I've noticed with the Baby Boomers that they seem to have misunderstood decades of their lives. Which leaves them unable to relate to events in the real world. Maybe your right and the mass media is to blame. Although you also blame how easy (as a generation) they have had it. I tend to think that they had it easy, so easy that they just cannot relate to the world being any other way.
One distinct thing that I have noticed is how their thinking on topics seems to stop at a particular date and nothing changes from that. It's still 1962 or 1969 or 1973, but sex and race relations are set at that time period. As are immigration and the economy. No update at all.
Thanks Mark! Very true about thinking stopping once they reach young adulthood. I often wonder to what degree this is true for most people. A lot of millennials and Gen X seem as though they'd like to live in 90s/2000s liberalism forever. One thing I will say about Boomers is that the good ones often had some kind of hardship, and most of the Vietnam vets I've met are a bit more realistic about things, but still not 100% like the older generations.
> Old people having out-of-date views is one thing, but old people being unable to provide any worthwhile life advice while also not having left the world better than they found it is not a good foundation for inter-generational dialogue.
Thanks to contraception and feminism, this generation's parents are much older than previous generations parents. In the usual order of things, a person will have their kids in their 20s, and be ready to launch those kids into adulthood when they are in their 40s - a time when a person is at their peak of usefulness, a balance of young enough to be active, old enough to have a little wisdom, and at a good place in their career - still working, but senior.
Now, people are having their children when they are in their mid 30's, the kids are launching into adulthood late, and so the parents are in their 50's and older. By the time a young person is 30, their parents are looking at retirement and not positioned to help them in any way when it comes to winning at life.
Thanks for your thoughts Dave. I agree, we are ageing ourselves as parents. Partially to blame is that there is a balance to be struck between enjoying the opportunities of life and sacrificing in order to raise the next generation. I think many believe that life ends once you have kids. I think we all know who to blame for that!
This was really good!
I've noticed with the Baby Boomers that they seem to have misunderstood decades of their lives. Which leaves them unable to relate to events in the real world. Maybe your right and the mass media is to blame. Although you also blame how easy (as a generation) they have had it. I tend to think that they had it easy, so easy that they just cannot relate to the world being any other way.
One distinct thing that I have noticed is how their thinking on topics seems to stop at a particular date and nothing changes from that. It's still 1962 or 1969 or 1973, but sex and race relations are set at that time period. As are immigration and the economy. No update at all.
Thanks Mark! Very true about thinking stopping once they reach young adulthood. I often wonder to what degree this is true for most people. A lot of millennials and Gen X seem as though they'd like to live in 90s/2000s liberalism forever. One thing I will say about Boomers is that the good ones often had some kind of hardship, and most of the Vietnam vets I've met are a bit more realistic about things, but still not 100% like the older generations.
> Old people having out-of-date views is one thing, but old people being unable to provide any worthwhile life advice while also not having left the world better than they found it is not a good foundation for inter-generational dialogue.
Thanks to contraception and feminism, this generation's parents are much older than previous generations parents. In the usual order of things, a person will have their kids in their 20s, and be ready to launch those kids into adulthood when they are in their 40s - a time when a person is at their peak of usefulness, a balance of young enough to be active, old enough to have a little wisdom, and at a good place in their career - still working, but senior.
Now, people are having their children when they are in their mid 30's, the kids are launching into adulthood late, and so the parents are in their 50's and older. By the time a young person is 30, their parents are looking at retirement and not positioned to help them in any way when it comes to winning at life.
Thanks for your thoughts Dave. I agree, we are ageing ourselves as parents. Partially to blame is that there is a balance to be struck between enjoying the opportunities of life and sacrificing in order to raise the next generation. I think many believe that life ends once you have kids. I think we all know who to blame for that!