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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think the baby boomer generation appears on another planet

185 replies

IncaAztec · 13/05/2018 21:21

This weeks corkers from my DM (age 65). Have left me wondering about the baby boomer generation.

-Accusing me of taking from the state as we receive free infant school meals (?)
-Informing me how busy she is (with WI and history club all in one week). I told her to ask my friend who has 3 kids & 3 jobs before she tried that one.

Anyone else with any baby boomer comments to share?

OP posts:
HoneyDragon · 13/05/2018 21:23

I’m heartily sick of both baby boomer and millennial stereotyping tbh. It’s just evidence of people happily shouting in their echo chambers rather than communicate.

MrsTerryPratchett · 13/05/2018 21:25

My FIL is like this. My DM is not.

So it's not a generational thing, it's a nobber thing.

NewYearNewMe18 · 13/05/2018 21:26

baby boomers and their golden pensions pfft!

MaireadMacSweeney · 13/05/2018 21:26

Anyone else with any baby boomer comments to share?

Here's a comment from this baby boomer - ODFOD

BigPinkBall · 13/05/2018 21:27

MIL tagged along to view a house we were thinking of buying, it was a bit more than we could afford but needed a lot of work and we knew the owners needed a quick sale.

MIL to EA in front of owner: how much is it?
EA: £250k
MIL: yes that sounds reasonable, they’ll pay that.

Original poster
IncaAztec · 13/05/2018 21:27

I agree to some extent. I don’t see myself as a millennial. Perhaps some (both?) generations have moved so far away from each other we have lost the way in terms of communication.

OP posts:
TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince · 13/05/2018 21:29

Yeah. I’m supposedly aBoomer although a late one (1963). I think I’m actually Gen Jones.

BUT, l am beyond being fucked off by all this shite about Boomers.

Just for the record:
I voted remain
I have a shite pension and have to work until I’m 67.
I lived through the horror of Thatcher
I’m still paying a mortgage
I’m s parent to a Millennial, who has been monumentally screwed over by successive governments.

But because l was born in 1963 it’s all my fault! Isn’t it?🤬🤬

The80sweregreat · 13/05/2018 21:30

Not all boomers are the same!
Honest.

VladmirsPoutine · 13/05/2018 21:30

Why have you created a thread to bash a particular demographic whom are not all as you describe? It's not in good taste. If you want to have a moan about your mother and her blinkered views of modern life by all means do so but this 'baby boomer' bashing is just as tedious as millennial 'snowflake' bashing.

Longdistance · 13/05/2018 21:31

Well, I don’t think baby boomers can complain tbh. Everyone in their day received cb regardless of earnings, I know as my dm did as I used to accompany her collecting it for me and db.

The free school meals was replaced cb for all iirc. I have half in the country at the time of change over, so forgive me if I’m wrong.

SweetieBaby · 13/05/2018 21:34

Yep my parents. They just absolutely cannot comprehend that the world is a very different place to the one that they started out in. I'm not blinkered to how hard it was for them in post war Britain and how very lucky we are in many, many respects but they don't understand the income multiples needed now to buy a house, the low performance of pensions, investments etc.

They bought a house that they saw grow in value beyond any expectations, dad retired at 53 on a very large final salary pension, they had multiple endowment policies that paid out large sums. They did nothing different to what we are doing, apart from my mum was a SAHM, but the economy did the work for them. They don't understand that our pensions have been cut 3 times now and will pay out nowhere near what we thought when we started them 30 years ago, that our savings are earning nothing thanks to virtually zero interest rates.

I can't discuss it with them now because it just infuriates me.

MrsTerryPratchett · 13/05/2018 21:35

Perhaps some (both?) generations have moved so far away from each other we have lost the way in terms of communication.

Or it's a concerted effort to have people fight each other rather than look at who is actually to blame. Divide and conquer. Google it.

HoneyDragon · 13/05/2018 21:35

There are plenty of the baby boomer generation living in poverty in their old age. You’re just as likely to see them at food banks as millennials and both groups are told it’s somehow their fault they are in that mess.

