I was reacting specifically to the person talking about having a northern boomer childhood and explaining to them that people born 10-15 years after they did experienced the exact same things, probably worse at times. What they didn’t have was the things that statistically boomers benefited from as a generation, but were removed for people who came along after them. Things have gotten even harder for the generations after mine, and if I was a child now, apart from the coal fire and access to food banks rather than starvation for a few days when the money ran out, I don’t think my childhood would have changed very much at all. What would have changed is the opportunities available to kids exactly like me.
For example Alevel provision in order to go to university. Kids 6 years older than me had access to a 6th form at my school, a 20 minutes walk from my house. By the time I came along, that was removed, but there was a community college an hours bus journey away and I was eligible for a bus pass. For kids now, there are no A level providers at all in that local Authority. Kids have no choice but to go to schools and colleges 4-5 miles away with no help with transportation.
Once at University, those older than me had access to full grants, housing benefit and job seekers during the holidays. For me, those grants turned into partial loans with no access to outside help and left me with £5 a month for food ( officially I was not allowed to work during my degree, but I had no choice). For kids just like me now, they have to take out £9k loans for tuition fees and then further loans for maintenance that don’t even cover half the rent in most student accommodation. They then leave with tens of thousands of debt hanging over every thing they do for most of their lives unless they get a very high paying job.
Obviously, we’re all aware of the issues with rental accommodation, hefty deposits if they do somehow manage to earn enough to buy a house, childcare through the roof, education for their kids failing, and on and on and on. All of those things that kids like me, with parents who need our financial help to survive rather than being able to help us at all have to navigate completely on their own. The safety nets have all been removed or drastically reduced.
There are lots of boomers, who having upbringings in poverty, but managed to work hard and now live middle class lifestyles don’t seem to understand that the ladder was pulled up behind them in lots of ways. Yes, they had it hard, but if they attempted to do the exact same thing 10/20/30 years later, they’d discover how things got progressively harder for children just like them.
Our grandparents, the silent generation and below, who lived through 2 world wars, understood this and fought for things such as the welfare state and the NHS so life would be better for everyone’s children, not just their own. Some of their children however, as a vocal minority seem to spend their lives thinking that as they had it hard, why shouldn’t everyone else?