Following in the footsteps of their parents and their grandparents before them, Baby Boomers have taken to criticizing the latest generation of American children. These snowflakes, as Millennials/Gen Z/Gen Alpha are disparagingly called, have it easy, according to their critics. Often, criticisms are followed with “back in the day” anecdotal stories meant to prove that teenagers and young adults are living on easy street compared to their parents and grandparents. If only our society would return to the good ‘ole days, Baby Boomers say, all would be well.
Armed with selective memories or showing signs of dementia/Alzheimer’s, Baby Boomers have posted to social media countless memes and comments about how better their youthful days were than are those today. What Baby Boomers don’t mention is the instrumental part they have played in making things the way they are today. Who are the people running the government? Who are the corporate CEOs and the heads of media outlets? For the most part, Baby Boomers. Millennials don’t control much in this country. It’s their parents’ and grandparents’ generations that control everything. It’s not Millennials who elected Donald Trump. It’s not Millennials who are in charge of the American war machine. It’s not Millennials who have destroyed the working class and outsourced millions of American jobs. It’s not Millennials who have driven up healthcare costs. If Baby Boomers want to find who’s to blame for all these things (and more), they need only look in the mirror. And while they are gazing at their aged “sixty is the new thirty” faces in the mirror, they might want to ask the Greatest Generation to join them. Millennials are certainly not without fault, but to lay the blame for societal ills at their collective feet is not only laughable, it is also a denial of past history and present reality.
Millennials are the first generation to be born into the technology revolution. Their parents came of age in a world without most of the technology that drives our present age. My wife and I will celebrate forty-five years of marriage in July. Until the late 1980s, our life pretty much mirrored that of our parents. Outside of having 8-track/cassette players instead of record players and push-button telephones instead of rotary dial phones, our day-to-day living wasn’t much different from that of the homes we grew up in. Certainly, societal mores were rapidly changing, but Polly and I were insulated from these changes thanks to our immersion in Evangelical Christianity.
In the 1990s, computers became affordable for many people. From that point until today, we have experienced non-stop technological advancement. We now live in world dominated by computers, smartphones, — which are handheld computers with built-in monitors — the worldwide web (www), and social media. In a matter of seconds, we can send text messages, photographs, and emails across the globe. We can talk via Skype to people continents away. Social media allows us to be friends with people that we would never have met had it not been for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like.
This is the world of Millennials. Should they be faulted for embracing the modern technological age? Who made all these wonders available to them? Who built the companies and products that play such an integral part in their lives? Better look in the mirror again, Baby Boomers. Sure, it’s primarily Millennials who invented social media, but without the work of aged men such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and countless other Baby Boomers, there wouldn’t be an Internet, nor would there be smartphones and social media. Like it or not, Baby Boomers, the world as it is now was created and shaped by us.
I am almost sixty-six years old. Like many of my generation, I don’t like some of the behaviors I see coming from Millennials. But, I also know that my parents and grandparents thought the same about my generation. Being criticized by previous generations is a rite of passage. I am a father to three Gen-Xers and three Millennials. I have thirteen grandchildren, one of whom is twenty-two, and three others who are in high school. In less than fifteen months two of them be in college. My older grandchildren are very much a part of the tech generation (as much as their parents will allow them to be, anyway). Are my children and grandchildren inferior/less hardy than my generation or that of their grandparents? Of course not. What they are is different. They were born into a world very different from the world I entered in 1957. Their experiences, in many ways, are different from those I had as a teen and young adult in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, their wants, needs, and desires are not much different from what mine were years ago.
