To ask - Which living generation do you think has had it the hardest?

[catsinpinkhats]

• Silent Generation: Born 1925-1945.
• Baby Boomers: Born 1946-1964.
• Generation X: Born 1965-1980.
• Millennials: Born 1981-1996.
• Generation Z: Born 1997-2012.
• Generation Alpha: Born 2013-2025.

I think each generation has had varying degrees of things that are hard, socially, financially, politically etc.

My grandparents were of the silent generation and there's no doubt their childhood and young adulthood was hard during and after the war. Plus many men still did national service.

I am a millennial and most of my generation is old enough to remember life pre-internet but also young enough to embrace it. Things are hard for my generation and younger due to house prices etc, but society is more open generally with more possibilities.

We all think our generation has it harder, but what do you think if being objective?

Rubbish! My children
are millennials and took a gcse in computing which was compulsory. They had laptops in sixth form and university.
They, and the cast majority of their peers own property.

Personally I think generation alpha. With social media pressure. And mollycoddling meaning that children are growing up with no resilience, and will struggle when they get out into the world.

I don't think boomers had an easy start there was still rationing in their childhood and as they entered adulthood the workplace was a man's world. Many women had to stop work on marriage and definitely when they had a child. Forced adoption if you were single mother. Though if in work life got better and certainly today's pensioners are better off than any pensioners previously. I'm early gen X we got computing in secondary school mud 80's and definitely used them all the time at university but no mobile phones so social life had to be prearranged as no method of reaching people in halls or rented house shares to cancel

Silent Generation for sure

War is the harshest

Ask those born in 2025 when they're 40?

I don’t get the war stuff meaning silent generation that was in WWII had it the worst, as I’ve lived through/served in more years of war than they did as a Gen Xer.

Who was sent to the Falklands?
Who was sent to Iraq?
Who was sent to Bosnia?
Who was sent to Iraq a second time?
Who was sent to Afghanistan?

?..

WWII lasted six years.

I think it's gotten progressively easier for every generation up until now. Nothing can compare to those that lived through the war. Even the boomers had their problems with industrial actions and recessions that lasted years.
The oldest of generation Z still had a a half decent chance of getting on the property ladder and have benefited with being more aware of sex based rights etc.
But after that things have taken a downward slope again. With the cost of higher education, property prices, education in general, strikes, climate change, knife crime and a failing NHS which might not be there for them by the time they have children themselves. Which are things that effect us all, but they are facing living their entire adult life with.

People of any age let down by the NHS and local authorities.
People who cannot afford food or heat.
The bereaved.

These cross all facile generational categories.

Not those whose main crisis is a mobile phone not working, or worrying about Cecil Rhodes and an Empire long faded, or what gender they are today.

I listened to a super interesting podcast episode about this, OP. It’s all about whether or not we should box people in generations and whether it’s ageist or helpful etc.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/no-stupid-questions/id1510056899?i=1000629762483

I'm Gen X and we had the best of it all. I was born very poor, parents were homeless when I was born, my mum was a single parent, unemployed, living on a very deprived estate when we were kids in the 80s/90s. FSM, uniform vouchers, a hamper from the freemasons at Christmas, 2 caravan holidays in my whole childhood

But we had enough to eat, support, hope, funded education, the sense that we mattered, a community that was securely housed in social housing and social mobility. I'm now pretty middle class thanks to that free university education that finished just as Blair and Cool Britannia and Tim Berners-Lee were defining the culture.

We were so lucky - my children grow up so more privileged than I did but they don't have the hope, the solidarity or the feeling they can change things. Lockdown was a disaster for them as was social media.

Silent generation had it worst no doubt.

I am an early 80s millennial, we didn't have computer lessons until year 10, it was the only Gcse I failed.
I can't even compare it to learning a foreign language since I actually find comparatively much easier.

I definitely agree with the Silent Generation. My Dad told us stories of spending the night in the air raid shelter at the bottom of their garden. My Mum's school was bombed. When Mum had scarlet fever at a young age she was taken to an isolation hospital and not able to see her parents except through a window.

