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.

i don’t think any one generation ‘got it right’ when raising children.

Each generation of parents does the best they can faced with whatever the current circumstances are.

Better to help out than judge.

The generation older than the Boomers were far less toxic, selfish and unpleasant.

Here you go again. What does this mean? Where are you getting these generalisations from?

What could they realistically have done about your being bullied. If they'd gone into school you'd have been known forever as the girl whose parents came to school to talk about her being bullied. Schools didn't take bullying seriously in those days unless there was sustained violence.

Remove the child from the environment!

How could anybody send their child into an environment where they know this is happening? That is an enormous fail in the most basic duty of a parent: to ensure their child's safety.

Copious social research on their attitudes, behaviours and opinions, which they maintain even in the face of all scientific evidence to the contrary.

Have you discovered google?

Yes, amazingly even us ancient Boomers know about Google. I would really like to see the academic research that labels an entire generation 'toxic, selfish and unpleasant', but I suspect I won't find it by using those search terms.

We've had a member of our family of that generation announce to us that she has no empathy, as though it is something to be proud of. And advise us all to be more like her.

Verging on psychopathy. And such people that age always, always use this word "resilience" to describe toxic behaviour, lack of basic support and understanding, having no empathy, and to justify utter selfishness. Subjecting children in traumatic situations, or even leaving them just feeling uncared for snd to fend for themselves from a young age, is not building "resilience". They seem to think this word is a get out of jail free card to ease their guilt. It is not.

Most of my contemporaries parents are 'boomers'. Many of them rented until early middle age, no overseas holidays, scrimped and saved for 2nd and 3rd hand cars, had to deal with gross misogyny and sexism in the workplace, fought for equal pay and decent working conditions. They're doing better in late middle/old age but I sure wouldn't begrudge them that.

Our extended family kids are millenials/gen z and with few exceptions are on the housing ladder in their twenties, making multiples of the highest salary I've ever earned and have chances and opportunities my DPs and me and DH/DBro, sis and in-laws could only have dreamed of at their age. We celebrate their success.

My mother and mother in law were strong unpleasant women. Their men did as they were told. One was born in 1914 the other in 1935. They both raised boomer children.

The older one had a lot of her own money so had nanny, cleaner. Her husband was the one who spent time with the children. Who were pretty neglected looking back. No parents evenings for them.

The younger mother much less money a veered between helicopter parent and not knowing where the children were until dusk. , father worked long hours. But again no parents evenings.

Both sets showed zero interest in their children's education.

Boomer parents were the first ones to show a flicker of interest education wise. Still the children had a lot of personal freedom. They had bikes, scooters and roller skates only coming home for meals in the summer. Not dissimilar from their parents.

Somewhere along the road things changed. Perhaps roads were busier so more dangerous. Everyone became more risk averse children were considered targets of nasty adults who would kidnap/murder them. The media warned parents daily, schools also. The internet became a bad thing, yet children were bought computers to play games on.

I don't know what kind of children millennials will raise.

I see a lot of kids with problems coming into the place where I work, and I can assure you that there were no kids with the problems some of them have when I was at school. It's terrifying to see just how many issues some kids have these days, and there doesn't seem to be any understanding of why.

I'm a boomer, and while I don't have children all my friends do and their children are all extremely nice, well adjusted, people with no mental health problems at all. None of them think their parents got anything wrong, and they certainly aren't bringing up their own children to think the world revolves around them and their wants.

Why do so many posters think that the way they were parented was the same as the way everyone was parented? There were a lot of awful parents back then, and there were a lot of fantastic parents - just as there are now.

Anyone who thinks that every modern parent is doing it right is very naive.

However parents in earlier times didn't run to the school every time their child was told off, or they felt some other child was getting something their child wasn't, nor did they spend time micro managing their lives. I for one am grateful, and would have hated it if my parents had been overly involved in my life.

This

Why do so many posters think that the way they were parented was the same as the way everyone was parented? There were a lot of awful parents back then, and there were a lot of fantastic parents - just as there are now.

You're assuming we're basing this just on our own experiences .