As a sports photographer, I spent a good bit of time around local high school students. I carefully watched their behavior and interaction with not only their fellow students, but with society at large. I found, at a base level, kids are kids. Environments change, but kids remain the same. We oldsters do a great disservice to our society when we refuse to see the good in younger Americans; when we refuse to grant that maybe, just maybe, our children and grandchildren have much to offer the human race (despite being hamstrung by runaway government debt, lack of jobs, and astronomical education costs). Millennials are not without fault, but they certainly are not the people described by many of the memes and social media comments I have seen in recent years. One Baby Boomer Facebook friend of mine posted a meme that blamed video games and rap music for school shootings. I shook my head and laughed as I read comment after comment from people agreeing with her. Never mind the fact that video games actually reduce male aggression and that children today are safer than they ever have been (except at school). And music lyrics? Really? Baby Boomers are the classic rock generation. Have they forgotten what the lyrics of their favorite rock songs actually say? Yes, the music loved by Millennials is more explicit, often using graphic words to describe sexual activity, but the music of yesteryear had its own language for sexual activities. In 1976, the Starland Vocal Band released a song titled Afternoon Delight. The lyrics went like this:
Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight
Gonna grab some afternoon delight
My motto’s always been “When it’s right, it’s right”
Why wait until the middle of a cold dark night
When everything’s a little clearer in the light of day
And we know the night is always gonna be here any wayThinkin’ of you’s workin’ up my appetite
Looking forward to a little afternoon delight
Rubbin’ sticks and stones together make the sparks ignite
And the thought of loving you is getting so excitingSky rockets in flight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delightStarted out this morning feeling so polite
I always thought a fish could not be caught who didn’t bite
But you’ve got some bait a waitin’ and I think I might
Like nibblin’ in a little afternoon delightSky rockets in flight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delightPlease be waiting for me baby when I come around
We could make a lot of lovin’ ‘fore the sun goes downThinkin’ of you’s workin’ up an appetite
Looking forward to a little afternoon delight
Rubbin’ sticks and stones together make the sparks ignite
And the thought of loving you is getting so excitingSky rockets in flight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
Afternoon delight
If this song were written today, I suspect its author would make ample use of the “F” word and other sexually explicit words. The reason these words weren’t used in the 1970s was because of the Greatest Generation’s puritanical view of certain words. Sexual meanings were hidden behind euphemisms and double entendres. In 1968, the song, “Why Don’t We Do it in The Road” was recorded for the White Album by the Beatles. The entire song was of Paul McCartney repeating:
Why don’t we do it in the road
Why don’t we do it in the road
Why don’t we do it in the road
Why don’t we do it in the road
No one will be watching us
Why don’t we do it in the road
What exactly was IT that they were doing in the middle of the road? If this song was written today, I suspect the word IT would be replaced by the word FUCK. Is one version any better or worse than the other? Of course not. Different, yes; bad/worse, no. One rendering requires reading between the lines, the other doesn’t.
Baby Boomers love to get all wound up about sexting and other ill-advised behavior by Millennials. These gray-haired “saints” forget that they are the ones who ushered in the sexual revolution, and that they used notes instead of texts to set up intimate liaisons. What I am saying is this: kids are kids, and their parents and grandparents need to lay off constantly judging them and criticizing their way of life. Have these oldsters forgotten how such attacks make someone feel? Baby Boomers raised in the Evangelical church, have oh-so “fond” memories of sermons about the evils of premarital sex, rock music, smoking pot, miniskirts, and long hair on men. Surely, we can help, instruct, and guide our children and grandchildren without denigrating the things they value and consider important. If we can honestly remember our own youthful lives and indiscretions, perhaps we might not be so judgmental towards Millennials.
As a father and grandparent, I love and respect my children and grandchildren. They are far from perfect, and they can do things that drive me nuts, but I know from my own experiences that every generation has to find its own way. Millennials face challenges that their parents never had to face. We live in a fast-paced world where things change overnight. Older Americans have the luxury of ignoring changes they don’t like. Millennials, on the other hand, must continue to change and adapt. Their world is fraught with dangers and challenges Baby Boomers never had to face. They need our help, not our judgment and derision.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Boomers complain about how millennials and Gen Z are lazy and screwing up the world. Millennials and Gen Z say “Okay, Boomer” and gripe about how boomers robbed their future. As a Gen X’er, I’m ticked off. Forgotten again! It’s not fair dammit! When do I get to screw up the world? Well, I guess there was the mullet and parachute pants…..
I am almost Bruce’s age. Ironically, I lamented that young people—Gen Xers, though the term wasn’t yet in wide use—were lazy, entitled and “didn’t know real music “ when I was in my 30s and 40s. Now I understand that Milennials—a term I now detest because it has racial* and other connotations—do things differently because they think differently because, well, they have to.
As Bruce mentions, they were born into a world of nearly ubiquitous (at least in the developed world) technology. They are in a society that is more racially and culturally diverse. I think now of the Brooklyn neighborhood in which I grew up. Though it was mostly working-class, it was white and overwhelmingly Catholic, with a Jewish minority. Almost no Milennial has experience of such a community.
