To think the babyboomers have had it a lot easier than the next generation?

[DarlingDuck]

In terms of house prices, uni fees, pensions and retirement.

I'm 30 and don't know any people my age who own their own homes unless they were substantially subsidised by their parents. All my friends have uni fees to pay off and a lot of them struggled/are struggling to find work even with a degree.

Am a bit jealous of my parents generation... Had a major pang when I heard the over 65's own 85% of the UK's property, AIBU?

I think it is a lot different with house prices today and a lot of older people dont get that. Here a 2 bed flat is 12 times my husbands income. We have to do it and we are lucky to have a property but that is ridiculous when you think about it.

There is no way on earth you could take 8 years off with your children like granny23. It just wouldnt be even concievable for many of my generation to take time off to bring up children.

I think you're being a bit whingy. If there is a generation that had it easier it's not the baby boomers. The generation that has had the easiest time so far are those between forty and fifty.

All mod cons: the opening up of markets and travel: free uni education and grant: all the benefits of increased sexual and social equality: and the true beneficiaries of the hosue price boom.

However don't whinge too soon: that's only so far. This is the sqeezed generation facing pension depletion, care fees for two generations, loss of house price boom inheritance, university fees and and continued significant financial support for their children.

I think our children have it toughest - those now teenagers.

granny 23, not going to respond to all your points, but I find it rather amusing that in defence of how tough your generation has had it you state that you saved enought to put your DDs on the housing ladder before they were 20!! How many people can afford to do that then or now? Also so sorry that you have to pay income tax, but I believe the personal allowance is something like £9,900 if you are 65+? Not bad on top of a state pension I suggest.

you cant blame a previous generation for the problems now yes my parents own a nice 4 double bedroom semi detached [ built in the fifties so lovely large rooms and garden] but they struggled for years they are comfortable now but only after retiring plus they were born during the war years they did nt have the advantage of central heating television with hundreds of channels[ maybe thats not such an advantage] automatic washing machines internet i could go on and on everybody is struggling with the recession but things willget better eventually

Just been re-reading some of the above.

The baby boomers that had it all were the ones that went to university. The grant was ample to live off, and in those days most people lived in cateered halls so did not live on potatos. The students I knew had plenty of money for a social life and their parents contributed nothing. They could and did sign on the dole and claim during the Easter and the long summer holidays when their non student peers worked 8 to 5. The rest of their generation worked from 15 or 16 and they were the majority.

I don't think most people of the previous generation had it easy - there was still rationing in force when my Mum was born in 1950 and the seventies, with it's government enforced 3-day weeks, rolling blackouts and strikes was no better.

I am looking to those days for inspiration on how to live my own life - they didn't moan, they just got on with the business of thriftily feeding and clothing their families and making the best of what they had.

I think there are the 'lucky ones' in every generation.

If I was the jealous type I could moan about,
Todays low interest rates, because we paid such high rates.
The fact that we never had the option of any pre-school care apart from 'play groups' staffed by mums in a cold church hall.
We didn't have tax credits.
DC clothes and shoes were very expensive. I am paying no more for baby things for my GC than I did for my own.
Married women needed their husbands permission to open a bank account.
I am not at all jealouse of all the 'stuff' internet, ipods, skytv etc.

I can remember the 3 day week and blackouts. I came home from school, freezing cold with wet shoes and the power had gone off at 4pm. We had sanwiches and hot soup (mum had put in a flask before the power went off), and then I went to bed and tried to do my homework by tourch light. I only had one pair of shoes so I wore them wet the next day.

Oh and believe me people did moan!

yes i remember the three day week too - remember sitting by candles in front of the open fire

and also remember the mad scramble for candles when the lights went off :)

I am not at all jealouse of all the 'stuff' internet, ipods, skytv etc.

nor me, i had way more fun growing up - even without 56 channels on telly or even a phone in the house

I'd happily pay 15% interest if my house was only a third of the price.

