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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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:
Creambun2 · 13/05/2018 22:03

"young people are lazy and could afford housing if they worked hard and stopped drinking coffee/using iphones etc etc"

"when I bought a house we sat on the floor for 10 years and ate lentils for years too"

WhendoIgetadayoff · 13/05/2018 22:03

Emoji you’re about 15 years to young to be baby boomer.
Baby boomers were born post war. Hence the baby boomer generation - so baby boomers are currently 67-74. It’s also why we have aging population as 1947 was the peak year with most being born and as things are better with food, life medicine etc we have never had so many plus 70s ever before.
And as millennials and those before them are having babies later there is likely to be a big crisis as we have a much larger population not working due to age - and poss needing care and services. With a smaller working age population paying for those services.
But that will affect those born in 70s most.

Antigonads · 13/05/2018 22:08

Why on earth are you equating your mother's stupidity with the baby boomer generation? Lazy and unimaginative.

DerelictWreck · 13/05/2018 22:09

Pretty sure Emoji is the exact right ago to be a boomer WhendoIgetadayoff?

Assuming they left uni at 21, they were born in '65

Roussette · 13/05/2018 22:09

Oh for god's sake, stop generalising OP. Rubbish. We're not all the same. I'm a baby boomer born in the 50s, out of a class of 39 at secondary school two went to University, the opportunities were just not there. I left school at 15 and home at 16 and made my own way and fucking hard it was too. I lived on packet soup in a poxy flat and supported myself and worked my way up, bit by bit.

My DCs had opportunities I could only have dreamed of. So please don't generalise.

MissVanjie · 13/05/2018 22:10

it sounds infuriating, but generalising is not the answer. as someone said upthread, it's divide and conquer.

The80sweregreat · 13/05/2018 22:10

These type of threads have been done to death.

We're not all the same - some young people also live in a bubble and have wealth and no understanding of how hard life is. I read threads like that every day too.
With my parents it was how hard they had it during the war years, how lucky I was not to have bombs dropping on me etc - as if being born after a terrible war was my own fault! Every generation has its funny ways.

Graphista · 13/05/2018 22:10

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

Agree with this.

My mother - thinks her generation generally are clueless about what subsequent generations are dealing with, and are pulling the ladder up behind them re mortgages, free higher ed, employee rights, women's rights (actually here she thinks we're going in bloody reverse!)

This is from a woman who's had a bloody tough life.

My father - thinks any generation younger than his are lazy, 'dole bludging', irresponsible, expect something for nothing, that benefits are easy to get, that there's plenty of full time well paid jobs and cheap housing for anyone who 'just bothers to work hard enough' and he retired before 50!

This from a man who got his first job thanks to his father, then joined the army and so had 20+ years in a good job with good pay and conditions from which he couldn't even be made redundant let alone sacked without a damn good reason and lots of red tape, has never in his adult life gone without. In 2 years he'll have been retired longer than he was in the army. He gets an excellent pension more than most get full time pay.

Their mortgage is long paid off, last 2 cars bought cash.

Theemojiformerly - I'd say you're more Gen X like me.

"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."

Agree this is also true - doesn't make it any easier to listen to him prattle on!

And we need the boomers that DON'T get it to start getting it and join those of us that know the reality in fighting back against high housing costs, poor wages, high education costs post-18, erosion of employee rights etc

Graphista · 13/05/2018 22:11

Sorry meant to add to last paragraph

That are seriously negatively affecting their children and grandchildren.

Tillytrotter123 · 13/05/2018 22:13

Yes I also believed baby boomers were born straight after ww2. My dad was born in 1944 and bought a house for £500 (which he saved up in cash through painting and decorating and was also the sole earner). The house just sold for £300k. He just doesn't understand why I have to go back to work after my maternity leave finishes, saying I should 'cut my cloth accordingly,' and has no idea how hard it is having a big mortgage. He also believes couples with children should say unhappily married for the sake on the children. Don't get me wrong I know some people were seriously poor then and he was born just before the NHS but it is a huge divide between his generation and mine as he had me late in life. He is quite old fashioned thoigh and I know a lot of people his age think differently.