Which brings me to another point: They are, for the most part, less religious than we are,’or were. While people like me and Bruce had to decouple ourselves from faith, many Milennials didn’t have faith to uncouple from, or it wasn’t as much a part of their lives as it was for ours. One great thing about that is that it is, at least in part, a reason why it’s not as big a deal when one of their friends or family members—or they themselves—comes out as gay, lesbian,‘transgender, non-binary, queer or as some sexual or gender identity that even I, a transgender woman, haven’t yet heard of.
The flip-side is, as Bruce points out, that they will live with problems that are, to a great degree, bequeathed to them by Boomers and “The Greatest Generation.” We should do what we can to help but Milennials will be dealing with those problems for a much longer period of their lives than we have had to.
Interestingly, for me, the pandemic has helped me to better understand what I’ve just tried to describe. The Milennials I’ve come to know—who include most of my current students—saw it as a reality they had to face, and they often responded in creative ways. In contrast, most of the whiners and worse were, unfortunately,’of my generation.
*—Too often, it seems that when people talk or write about “Milennials,” they are referring to denizens of cafes in places like Williamsburg, Brooklyn who use custom-made trimmers to keep their beards long enough to look rustic but neat enough not to catch the crumbs of the avocado toast they’re washing down with “craft” IPAs. The implication is, of course, that they’re male—and White.
Gen X-er over here – again, everyone forgets about us. Whatever, never mind. We were the latch-key kids running around the neighborhood unsupervised while our Silent Gen and Boomer parents had to work as the economy was going to sh!t in the 70s and 80s. We were constantly living under threat of nuclear war and HIV – a lot of us believed we wouldn’t make it far into adulthood, and if that was true, whatever, never mind.
It’s hard to reconcile the pot-smoking Vietnam-protesting free-love Woodstock hippies with the red-hat MAGA bigots pining for the “good old days” when women stayed in the kitchen and black people drank from separate water fountains and nobody could openly be LGBTQ without fear of being beaten. What changed? Greed? Fear?
My 35 yr old son was expressing this sentiment, that boomers had ruined the world. Although he did say he didn’t blame me personally! But seriously, we’ve bequeathed a ruined climate to our children, and the problem isn’t going to be solved. They will be lucky if the problem is managed at all in the next 20 years. It’s already too late to stop some pretty bad effects.
In a no holds barred way….Do not click if you are of a sensitive disposition.
Steve, this is great! Thanks! But do we have to wait until the first of May? 😂😂
In Central PA, yes. Florida would be nice…..
Fuckin’ First of May. I love it!
Aw, c’mon, Bruce. As an early Boomer, I object. It’s unjust to tar all Boomers with the “ruined the world and criticizes everybody else” brush. Some of us fought, and still fight, for women, LGBT people, civil rights, the environment, and dozens of other good causes that arose while we were growing up. We’re not all conservatives who sit on the porch and yell at the kids to get off our lawns.
I trust that Bruce is just trying to shine some light through his generalizations. There are progressives and conservatives in every generation, and I’d argue society seems to generally move toward progress in spite of the occasional regression. What’s liberal today may be conservative tomorrow. I’m sure Gen Z’s grandkids will complain of silly and harmfully outdated notions and values of today’s rising generations….and today’s Gen Z will be the curmudgeons of that era complaining about “those damn kids”.
Things have been going on this way forever. Plato recorded Socrates complaining about the disrespectful young folks of his time, and yet he was executed for corrupting the youth with his new-fangled philosophies (and “impiety”)
That was not my intent.
Apologies for mis-representing you then. I still have to agree with ThatOtherJean, though. I know a lot of really good Boomers who do not fit the current stereotype, and a lot of good Millenials and GenZs (granted my wife and I produced some GenZs so I may have a bias). There are also plenty of less-than-stellar examples from each generation.
I hold my own generation accountable for such crimes against humanity as Hammer Pants, neon tracksuits, and fanny packs.
I’m certainly glad I’m not the only Gen-X that thought, “The Forgotten Generation”.
As a mother of educated, Millennial, grown children, I have to say, they’ve had more challenges trying to meet the expectations and demands of today’s world. They don’t/didn’t have it easy. My kids’ student loan debt is enormous and repulsive. The pressure to make a GPA worthy of entering college, then maintaining it to gradute was gut wrenching. (Science majors) Now, getting and keeping a job that pays enough to pay back the student loans while surviving financially in today’s inflationary world is not for the faint of heart. As a forgotten Gen X-er, I’m not sure how the Boomers deducted their stereotypes of Millenials, but they are very wrong.
Millenials are a pretty tough, open-minded and creative bunch that work smarter, instead of harder.