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.

And?

Ah my parents were the Greatest Generation then? I wonder why it's called that. Some of those suffered two world wars.

Isn't it nice that teacher, SLT, and governor attitudes towards bullying have improved so much since then? It's not just parenting that has changed, but attitudes across the entire teaching profession about safeguarding, IMO for the better, because those Gen Xers and older who were abused at school have spoken up.

We weren't raised to actually be resilient we were raised to put up and shut up.

True resilience looks like that receptionist who got fired for turning up in flats and went to the press with it, making life better for all women subject to workplace dress codes in the process. She hit back in a way that was smart as well as hard. Many boomers and older would have called her "entitled" and told her to put on the heels and be grateful that she had a job.

https://www.tuc.org.uk/workplace-guidance/case-studies/how-fords-striking-women-drove-equal-pay-act

https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/hulls-headscarf-heroes-local-women-whose-relentless-fight-protects-fisherman-today-122960

'put up and shut up' eh?

For starters, they could have listened to my repeated requests to change schools. There were plenty of options around us. Even if it didn't help, at least they'd have tried and I'd have remembered that they heard me and tried to help. An effort beyond, "Just ignore it," would have meant something.

When you're an adult, you're allowed to do that sort of thing. As children it was definitely a case of put up and shut up.

But your example of resilience was of an adult, not a child.

If it's so much better now, with the advanced, so much better parenting, why are there so many children who seem incapable of coping with even the slightest setback. Why are there so many depressed children waiting for mental health assessment? Why so many children who are disruptive, even violent, in the classroom and home?

I'm not the poster that originally made those comments you responded to with your links.

Sorry, yes. But the rest of my post? Why is that?

Gone too far in the other direction maybe? Children who were raised without sensitivity overcompensating?

There are other things that could be considered but I suspect, in general, some things are better, some are worse, as is going to be the case with the next generation, and the one after that.

That's depressing isn't it - we'll spend generations flip-flopping between too strict and removed, and too lenient and helicoptering, and it's the children who suffer.

Why are there so many depressed children waiting for mental health assessment? Why so many children who are disruptive, even violent, in the classroom and home?

Normally because of a combination of complex and varied reasons. Parenting is just a small part of it.

What really bugs me about these arguments is, is the pretence it wasn't happening back "then" . What about all the drop outs, the addicts, the alcoholics, the teen pregnancies or very young marriages(especially the age gap marriages/with a teacher or another man in "power"), the ones that just disappeared, the ones you heard about and never saw, the ones who killed themselves , the ones who self harmed and self medicated and so on. It wasn't fucking sunshine and rainbows.

Never mind the violence in schools. It was definitely there, just never witnessed or acknowledged because we were never supervised. It just wasn't aimed as often at teachers so not their problem. Plus they abused kids themselves so of course it wasn't a big deal.

Plus CAHMS only started in 1990 because people finally acknowledged there was a need, evolving into the 4 tier framework in 1995. Took a while to get off the grounds and start working. Never mind the fact that there was still a stigma around mental health issues and neurodivergence, there still is today.

Most people though, tend to be somewhere in the middle. I work with children and the numbers of neglectful/abusive parents are fairly equal to the numbers of "that" parent. The majority are your average, reasonable parent.

I felt like I maybe went too far in the other direction to compensate for the insensitive parenting I experienced. But my children are in their 20s now and so I was able to talk to them about this topic and tell them that I wondered if I'd over compensated and that hadn't been such a good thing. I was all about the support and feelings. Their feedback was that they didn't think so and that they felt very positive about their childhood, had always felt supported, thought it was beneficial to them and that I'd got it right. That doesn't mean they had all the power though, I was still the parent. This wasn't that long ago, just a few months ago, so it was reassuring to get their feedback since I'd been questioning myself.

Police say they are uncovering a hidden “epidemic” of paedophile abuse in the 1970s and 1980s, with thousands of allegations leading to convictions against people who abused their power to attack children.
New figures seen by the Guardian show that 4,024 allegations led to guilty verdicts at court after police investigations since 2014 into decades-old child sex offences.
Officers say hundreds of offenders, including teachers, religious workers, youth and care workers, thought they had got away with their crimes. Many victims have been traumatised, and some have killed themselves or been left with severe mental health problems.

The national operation coordinating claims of non-recent child sexual abuse began in 2014 and is called Operation Hydrant. It began after the Jimmy Savile scandal prompted more victims to come forward.
Since Hydrant’s launch, 7,000 suspects have been identified, with 11,346 allegations of attacks received from 9,343 victims, all concerning sexual abuse of children. Some claims date back to the 1940s.
Of the alleged offences, 47% were not investigated by police, in over a third of these cases because the suspect was dead. In a fifth of discontinued claims, suspects could not be identified. More than one-third of the allegations resulted in convictions at court, with 6% resulting in acquittal.

The good old days.

To be fair, I think this is something parents still have to be vigilant about, and always will.

My MIL had a 60s free range childhood, out playing with friends etc... except some of her annecdotes end with her or a friend being SA. There was defo a dark side to being so independant.

Fwiw my boomer parents and those of my friends were not at all like described here. Very attentive, lots of activities, mum always around. It's a WC area but we all seemed to have loads of scheduled things (90s childhood).

@ForestBather of course not, I'm just sick and tired of this narrative that it was fine and dandy and x,y,z didn't happen or if it did it was an anomaly or a one off.
Even more so, when there were parents that did care and were involved and actually parented so it was possible and it was accessible. You just had to want to.

I think the Boomers did their best in difficult & unprivileged circumstances. Sorry if this offends anyone.

Hilarious. They are literally the most privileged generation that has ever lived. And by far the most entitled, self-righteous and incapable of self-reflection.

Ageist nonsense. How could that even work? Every single individual born between 1st January 1946 and 31st December 1964 was as you describe? Is everybody born in the same year or decade as you exactly like you? Did they all grow up with the same amount of privilege? Of course not.

Same here.

And aren't Boomers the main generation with estranged kids and they just 'have no idea why'?

@ForestBather indeed. You've just described my mother.

Ageist nonsense. How could that even work? Every single individual born between 1st January 1946 and 31st December 1964 was as you describe? Is everybody born in the same year or decade as you exactly like you? Did they all grow up with the same amount of privilege? Of course not.

It's not "ageist". I wasn't referring to "all elderly people", was I? The generation older than the Boomers were far less toxic, selfish and unpleasant.

Your comment is ridiculous. The thread, and all generational analysis on an economic or social basis is by definition composed or generalisations, averages and trends. Nobody in the entire thread has claimed that all people of any generation follow the general trend/ characteristics/ norms that apply to that generation. Are you attempting to imply that no social or economic generational analysis is valid because there are outliers? Bizarre.