MoreProsecco · 13/05/2018 22:14

According to my MIL (just turned 70):

  • the NHS is going to pot because of part-time woman GP's & sending case notes by taxi because her friend told her this happened 20 years ago.
  • house prices have been pushed up by women's salaries (only the man's salary should be counted 😡).
  • women with young children work for fancy cars & foreign holidays
  • it's ok to discriminate against gays & women in recruitment (you can't possibly employ women as you world have to pay them maternity leave)
  • imagine living in a flat! Couldn't possibly do that - only ever lived in houses.

All this from a woman who has hardly worked a day in her life; had her children in early 20's & gave up then. Gets her state pension, of course & lives off FIL's pension.

FASH84 · 13/05/2018 22:15

My gran is the opposite, she is fond of saying 'it's not easy for younger people' even though she had a very underprivileged start in life, and actually said to me and my aunt that she feels bad for getting a good pension and that they were able to own a home (a modest bungalow) outright, even though she was a low paid nursery nurse her whole life, her first husband was an abusive financially controlling narcissist who would give her such little to live on she kept herself and my aunties in the kitchen all winter as she could only afford to heat one room. Then she met my grandad who'd been in the army then worked for years as a trans continental lorry driver away in the middle East for months at a time to earn money for them all while she worked and raised six kids (she had two kids from 1st marriage, he had 4, my bio nan was an alcoholic so all DC lived with them). They've worked all their lives, never lived extravagantly and shouldn't feel guilty for the little comfort they have in retirement.

Roussette · 13/05/2018 22:15

But Prosecco for every one like your MIL, there's one like me. although I;m not her age yet

Birdsgottafly · 13/05/2018 22:16

Eastcoastmost, but that is, as you said, her World. It isn't the World my Sister grew up in, or is used to. She's a baby boomer and bought her car for £300, she drives old Saab/Volkswagen etc.

I was born 1968, the only people I know with new cars are leasing them.

batmanpants · 13/05/2018 22:16

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

This ^^ Grin

paisleyblue · 13/05/2018 22:16

Not all baby boomers are as you describe. My dad is the opposite. Biscuit

Turnitupdrhill · 13/05/2018 22:17

There's a really tedious turning against posters of a certain age on mumsnet recently.

Quite how anyone could stereotype so broadly is beyond my comprehension.

SymphonyofShadows · 13/05/2018 22:20

Selfish me, growing up in a house with no central heating and ice on the inside of the windows on winter mornings. Being routinely groped and told not to be frigid when I complained. Being the only female engineer and still expected to make the tea, wear a skirt and earn far less than The Men as they Brought Home The Bacon. I'm just on the cusp of BB/generation X but I have no bloody clue when I'll be able to retire. I literally don't know I'm born Hmm

PortiaCastis · 13/05/2018 22:20

So it's not a generational thing, it's a nobber thing
Yep this ^^

IncaAztec · 13/05/2018 22:22

Or has the pace of social change increased so much from one generation to another that it has left me wondering and (wrongly) stereotyping. To the extent that I don’t recognise my DM within it?

OP posts:
MoreProsecco · 13/05/2018 22:22

Roussette - yep, my mum is also a baby boomer & fairly pragmatic. She encouraged us to have a career, as in her day you had to give up work when you became pregnant (no maternity leave/pay or childcare in these days).

There were some definite disadvantages for her generation: not being able to get a mortgage or pension for yourself, sexual discrimination at work, being trapped in shitty relationships because you couldn't work & get out unless you had family doing childcare. Most men were totally shit around the home.

Luckily my mum is not a nobber, unlike MIL.

GabsAlot · 13/05/2018 22:22

my dads a bit like this-my dsis is renting cant afford a mortgage yet he says just stay in more-she hardly goes out

IncaAztec · 13/05/2018 22:22

Also, it could be a nobber thing, admittedly.

OP posts:
feral · 13/05/2018 22:23

I'm apparently Generation. What would you like to accuse me of?

Tinycitrus · 13/05/2018 22:23

It is a generational thing.

Subsequent generations will never have it do good. I will ge working until I’m 68. No cruises to South America or trips to see the northern lights fir me.

But that’s ok. Other generations also had it far far worse. Smile

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