Did boomers get it right?

[GreyGoosehound]

I’ve lurked on several recent posts about deteriorating behaviour in schools, with increasing violence and 4 and 5 year olds who don’t have basic skills.

I’ve also seen threads and SM posts about boomers, mainly negative. But it’s also acknowledged that GenX are quite a hardy, resilient bunch.

I am generation X, and have brought up my genZ children differently to how I was raised. I was more present in their lives, made huge efforts to meet their needs in a way that my parents didn’t, as did many other parents in my age group.

You don’t need to look hard to find criticism of Millenials and GenZ, and GenAlpha (2012+) are commonly discussed as nightmare fodder.

Did the benign neglect and distanced parenting of boomers work better for growing children? Did the freedom that GenX had make a huge difference in their development?

I know there are global issues that contribute - the internet must have made a huge difference to both parenting and in child development, financially GenX had an easier time of becoming independent from parents, all this will have an effect.

I wonder if this is just a blip in human development, or how genZ and future generations will parent their children in response to how they were parented.
Thought this would make an interesting discussion.

Is this really applicable to the “boomer generation” tho?

Yes, because that was the Boomer’s parents era. It’s how they were raised and how they’d have raised their boomer kids. They didn’t have psychologists or parenting books or TV or social media back then. They’d only learn from their own experiences and wouldn’t have had anyone teaching them a better way.

I think it goes back a generation further than that, so a bit removed from the boomers. My parents are boomers and had all the antibiotics and vaccines that arrested the high rate of infant mortality. So my great grandparents generation maybe lost children, not my grandparents (silent generation). I don't recall any stories of lost great grandparents' children though.

Really? My grandparents had kids between the late 30s and late 40s. Infant mortality was between 75 per 1000 births and 100 per 1000 births. Compare that to 4 per 1000 today.

My grandparents had kids in the early 50s to late 60s. They are all dead now but could be great grandparents any moment.

Gen X with silent generation parents.

DPs were brilliant but a lot more hands off than today's parents. We were generally left to navigate our own lives - I can't remember my parents ever going into school apart from parent's evening and school plays/concerts. We navigated friendship issues ourselves, if we didn't do homework we were the ones explaining why and accepting the consequences.

I think they felt their responsibility - apart from the obvious making sure we were fed, clothed, doing OK at school, teeth cleaned etc - was ensuring we were capable of managing our own lives successfully.

One of my DBros was very into sport, and DPS encouraged and supported him but he had to make his own way to practice, he wasn't ferried around. Same with his mates.

Family holidays and weekends weren't wholly built round what the kids wanted - some beach days but plenty of walks and stuff that DPs wanted to do too. We weren't the 'be all and end all ' of our parent's lives, we were a part of a family where everyone was equally important. Our needs were always met, our wants sometimes.

We were taught manners, courtesy, told off when we did something wrong and dealt with the consequences of bad behaviour ourselves.

There wasn't a focus on our 'mental health' - we were happy most of the time, and when we weren't we got over it quick enough without our moods being pandered to.

For all the talk and openness about mental health, the current cohort seem so much more miserable than previous generations.

Exactly. ‘Boomer’ is a wide brush. My mother is a boomer but so is my husband. But my point is that they were products of their own upbringing. Children were seen and not heard. Their feelings were never considered. It was only around the 1970s/80s that people began to even consider ‘parenting styles’ and their effects on children. And even then it would only have been the most educated and enlightened adults who knew about these things. We can’t blame an older generation for their shit parenting when they knew no different, and couldn’t have. It was only a generation or two back from my grandparents that six year olds were being sent down the pit.

There wasn't a focus on our 'mental health' - we were happy most of the time, and when we weren't we got over it quick enough without our moods being pandered to.

Good for you , a lot of kids weren't.

So true. I wouldn't say I was happy, just no-one cared so you found a way. My mother did say she used to worry about me sometimes looking sullen and sad when I was a pre-teen but no-one cared to find out why. So I kept waking up each day, going through the motions, going to sleep at night, because I had no other option.

