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.

Most Millennials have Boomer parents. Some Gen X also do because the Boomer generation was a rather long one, but more Gen X had Silent Generation parents.

Boomers largely had the Greatest Generation as parents and also experienced a shift in parenting towards being more engaged and affectionate with your children thanks to influential new publications (such as Dr. Benjamin Spock’s in 1946).

However the current issues with Gen Alpha are more to do with technology access and both parents having to work long hours instead of spending time with their children.

I was a child in the 60's and 70's, and I was brought up to have a respect for authority, to pay attention at school, obey the rules and to do as I was told. I was also taught that you should display politeness, courtesy and good manners at all times, and to not be a nuisance or an annoyance to grown-ups.

On the whole, I'd say that almost all of my friends and fellow school pupils were brought up in much the same way. Incidentally, we all lived on a huge council estate in a new town.

The way children behave today could not be more different.

I remember being very much left to my own devices, along with many of my peers.

Apart from weekly music lessons there was no structured time outside of school, no entertainment provided. We had family holidays but they were what my parents wanted, there was no thought about what us children might enjoy. My parents lived their lives, they loved us, but beyond feeding us and occasionally asking if homework was done there wasn’t the interaction that children nowadays appear to get from their parents.

I have less time than my parents had, but I have had closer relationships with my children, and have spent far more time with them, valuing them, listening to them and caring for them.

This seems to be a feature of many of my GenX peers.

Quite, just because you didn't know about it in previous generations, doesn't mean it wasn't there. It clearly was

I agree with the poster above who pointed not just to screens, but how life is presented on social media.

We’re all being bombarded with images of perfection, achieved with seemingly very little effort, which can make real life feel so terribly disappointing.

The perception of unfairness is baked in, and the response is often to expect the world, complain and feel sorry for ourselves rather than doing something about it. It is a bad (and unattractive) outcome.

In comparison, 1980s childhoods involved very little by way of material possessions - we’d aspire to things in the Argos catalogue and only get new stuff on birthdays or Christmas. Parents didn’t generally direct play. We’d be endlessly bored (and therefore creative/bookish) and anything outside of the norm - both in terms of parental attention or possession - was a genuine treat.

I think my parents judged well how to deal with the serious emotional issues, but would find a way to make a joke of or casually dismiss minor complaints: “shurrup, you great Mary” and “life is unfair” were common responses to minor gripes or sibling niggles.

We didn’t expect to be happy all the time, but did manage to find spikes of happiness with relatively little investment.

I try to adopt a similar approach to my kids, but I feel the peer pressure - as a mother - to know what their homework is, to enrol them in endless after school activities, to spend every weekend doing stuff for them, and to organise extravagant parties. It is hard not to feel bad about a more relaxed approach when everyone else is helicoptering around us.

But if surely your generations upbringing was so amazing and you are all such amazing people, you'd have had kids in the 80-00's who you imbued with the same ideals as your perfect childhood and they'd be having babies over the last 20 years who also were raised with these perfect standards.

The fact approaches to parenting have changed significantly suggests that lots of people don't think the childhoods they had were perfect.

The "we were raised so much better" arguement just seems like one to justify being able to hit kids again.

my mum was a teacher throughout the 60's, 70's and 80's and I can assure you the kids then were just as awful as now. As I can also attest being a child of the 70's.

More people are dying of suicide now than in previous generations which doesn't really tally with the 'we just didn't know about it' line.

The "we were raised so much better" arguement just seems like one to justify being able to hit kids again

I've read that post a couple of times and I can't see anything about it being 'one to justify hitting kids again.' Have I missed a subliminal message?

Poster didn't say 'we were raised so much better,' either. Just differently.

One thing I find strange about many parents today is that they seem to be subconsciously designing an environment where their kids are dependent on them. Friends always turn up at my house with minimal toys (if any) for their kids. When I was a kid I'd always have sticker books or a novel (depending on age) or some kind of game packed with me so I could walk off and entertain myself when I got bored. My friends' kids never seem to have that so they quickly get restless and start needing adult attention. I'm genuinely thinking of getting a toy box with all of this stuff in my house because no one ever brings it with them. I don't get it.

I don't think so. I had a good childhood - not perfect by any means, but I have good relationships with my parents, and have done well in life with a good career and a solid marriage.

It still took me a long time to value my mum's opinion on childrearing, in the face of Performance Attachment Parenting that you are bombarded with when you are pregnant and have young children. The difference was that I live 400 miles away from my mum, and the internet is everywhere, and the dominant cultural narrative was "don't let your child cry for even a second! Formula is next to CHILD ABUSE! do ALL the ACTIVITIES!" and suchlike.

I don’t think that’s right. I think we’re all susceptible to peer pressure and modern guidance about what is the best way of parenting, and each generation thinks it knows better than the previous one.

The current approach doesn’t seem to be working and it is healthy, as the OP is doing, to take a step back and assess fairly whether we could learn from what seems now to be a more successful model.