My parents who both left school with minimal qualifications managed to buy a 3 bed detached (their first house) on just my Dad's salary. I don't know anyone in my group of friends who was able to buy a house on a single salary. y 15% interest if my house was only a third of the price.

My parents who both left school with minimal qualifications managed to buy a 3 bed detached (their first house) on just my Dad's salary. I don't know anyone in my group of friends who was able to buy a house on a single salary.

YABU as you are only focussing on specific things.

I think the middle class baby boomers had it easier (remember the middle class when they were young was a small proportion of the population). Things that were worse:

1. Disabled children and adults were routinely locked up for life in large institutions where they had little or no freedom.

1. Domestic violence was seen by most as an issue to be sorted out between husband and wife. Women fleeing DM with children often literally had nowhere to go - they were seen as making themselves voluntarily homeless. As a result many of the early refuges had mothers and children sleeping on floors as they were loathe to turn away desperate women because of lack of space.

1. Racism was accepted by most white people and was common place.

1. Women earned less legally and there was no maternity leave at all until the 70's. Many women could legally not work in certain jobs after they got married.

1. Getting a mortgage was extremely difficult. You needed a long banking history and references from your employer. And in the 80's house prices went sky high, interest rates were very high and many people were in negative equity or had their houses repossessed. Repossessions now are still not as high as they were then.

1. Many elements of health care that are routine now didn't exist. So people would die of health problems that are now routinely treated. Ideas around children in hospital were old fashioned with many parents only being able to visit their children for a few hours a day. Siblings usually were not allowed to visit at all.

1. Corporal punishment at school was routine and only 3% of people went to university. That is why university was free.

1. Until the 80's many many families lived in houses with no bathroom and a shared outside toilet. This was fairly normal then.

1. There was until the mid to late 80's very little help for abused children. Childline was launched as a result of a feature Thats Life did on child abuse. They, unusually in those days, had a phone line that after the programme they said abused children could ring for help. In that first evening they had 50,000 calls from children.

10. Being gay was beyond the pale and discrimination and attacks were rife. It was legal to sack someone for being gay and many gay people were sacked or evicted from rented accommodation purely for being gay.

11. From the 70's manufacturing jobs began to go with shipyards and large manufacturers closing down. Many of the men employed in this work (it was mainly men) were made redundant and struggled to find any job until they eventually retired.

12. There was a huge stigma to being a single mother with for example neighbours refusing to talk to or have anything to do with single mothers. Their children were called bastards and looked down upon. And yes I know there still is some stigma, but it really is nothing like it was then. And there was a huge stigma to being a divorcee - so many women put up with terrible married lives as they felt they had no choice. Divorce is soraing amongst the baby boomers now.

And I could go on and on. A free university education and relatively cheap housing to buy, only benefitted a privileged class of people. As it seems MN's come from a more privileged background, many may agree with you. But for many people outside this narrow range of people, it is much better to be young now than it was then.

some of that is rubbish lesley

i bought my first house before i married at 19, i wasnt privileged - absolutely not, my husband worked in the dockyard and I worked in an office and it wasnt hard to get a mortgage even at our young age.

and I dont think being judged by society is always a bad thing, nor do i think punishment in schools was a bad thing.

I did not say you had to be priveleged to buy a house. Although in the 60's getting a mortgage was hard. I am not sure when you got your mortgage?

Dockers were very well paid though and you benefitted from that.

But very few people did go to university and those that did were hugely priveleged.

I agree that society judging is not always a bad thing. But I do think that naive girls who got pregnant did not deserve the open judgements they received - and in my experience it was the naive ones who got pregnant. Would you rather pregnany women ended up in some of the terrible mother and baby homes that existed?

Getting a mortgage in the 80's was easy though. Is that when you got your mortgage? If you did you are more likely to be my age than a baby boomer.

I've not read the entire thread but imo yes there are a group of babyboomers who have, in a way, pulled the ladder up behind them and shafted future generations' chances.

