The baby boom changed every age group it passed through because it was so large. Now the last baby boomers are passing through their forties, and the vanguard are retiring. Social services for the elderly are a major topic in analytical articles. How will we pay for their medical needs? How much of the national budget will go for social security?
Other issues relate to the gap in experience left by the Boomers’ retirement. Much expertise will walk out the door when they leave. Boomer numbers insure that they will be a force to be reckoned with for a while longer.
However, the current age that includes the Arab Spring, Wikipedia, and Facebook tinges the decades of the sixties and seventies with a sepia patina of nostalgia. In comparison with the changes since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the baby boomers’ time on stage appears almost innocent.
The Soviet empire, so easily identified as our enemy, is gone, replaced by an amorphous al-Qaeda and its offshoots. Organized religion is challenged by the “nones.” The booming suburbs are replaced by underwater mortgages and the resurgence of downtown living.
The children of the Boomers are not as child centered. Some wonder if they will even replace themselves.
The Boomer generation, so confident that their numbers would prevail in the ideological struggle with their parents’ world, is fading. We are still assessing the confused times they leave behind.
This gap between the parented and the unparented has increased since the famous baby boom following World War II. The boom gave way to other generations, born from the mid-1960’s onward. These groups are variously called Generation X, Generation Y (also known as the Millennials), and Generation Z. Until the economic recession that began around 2008, these children were born during an era of unprecedented economic growth, of the two-career family, of the housing boom.