Where did @fluffycloudalert mention or condone hitting children?

No evidence except decades to centuries of the study of psychology vs one book which I haven't read but from the blurb doesn't say what you think it says.

Telling somebody not to feel something is not a helpful way to deal with emotions that you as their parent should be helping them to deal with (not wallow in - work through).

In comparison, 1980s childhoods involved very little by way of material possessions - we’d aspire to things in the Argos catalogue and only get new stuff on birthdays or Christmas.

@ComfyBoobs Yes, I absolutely loved browsing through the Argos catalogue, I remember really wanting a particular Cubic Zirconia ring. 🤣
Catalogues in general were great to look through, but you were seldom allowed to order anything. Strictly Christmas and birthdays as you say.

Hmm I saw a video of a therapist saying that most of her clients were Gen X.

people didn't talk about it then, DH's grandfather died by suicide and no one in the family ever mentioned it.

It was considered shameful and had also been illegal up to 1961

I have just commented on same post!!

Also...aren't 'kids today' being raised by the children of boomers? So what is it that was lacking in the way they were parented that they are trying to make up for?

This is what I want to understand.
I made deliberate choices with my own children based on how my parents brought me up. At the time I started having children I believed my parents methods (benign neglect) were not ways to repeat, so I was much more there for my children, more involved, more caring. In doing so though I don’t think I did them favours in terms of their resilience.

I’m not advocating a return to spanking children, but I wonder if children need far more freedom to sort themselves out than they’re now getting? Parenting has changed, but internet has also undermined parenting as well. If mum says no there are hundreds of internet contacts that now turn round and tell a child that mum is an abusive arse who doesn’t love them.

@TinkerTiger That might be partly because we’re middle-aged and feeling burnt out! Perhaps we’re also more likely to be able to afford therapy at this point in our lives?
It’s not cheap so ppl just starting out/ in the midst of raising a young family probably can’t afford it.

I would’ve hated my childhood to be like that of many of today’s kids. I played outdoors most of the time; learnt social rules by being with other children; got lots of exercise.

My parents would play board games with us, and took us camping a lot, but there was grown up time in the evenings because we had bedtimes (they pretended not to notice that I read in bed).

I’m not surprised that many children suffer with MH issues now- lack of resilience is high (I work with children).

My feeling is that not being able to problem solve in practical ways is actually harmful. Computer games don’t cut it, children are less sociable in real life because of them.

I'm GenX and my parents are Silent Generation. Like others, I remember running wild - there was a gang of us who would hang around the nearby industrial estate and, amongst other things, play hide 'n' seek in gigantic concrete cylinders and clamber all over them. So dangerous! No after-school activities here, but it was due to having no money for them. I was green with envy at friends who were doing majorettes and disco-dancing lessons. My mum couldn't drive and my dad worked shifts so a lot of the time I was just hanging around the house and wondering wtf to do. My friends were in the next village and until I got a part-time job there was no spare cash for buses. A lot of time was spent feeling intensely bored and lonely and I remember how thoroughly shit it was.

Consequently, I don't want that for my teen DD. I'm very aware I feel anxious about her social interactions and ensuring she has all the opportunities to see friends and do things so I'm forever taking her places. I let more things slide than my own would regarding her interactions with me and her dad. However, I'm not a pushover by any means and do have high standards for behaviour and effort at school, and I'm way more hands-on and emotionally available than my own parents. I would have died rather than talk to them about my problems. But now, as an adult myself, I see that they were doing their best in the only way they knew how to do.

Every generation has its battles to fight. Our DPs (who if you're a Gen X were either the Silent Generation or Boomers), were raised during times of quite severe austerity and deprivation during the war and postwar years. They were raised to be tough and uncomplaining and were expected to be 'seen and not heard'. And they didn't always make good DPs. How many of us were smacked, hit, yelled at, sent to our rooms without food and told to just get on with things when we needed help?

I think social media, smart phones, ipads and 24/7 scrolling entertainment that can be carried around has a lot to answer for with the problems of DC and young people now. None of us in Gen X had that. We grew up in a simpler time, a time when we could make mistakes, when the educational pressures were much less than they are now. I'm not surprised that young people have issues with their mental health. And the pandemic was an absolute headfuck for young people - just at the point where they were taking those all-important exams and supposed to be heading out into the world as independent adults, they were forced back into the family home, stuck with their families 24/7, unable to go out and see their friends, participate in the normal rites of passage that mark the end of school, start of uni, end of uni, first jobs, first flatmates, etc.

My parents had me later in life and were 40+ when I was born. I had my dd when I was 36 and DH and I brought her up with those same values we were brought up with. I'm inordinately proud of the lovely young woman she has become.

I am also aware by the time I got to my late teens, that things had become far more lax when it came to parenting children younger than me.

If you ask me, it is the Thatcher 'Yuppie' generation and the way they brought up their children which is to blame for the current mess.