I don't think there's that much variation. All children now are spoilt compared to my time. In fact, anyone who varies too much can have social services called. What was 'normal' in my time is no neglect. The new norm becomes a must.

How does being ferried around and having their lives organised for them make them resilient? It's the opposite surely.

In my experience, it's not true that nobody cared. It's just that they didn't think something should be done about it. Shrinks were for mad people so they didn't necessarily jump to the thought of getting therapy for dark moods like we might do now.

gen x have such middle child vibes!

also, every generation always complains about the youff, even in the 1700s and ancient egypt. Youre not special for thinking you did it better.

however if there is a problem with the youff, lets look to the parents and grandparents who raised them as the generators of said problems.

anyway enjoy your nostalgia and arrogance, as many have before you and many will after

Being told to suck it up from a very young age showed me no-one actually cared. Oh, my mother did take my to a psychologist when I was 14 because of the fearful way I reacted to my father's rages. I was the one with the problem. Even when the psychologist told her I wasn't and my father was the one with the problem, I was left to spend my entire teen and most of the first two decades of adulthood believing that my mother blamed me for my father's behaviour. She told me this later. Is it any wonder some of my generation did an about face on how to parent? My kids will never talk about me or their childhood the way I feel about mine.

"I took my GCSEs in the early 90s, and A levels after that. I was a stresshead anyway but don’t remember having any pressure put on me as a teenager, no more than any other year at secondary, and certainly not as much as my children had throughout their school lives from year 5 as they were prepared for yr 6 SATs and right up to GCSEs and beyond. The pressure on them at every step was enormous and, particularly with dd and many of her friends, put a huge shadow over them throughout secondary school."

I had NO homework in primary school and minimal in secondary. I live abroad now and when I tell people I only did 3 subjects between 16 and 18 and only 3 lessons a day in upper sixth, they're shocked. Uni was about 12 hours a week!
(I guess this explains why I'm not successful now, but I wasn't the only one with such a light scheduled youth).

In my boomer parents' time, however, they had a lot of homework. Things go around in circles I think.

"Glue sniffing was an issue and children died. "

It was overhyped though. It didn't affect anyone I know.
Remember the Adrian Mole episode when he tried it with his toy aeroplane?

There was a period when you could find glue bags around the place outside. Also know of some people in my boomer parents' generation who had issues with other substances.

"Heck, we had a 'remedial' class in each year at High School full of kids who could barely write or spell in their teens. Lots who had learning difficulties just stuck in a class of supposed 'no hopers' "

They weren't treated as no-hopers by the teachers who supported them though. They got special remedial lessons and much more attention as they were smaller groups.

Suspension and exclusion were commonplace. "

I would consider this a good thing because at least teachers had something they could do about bad behaviour. Same with sending a child to stand outside the class. I don't believe in corporal punishment, but there has to be some kind of sanction.

The same teachers who threw things at kids, smacked them with hands/rulers/belts/straps, made them write lines, humiliated children, made them stand with their nose in a ring of chalk on the board? At least at my school. My DH has similar stories.

@Gwenhwyfar showing they cared , even without treatment, would've gone a long way. Listening , understanding, acknowledging,supporting . That took no effort or resources.

Because neighbours or school would call social services or police if OP let children roam and look after themselves like Gen X children did.

• "picky eater? Go to bed hungry"

I wish! Had to sit there for hours until I eat it (or found some way around it). Would have preferred to go hungry.

Yes, they had most mod cons. Maybe not a dishwasher, but fridges, washing machines and ovens. Microwaves a bit later.

Someone said above the boomers' parents were born during Victoria's reign. I think that can only be true for a minority. My grandparents were born in the teens and twenties of the last century.

No because by the time I was at secondary, corporal punishment had been outlawed. I do remember some of it at primary.
I doubt they had massive discipline problems in the remedial classes as they were very small groups.

The situation I am describing was in the 1980s.