Anyone who thinks that every modern parent is doing it right is very naive.

No one has said or thinks that.

However parents in earlier times didn't run to the school every time their child was told off, or they felt some other child was getting something their child wasn't, nor did they spend time micro managing their lives. I for one am grateful, and would have hated it if my parents had been overly involved in my life.

There you go generalising yourself. It's also interesting you're equating love,support and care with over involvement. For the record though, from nursery to y6 I only went to talk to the school 4 times. One of those was because my child was inappropriately touched by another one.

Oh, I definitely agree on bullying. Many things have gotten better over the past decades.

A bullied child changing schools can easily be bullied again. Bullying was common in those days and victims lose confidence, sometimes attracting more bullying. I'm not in any way blaming the victim though.

If you think Gen X were thought well of when they were teenagers, you have a very rose tinted view of the 80s and 90s.

According to the media, we were all lazy wasters, unemployed, cynical, miserable, and probably drug addicts (grunge, heroin chic, Trainspotting, rave culture, crusties, etc). So many articles wondering where parents had gone wrong to have raised such a useless, lazy, unambitious generation.

Equally, the generation above Boomers (the wartime generation) were too strait-laced, rigid, disciplinarian, and had no creativity. Pretty much the only generation who had it right were Boomers. Coincidentally, the journalists writing these articles were all Boomers.

Of course now Gen X have grown up and are the generation writing these articles, it turns out that Gen Xers were actually the best generation all along, and Millennials are snowflakes and Boomers are hoarding generational wealth by buying cheap houses and having great pensions. Strange, right?

Boomers weren't strait laced we had the pill and were free sexually. We had drugs, booze, partied hard. Paradoxically still adhered to marriage before kids but that was before benefits existed.

A woman still couldn't get a mortgage though when I was getting married. Building society manager refused to take my salary into account. We had a 50% deposit on our first home.

How very true.

Very well put

Yes. "When I was your age, we had real problems to worry about like equal pay, not whether we had to wear high heels."

I suspect that the "helicopter parenting" is in part to prevent sexual abuse. It's a lot harder for a molester to harm a child if one of the parents is constantly chaperoning.

I have to say I'm not entirely sure what your point is. And as for helicopter parenting being about preventing sexual abuse, words fail me. Helicopter parenting is the parent following the child up the stairs of the slide, heading into school to make sure their child gets the Virgin Mary role in the infant nativity.

My point is that people of my mum's Boomer generation (but not my mum) were saying things like "she should just wear the heels, it's no big deal" instead of recognising the courage of the woman in protesting publically.

"Helicopter parenting" isn't clearly defined anywhere. Is the parent who stays for the whole of football practice instead of dropping off and picking up a helicopter parent? Because staying for the whole practice is a very effective molester deterrent. It was this that I was thinking of: the parent is always there, like a police "eye in the sky" helicopter.

heading into school to make sure their child gets the Virgin Mary role in the infant nativity

These are more accurately known as "stage mothers".

No but you've just said effectively that it's not worth trying, which feels a lot being that child that was told to 'just ignore it' and had to deal with it themselves. Even if it didn't help, the effort might mean a lot to a child and they'd remember you cared enough to try to help them (and remember for the rest of their lives how you responded to that, they will).

'My point is that people of my mum's Boomer generation (but not my mum) were saying things like "she should just wear the heels, it's no big deal" instead of recognising the courage of the woman in protesting publically.'

Were they saying that? Any more than women say it today? Well, obviously not all of them were - your Mum wasn't - my Mum wasn't (although she wasn't a 'boomer'). There were some truly courageous women protesting in the sixties, seventies and eighties - protesting against centuries of misogynism, gradually overturning inbuilt societal prejudices.

I've had conversations fairly recently with female work colleagues that have left me gobsmacked - specifically recently about Luis Rubiales. I was pretty shocked by the number of young women making comments like 'he was just thrilled they'd won', 'he was just in the moment', 'she made such a fuss about nothing'. What's happened? Why the retrograde steps? So many young women with circumspect role models.