Exploring legacies of the baby boomers in the twenty-first century

Abstract

As the baby boomers neared retirement at the turn of the twentieth century, attention focused on what the future might look like for both them and succeeding generations. Public discourse about boomers often depicts them as a selfish and narcissistic generation that have benefitted from the largesse of the modern welfare state yet seem intent on denying those benefits to their children and grandchildren. Millennials have similarly been condemned as a ‘snowflake’ generation unwilling to accept the responsibilities of full-blown adulthood, though, unlike the boomers, they have experienced the negative effects of late capitalism, such as job insecurity, student debt and housing unaffordability. Sometimes disparities between boomers and millennials have been seen as producing a ‘generations war’. However, using generation as shorthand for what are often more complex issues suffers ‘generationalism’ insofar as it belies intragenerational heterogeneity, among other things. Drawing on sociological conceptions of generation, it is an aim of this article, and the contributions contained in this Special Section, to explore the veracity of claims made around generations, ‘generations at war’ and the legacies of baby boomers.

The ‘Boomer remover’: Intergenerational discounting, the coronavirus and climate change

“…Edmunds & Turner, 2002a, 2002bKertzer, 1983;Mannheim, 1952Mannheim, /1970Pilcher, 1994) to one of examining appeals to 'generational thinking' or 'generationalism' (White, 2013), in public discourse. This scholarship has critically interrogated the deployment of generational claims, highlighting the empirical murkiness of their referents (Roberts & France, 2021), the contradictions in their implications (Bristow, 2021), and the political significance of how they are used to narrate social conditions and events -especially where generations are represented in a simplified, stereotyped, or exaggerated form (Airey et al, 2021;Bristow, 2015Bristow, , 2016Bristow, , 2019Martin & Roberts, 2021;Somers, 2017). The objective of this body of research is not to dispense with generation as mere fiction, but rather to see the deployment of 'generation' as the articulation and application of a particular category of analysis and practice that itself warrants examination (White, 2013).…”

“…This is one way the coronavirus gets described as like climate change in March 2020. The claim is that older generations, with the Boomers (typically defined as those born in the two decades after the Second World War; Martin & Roberts, 2021) often singled out, squandered the opportunity to make meaningful inroads on mitigating the worst effects of climate change, for the sake of their children and future generations. For their part, younger generations were perceived to be showing a cavalier attitude towards social distancing and other risk mitigating behaviours, which would protect older people hit harder by COVID-19.…”

“…'Boomer remover' also appeared on the r/memes subreddit and Google searches of the term peaked in the week from 15 to 21 March. It was most typically associated with teens, a kind of disturbing embellishment of the 'OK Boomer' meme, a mocking retort to the Boomers for being old-fashioned and out of touch, which spread widely in 2019 (Martin & Roberts, 2021). Indeed, one user described COVID-19 as 'Mother Nature's ultimate #okboomer to a generation that has done little but destroy the environment while denying climate change exists'.…”

“…The impacts of COVID-19 -and the economic recession in its wake -have also shown considerable socioeconomic and racial disparity. Generational grievance, and the kinds of accusations expressed by intergenerational discounting, obscure this relevant diversity and project a homogeneity of intent, action and outcome on entire groups of people (Martin & Roberts, 2021;White, 2013). This caricatures and mystifies the causes and conditions of crisis, turning them into 'the problem of people' (Bristow, 2016, p. 586) rather than connecting them to, in this case, what might otherwise be interpreted as failures of leadership, international cooperation and coordination, and regulation.…”

“…As discussed above, Thunberg and other youth climate activists use generational language to build a broad-based movement for climate action that calls upon intergenerational familial and social obligations and transcends other social divisions. Others, invested in conservative political projects, have used generationalism to mount a critique of the welfare state, in which older generations, and the Boomers in particular, are 'greedy geezers' who are saddling their children and grandchildren with a mountain of national debt that must be serviced at the expense of collective investments in education, job training, and other initiatives that benefit the young (Martin & Roberts, 2021;Somers, 2017;Street & Cossman, 2006). The generations are at odds, squaring off in a zero-sum conflict.…”