TheFaerieQueene · 13/05/2018 21:41

I don’t know how you can make such an assumption- all people born from 1945-64 are an amorphous mass who all think the same. Seriously?

The80sweregreat · 13/05/2018 21:41

I'm not a "real ' boomer ( 1965) sort of on the fringes.

I hate how the young are being screwed over - I lived through the Thatcher years so I have a lot of sympathy.

TheFaerieQueene · 13/05/2018 21:42

Ps. I’m not a baby boomer

Birdsgottafly · 13/05/2018 21:42

"Perhaps some (both?) generations have moved so far away from each other we have lost the way in terms of communication."

It would be interesting to see if there is a North? South or Class divide on this.

My Sister is a baby boomer and wouldn't come out with any of this crap. Nor would any of her friends. Many are struggling with health issues but still having to hang on to their jobs. We are Up North, so all though she and they are 'Professionals', they appreciate being able to have constant work and a decent wage.

She gets on well with my Millennial children and has given them a lot of support. She advises them well.

You adjust to your lifestyle. My Sister, when out of work, was saying that she didn't know how she found time to work, she does a lot of Voluntary work and helping others. But now she back in work, she fits everything in again.

Fatted · 13/05/2018 21:42

I don't think it's a baby boomer thing, I just think it's a crazy mum thing.

My mum is forever telling me how tired and busy she is. She complains about having to get up early (9am). She doesn't work, nor has she done for almost 40 years! She's got no idea what life in the real world is like. She also could not fathom how I would be better off working part time rather than full-time and shelling out over half my salary on childcare.

My parents are both in their late 60's. Get free bus passes, prescriptions, winter fuel allowance and my mum gets a state pension even though she gave up working to have kids in her 20s.My dad is still working in a £60k a year job and they have no mortgage.

TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince · 13/05/2018 21:44

Everyone received child benefit until this Tory government stopped it.

I couldn’t find a job when l left university in 1986. Youth unemployment was through the roof.

I was sent to court for refusing to pay poll tax.

I went to Greenham Common at a very young age. I wanted to make a safer future world.

But.... because I’m a’Boomer’im out of touch😂. Yeah right.Spot on. Selfish and greedy that’s me! It’s all my fault.

YouWereRight · 13/05/2018 21:54

My dad : I bought you an avocado to make up for screwing you over.

My dad actually gets it, he just thinks he's funny.

Birdsgottafly · 13/05/2018 21:56

"Well, I don’t think baby boomers can complain tbh. Everyone in their day received cb regardless of earnings, I know as my dm did as I used to accompany her collecting it for me and db."

Yes that made up for the lack of Maternity Leave/Care, the sexism at work (and outside), no minimum wage, no workers rights, no support for disabilities just encouragement to go into a 'Home'. Women still having difficulty getting a loan/mortgage/housing. Being told to 'know your place' and even if you had the income, not being able to live in certain places.

When severe racism ended my Mother's first marriage, which included her being spat at in the street, that 25p a week made up for it. Luckily my Nan could look after us and she didn't have to rely on a completely unregulated childminder.

Eastcoastmost · 13/05/2018 21:58

We were looking to lease a car, or buy second hand. This is what DM said:

Oh, your brother was thinking about doing that. I don’t know why you don’t just buy a new car outright.

Yeah, cos we all have 1000s stashed away, don’t we? Hmm

But that is normal in her world... There is literally no telling her the world has changed. We just have to work harder, apparently.

BIWI · 13/05/2018 22:00

You have a DM problem, not a baby boomer problem

SpongeBobJudgeyPants · 13/05/2018 22:01

Lazy stereotyping OP. You have issues with your mother. Everybody does not think like her. You need to open your mind and think a little harder.

BG2015 · 13/05/2018 22:01

My mum says crazy stuff! She's 73.

Last year I had a new kitchen and it was fitted by a local kitchen fitter who happens to live around the corner from my parents.

When I told her how much his bill was going to be she told me to tell him that I'd had loads of bad luck " tell him you're divorced and a single parent, you've had to move house, see if he'll do it cheaper'

I've been divorced 10 years and have lived here for 2 years. I just smiled and nodded at her.