They’re blamed for all sorts of societal ills, including the introduction of illicit drugs into this country, wishy-washy parenting and the economy going into the crapper. And yet they have been lauded for some of the best and biggest innovations since the beginning of time.
With 78 million baby boomers in America, they hold powerful positions. The youngest of the group turns 48 this year and the oldest 66. It’s likely that a boomer will be elected president in the fall. Still, the day is coming when the power baton will be passed to a younger generation. Will the boomers have left a smudge or a clean print on history?
A few months ago, we established a readers group made up of baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) to give their opinions about various issues. They are not a shy lot, and that’s a good thing since we ask them some tough questions — like “What’s wrong with America that can be attributed to boomers?”
Sally Burnell, 54, of Kent, and others in this story, are among the more than 100 who volunteered to participate in the group, and offered viewpoints on the boomer legacy.
“Our generation is terribly self-indulgent,” Burnell said. “Our parents were the greatest generation, tempered by the Great Depression and World War II. They knew the meaning of sacrifice for the greater good. Our generation was raised in such a way as to know no privations like those of our parents. They knew what they had been through and wanted our lives to be so much better than theirs.
“We grew up not having to make so many sacrifices like they did and having so much more, to where I think we expected so much that we overspent and went crazy with credit buying things we could not possibly afford because we wanted it now instead of waiting, saving and earning something by dint of sacrifice.”
David Weyrick, 56, of Akron, says his generation lacks loyalty to things made in America.
“My dad was a ‘Ford man’ all his life,” he said, noting that boomers also have a difficult time committing to marriage.
Weyrick has a point. While studies have determined that the overall divorce rate has held steady or declined since the 1980s, that’s not so for those over 50. The National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University recently found that the divorce rate for boomers and older couples has more than doubled over the past three decades, and it’s expected to increase.
Perhaps that is why people are now waiting to tie the knot. A report released last month by the Pew Research Center found after analyzing U.S. census data that barely half (a record low) of all adults in the United States are currently married. And the median age at first marriage has never been higher, with brides at about 26½ and grooms 28.7 years.
“Because we thought we could accomplish everything, we got greedy and excessive,” said Dr. William Hauser, 63, of Fairlawn. “Also we have become so opinionated [think politics] that social change we espoused in the 1960s only seems like a distant memory.”
But not all is lost. Hauser, and others, are also quick to point out what’s good about boomers.
“I think we baby boomers brought about a renewed sense of ‘we can accomplish anything if we set our minds to it,’ ” Hauser said. “We charged forward [sometimes blindly] into challenges such as racism and sexism and at least got things moving in a more equitable direction.”
Sometimes younger generations overlook what boomers did for equality — particularly when it comes to minorities and women.
“Fifty years ago, about all a woman could expect to do was to marry and have kids and be a housewife. Today, we can do anything we set our minds to. Anything. We can pursue fields that were once the nearly exclusive pursuit of men like science and engineering,” Burnell said. “We can become anything we dream of doing and we’ve only one last glass ceiling to smash, that being the presidency of the United States.”
And when it comes to technology, which has changed the lives of people of all ages, Weyrick noted we can thank boomers Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs and others.
To lighten things up, Audrey Humphrey, 58, of Atwater, attributes the popular long manes on guys in the ’60s and ’70s to boomers, though that hair has since slipped off the heads of some men and re-sprouted on their backs.
“We improved our ease of cooking. We produced the microwave and we then improved it several times,” she said. “We also got rid of the cardboard TV dinner tray and went to aluminum. But now we are back to cardboard boxes. And we went from black and white TVs [to go with those TV dinners] to color sets with more than three channels.”
And of course with medical advances, better diets, improvements in plastic surgery and pills that increase libidos, boomers continue to fight things like gravity and nature. That’s a good thing, since the ailing economy is preventing millions from retiring anytime soon — but that’s a story to be tackled another day.
Kim Hone-McMahan can be contacted at 330-996-3742 or kmcmahan@thebeaconjournal.com.
