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?

The Silent Generation or the poorest people in any generation - they always have it harder than anyone else.

Money far more important than generation. My parents are both Silent Generation but had rather a lovely time in the war, thanks to maids and gardeners and boarding school and big family homes in the countryside (and dads in reserved professions, so not in harm's way). National Service was an adventure, not so dissimilar to a gap year today - although with less choice, of course. Wouldn't have wanted to have mum's lack of career opportunities personally, but a life of gardening and sewing and walks with her friends isn't one she'd ever complain about. However, for my in laws of that generation, life was indeed pretty tough.
Same would be true for Millennials - the main problems are financial, but many are completely cushioned from those problems. Gen Z growing up with toxic social media and being hard hit by covid - those piles of shit have been dumped more universally on the whole of that generation, I suppose.

Silent generation had it the hardest, then Gen Z. I’m a millennial and our generation is ok. Not as good as boomers, but probably equal to gen x. We have had reasonable house prices when we were in our twenties, good jobs so had means to save up for house deposits, good access to uni, we had to pay for fees but way less than gen z do. We also mainly have boomer parents and so have/will be benefitting from inheritances.

There's literally no poverty in Britain today that is any way equal to what 'the silent generation' suffered.

My Dad went to work on a building site at 14 as his dad had died.

They taught him to piss on his bleeding cracked hands to harden them up. He gave his mum his wage at the end of the week and she gave him a hapenny back which he spent on sweets.

His granddaughter (my DD) would cry if her hair colour wasn’t right.

I was absolutely haunted by the idea of nuclear war when I was young and I know my DM worried about it a lot in the context of the potential impact on her children’s future.

@Greatbigfluffytrousers Oh god this! I remember reading a story in Jackie magazine about a young farm girl left alone in some miraculously unaffected valley when her parents died from the radiation fallout and a strange man arriving one day. I have never forgot it. It scarred me for life. I then set about learning things like how to ride a horse/milk a cow/start a fire because I was convinced we would be returning to a pre-electric state before very long!

Living during the plague must've been hard....

Z for Zachariah ?
Read it in year 5, same year as Chernobyl.
Not sure if I was more terrified of nuclear holocaust or AIDS when I was 10...

I agree with those who say anyone living in poverty in all generations.

Wars didn't end with the silent generation and my gen X family member still suffers from all of the horrific things he did/saw in the late 80s and 90s... Northern Ireland, Lockerbie, Bosnia and the Gulf War. But poor boys from my area signed up.

My mum and her siblings are boomers. They often suffered at the hands of their war- traumatised parents, had to deal with year long hospital stays because of TB, had no protections in terms of racist or sexist policies.

I think Boomers have had a harder time than people give them credit for. Yes, you could afford a house on a single salary -if you quite middle class, a lot of families had to have two working adults. But this was very often not a choice - opportunities for women were dire and many were sacked when they got married. Yes, university was free and you got a grant, but very few young people had the opportunity to go to university. Social mobility was bad and many people were stuck in the environment they grew up in.

Some boomers - especially those with some element of wealth - got really lucky, but things were much harder for loads of them than for most people today.

Silent

Silent gen but the ones I know never complain about it. DH’s Grandad is just so bloody stoic, I feel like you could stand throwing literal rocks at him and he wouldn’t even budge.

i once heard warren buffet say that financially the silent generation had the greatest potential for strong financial gains.
but i know it takes money to make money.

i will have to agree that living in poverty regardless of what generation you fall in is the horrible.

As PP’s have pointed out, it’s also difficult to make general statements about generations, because life can be so different depending on personal circumstances.

For example, the pandemic. My Gen. Z seem to have got through it pretty well academically and socially, but we know other teens who have been far more affected. 🤷

Sounds awful. You're poor dad. Are you ok

I was born in 1944 on the cusp between the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers. I grew up in a council house in a NE pit village and my dad was invalided from when I was 11. Mum had 3 jobs, a factory canteen, a market stall and a cake icing side line. I was an only child. I had a wonderful extended family, a grammar school education and a fully paid college course. I don’t feel I was in anyway deprived of the things that matter.

You can't generalise about a generation. There will always be some who had it easy and some who had it hard.

My grandmother was the generation who were absolutely, joyously liberated by WWII. Of course they were aware it was a war, and it was terrible - but her whole life changed because suddenly, women were allowed to do all sorts of things that would never have happened before. It is really striking when you compare to other women slightly older or younger in her village - she even lived ten years more than the average, because she got out. She was born in 1926; she was the daughter of a Welsh miner and purely because she was not yet married when war broke out - but wasn't a young child - she had huge opportunities that changed her whole life. Importantly, she also had family who were hugely proud of her and happy for the way her life had changed.

My dad is a boomer. He had it very easy in terms of what you can calculate on a spreadsheet. Passed his 11-plus, straight into a very prestigious public school, closed scholarship to Oxford, funded postgraduate. Minor wobble in the 80s where he had to change career, but it's a tiny bump in the road. But, he's absolutely emotionally crippled by having a father who was traumatised by the war, and he's a sad, angry man.

My mum is also a boomer - also got lots of 'opportunities,' free ride to university, great start into an excellent career out-earning her husband ... but she's really miserable and emotionally a mess.

I would not want to be a boomer if it meant the 'advantages' my parents had came with the emotional struggles.

I agree with this.

Some silent generation - my Dad is 85, been retired for 30 years on a ridiculous nhs full pension mortgage has been paid off since then and still gets a normal pension and winter fuel etc help. He's had a computer since the 80s and has no problem navigating his smart phone/banking apps. Vs DP's boomer parents who can't even work their tv and rely on us to complete any sort of paperwork. FIL works in a manual job pushing 70. He'll never be able to retire due financial constraints.

I have gen alpha, gen Z and millennial children and can't really see a lot of difference between them.

Gen z are the last generation to have it relatively easy.

Boomer and Gen X didn't have computer literacy taught either and still have the same expectations job wise of computer literacy

Silent generation. The others have all had their own challenges.

I’m a boomer. Personally impacted by: sex discrimination in education and employment, the harassment culture, falling house prices decreasing paid-for equity, losing a friend to AIDS and the fear that created. In general: WASPI. High unemployment, winter of discontent. The impact of strikes and civil unrest on strikers, families, police.

Contraception, equal pay, no-fault divorce and the introduction of computers (to a generation who didn’t even have calculators) made me feel very lucky, especially in comparison to those only slightly older than I am.

@coffeorbust Hell yes I’m fine thanks. I’m living off my inheritance from my dad. Typical Boomer😉

The silent generation - the war, sexism, basic medical care although some people came out relatively unscathed.
Everyone younger than Gen X due to uni fees and housing prices

I agree with this,
I was born in 1947 - just out by 1 year from the silent generation - so allocating circumstances to a span of 18 years is a bit meaningless.
As a child - rationing was still in operation as was national service. We had the scourge of diseases like polio and usual childhood illnesses that had no vaccinations. Life was hard - No television, no electricity, outside toilets, no central heating!
There were no foreign holidays a day trip if you were lucky, children could leave school without exams and go straight to work
University was only for the 10%
We lived through the cold war and dangerous nuclear proliferation (Cuban missile crisis)

There were few benefits when I was working and a single parent in the 1970s except child benefit. No equality for women.

It is disengenius to attribute the same conditions to someone who was born at the end of the generation with those who were in it at the beginning. This applies to all generations.