However being a single mother in the early 1970s was shit. Not only was money ridiculously tight, you also had to contend with a complete lack of childcare (and certainly no tax credits to help cover it) and some pretty hideous attitudes from others. There was no way of making my father contribute financially to my upbringing. My mother worked and worked and worked. Could never dream of owning her own home. My life is far, far easier.

Good post, lesley33. The opening post didn't seem to consider quality of life - it was all about material possessions.
Says it all, really.

Just like babyboomers think they invented sex in 1963, today's generation think they invented the phrase "life's a bitch and then you die". Plus sa change ...

I think YABU

Yes, there were no uni fees. However, despite my dad being outstanding at school there was no way he'd ever been able to go to university. His mum needed the wages once my grandad starting getting health problems.

My parents bought their house (wreck) in their 30s. They could only afford the deposit with help from my mum's father. Dad worked on the house after coming home from work and every weekend.

Mum has a piss poor pension. Dad's is not too bad, but he's still working into his retirement to pay off his mortgage (they had to remortgage down the line).

Dad was made redundant 3 times.

My parents generation are the baby boomers. My Aunt was a single mother in the 60's. Very few unmarried women kept their children with them then as the stigma was so high - many babies were adopted. My Aunt had a really hard time bringing up her DC.

My mum worked alongside men in the local council, being paid less than men doing exactly the same job as her.

I have a genetic illness and spent quite a bit of time in hospitals as a very young child. Even when I was as young as two, my parents were only allowed to visit me for 2 hours a day. My mum said hearing me screaming the place down as she left every day was heartbreaking. But they had no choice - I needed treatment to survive.

My GF had long periods of depression and spent years going in and out of mental hospitals - he had ECT and as a result could not remember chunks of his past. My dad says his treatment was not exactly enlightened.

My bf at primary school had an older sister whose DH was violent. The only help available was from the police who saw it as "just a domestic". I remember her relatives saying things amongst themselves as "well she made her bed, now she's got to lie in it".

Cheaper houses, uni fees and pensions really don't make up for what some people - and their children, ended up putting up with.

xenia and lesley33 1950s/60s parents were not babyboomers - the offspring are!

Yes there was still rationing and they may have had austere childhoods, but in terms of job security and house prices they had an 'easier' ride through employment and property ownership. Feminism and improved women's rights began to come in in the 70s. Still a work in progress, is it not?

I described my parents married in 1953 and then also myself born 60s. I gave the mortgage interest rates I paid in the 80s (much much higher than now) lack of many maternity rights and all the other things which make people these days much much better off. I think people have just forgotten how hard it was. We bought noghint new for b abies. We never even bought orange juice or hair conditioner. That sort of thing was just beyond budgets but taken for granted now for all but the poor. I compared house prices where we bought ni 1983 with those there now.

YANBU my parents bought a house in 1972 for £8000. My Dad had a clerical job and my mum worked Saturdays in a nursing home. My mum went back to work full-time around ten years later. It was a nice three bed semi with huge garden in leafy Surrey suburb. They sold it for around £400K, twenty five years later. In the ten years we've been on the property ladder we've lost all the equity we put in. We're now back where we started. Despite both being in good jobs, we couldn't afford a three bed semi. They now live in a four bed detached house by the sea and have a joint pension of over £35K. They never saved a penny in their lives - they were horrendous overspenders. But were lucky enough to have company pension schemes. I think their generation have been extremely lucky.

Remember there was massive inflation in the 70s, a 3 day week, power cuts (we had to buy oil lamps etc). It was not fun. Many people were totally ruined. We had 3 years with inflation at 18% then 22% then 20%. people living on savings were wiped out. A blood bath really, tax rates up to 85%,. Awful time.

We bought in 1983 and those 3 bed terraced (zone 5 London) were just over 5x my salary ( bought with my husband who earned the same). Today they cost about 5.5 the equivalent salary (which my daughter earns). So in that resepct things aren't worse and she is paying less direct tax than I was (I paid 33% which was the very lowest rate anyone paid when we bought). There will always be difficult periods but over a 40 year working life (for those not foolish enough to become housewives) things usually work out fine.