before 2000 and I'm lumped in with early 80s babies!

[RiverdaleJughead]

Especially peaceloveandbiscuits who isn't exibitig any peace or love by calling us entitled .. cheers babe I'm sure you're bloody perfect.

[peaceloveandbiscuits]

Haha, this is an excellent example of the label not fitting every single person. Sozzles.

[olderthanyouthink]

wettun thank

I'm a feckless millennial ('95) and I see that baby boomers as a group had it easier though there's always individuals who have it tough.

Technically my parents and grandparents a boomers and my parents aren't as well off as my GPs but they still have it better than me. My parents only own one house my GPS own collectively 6. I will struggle to buy half a house.

One of my nans refused to marry my grandad until he bought a house, you cants pull that sort of thing anymore.

My parents lied to the bank to get their first mortgage, can't do that anymore with banks looking at every cup of coffee you buy.

My dad has ages till he retires, I might just end up too old to be employed but never retire.

[Werkzallhourz]

I don't like the focus on generational differences in the UK because a lot of the tropes are American in origin and don't fit the British context.

For a start, Britain really didn't have a significant baby boom post war. There was a sharp rise in the birth rate in 46 and 47, but that was about it and that was compared to the very low birth rates between 39 and 45. The situation in the US was very different.

Again, Britain saw austerity and rationing until the 50s. Not so in the US. We also had significant industrial slum issues and a requirement for the state, at a time of national debt caused by the cost of the war, to provide services and facilities en masses to the populace because so much British wealth had been destroyed between 1914 and 1945. Crikey, we only finished paying off lend lease about five years ago.

Yes, the deaths of thousands of men in both the wars opened up the space for "social mobility" for those born in the 30s, 40s and 50s, but the vast majority of children born in that period grew up in rather substandard housing with no bathrooms, outside toilets and were expected to leave school at 16 to work.

Then, of course, we get to the 70s and everything falls apart.

This is massively different to the situation in the US.

[BurningBridges]

do you think there's going to be letter coming out letting us all know which one we are? And if you are on the cusp of a generation, can you choose which one you fall into? Is there any right of appeal? I don't know who to get in touch with.

[Megatherium]

But it's swings and roundabouts, isn't it? Yes, there were all those benefits described above, but there were other problems like:

• more difficult for women to have careers, especially in the professions;
  
• inadequate benefits, including maternity benefits and maternity employment protection;
  
• less job security generally;
  
• poorer health and safety protection;
  
• no adequate protection from race, sex or disability discrimination;
  
• medical science less advanced, therefore things like polio, TB, cancer with higher death rates etc;
  
• knowledge of mental illness considerably less advanced, hence people being institutionalised and given some pretty brutal treatments;
  
• higher infant mortality;
  
• no abortions;
  
• poor contraception;
  

- no acknowledgement of child abuse, hence more abusers getting away with it;

• more people leaving school at 15, fewer going into higher education;
  

etc