I think though that some of the late Boomer generation and early generation X didn't have it so easy. Unemployment in the 80s was bad and although there were all the yuppies making a fortune in the city there were also many industries being closed down and whole communities being devastated.

I think each generation has had their own struggles and, as another poster said earlier, if you are born poor in any generation then life is tough. I remember when we moved to Glasgow in the early seventies that many of the tenements still had outside toilets and conditions could be grim.

I also fear for generation Alpha (which includes DD).. So many problems looming. Climate change, wars, the growth of intolerance towards others who have different opinions or are a different race/nationality.

I am right on the cusp of being a boomer/generation X and I am glad I grew up when I did but that is talking from the position of coming from a comfortable home with loving involved parents and lots of opportunities. Others from the same generation who had different circumstances may well not feel the same.

Well, there are people the same age as me who’ve had a really awful life depending on where they were born, how wealthy their parents were, how healthy they are. The same can be applied to any generation!
So in answer to your question - it’s impossible to quantify.

I don’t think you’re right. - I was born in ‘71 so early Gen X if you take the 1965 to 1984 generally accepted definition of Gen X. I had access to a computer from about 10 years old, and I still have the mobile number I got in 1991. I had my own PC (amstrad!) at university. I’ve always had a work email address and computer. From the age of 25 that was a laptop. I’m not a digital native inso far as tech has always been there, but what you’re describing is far removed from my experience of being a Gen X’er in education or the work place.

And I’d agree, my life has been much easier and more comfortable than my ‘boomer’ parents, even though I started work in the early ‘90s. They are probably overall more affluent than I am in retirement, but I haven’t made any sacrifices in material things or experiences along the way, where they definitely did.

Are you serious? I've lived through them wars too, but they nowhere near compare to what that generation went through in WW2. For one thing they had bombs falling on them in this country! Teenage boys were sent off to be killed and had no choice. They lived on rations!

WhiteHorseSpirit those impacted the (mostly) men who went to war, however ww2 impacted everyone, including bombing of uk civilians, evacuation, rationing etc, so distinctly different.

I am part of that micro generation.I think we are the lucky ones, no student loans, no social media, affordable housing. But young enough to learn how to use the Internet.

Silent generation because of the war and the aftermath and the alpha's because quite a few of them spend wayyyyy too much of their childhood sat in front of iPads plus this country is going down hill rapidly.

Shit peaked 60s-00s

That's generalising of course like someone already said being wealthy trumps being poor in any time period excluding the bubonic plague maybe?🤔

Silent generation - no doubt. Two of my aunts lost their fiances in the war. Neither knew what happened. One, their fiance's plane flew out over the north sea and just... disappeared. Mum recounts regularly getting up in the middle of the night to go to the shelter, hearing the bombs drop then coming out to see whose houses were still standing. My Grandad never spoke about what he experienced in the war.

I thought this too.

Technically I'm a baby boomer but I don't have the pots of loot everyone seems to think my generation has. Not all of us earned huge salaries or had cheap mortgages.

I cannot imagine having no decent dental care, no heating, no hot baths. Having to marry young and potentially have twenty kids. Working in a factory. Being bombed. Having children die before the age of five and consider that normal. We are BLESSED.

I disagree on the affordable housing - I could have afforded to buy in my early 20s if I was literally 2 years older. As it was, I was almost 40 before I could buy, and I don’t earn badly. Just a single wage and no family help, plus not being able to save much when renting.

I’ll give you the student loans, though, although I think they had just started IIRC.

Silent generation. My Dad was born then, very tough times, his father was away at war, they had to evacuate to air raid shelters frequently, there were bombs dropped near them. Times were tough with rations, but even outside that they had very little, my dads father was killed, money was very tight, an orange was a treat. He had to leave school young to support his mother and sisters.

Silent Generation had WW2, then rationing, then Cold War and nuclear threat, then the unrest and strikes in 70s and 80s, then 9/11...

My grandmother died in the mid 80s due to the stress of the miners strikes. Having her husband, son (not my dad), brothers etc as Miners and it was all the last straw