Is being born between 1946 and 1964 sufficient to make you a

[hedgehog]

"Baby Boomer"?

What if you were poor?

What if you are black, Latino, Asian or ethnic?

What if you are religious?


I was born in 1954 but raised Irish Catholic in a family with a lot of recent immigrants. I went to school with girls who were Irish, Italian and Polish. I grew up in the Rust Belt and matured just in time to see a way of life collapsing around me. What does someone like me have in common with the stereotypical "Baby Boomer" aside from a common birth date?

[ben_meyers]

1. "Boomer" does not refer to economic status

It refers to the boom in births post WWll, so yes you qualify.

[MADem]

2. Precisely. It was a boom in births, not an economic boom. nt

[SoCalDem]

7. the parents of boomers WERE undergoing a financial "boom"

compared to their parents:)

Men who went to WWII, were children of the depression..many had never left their small towns/farms. Going off to war initiated them into possibilities they would have NEVER experienced otherwise.

Then having survived the war and returned, they were offered the opportunity of college, a cheap car, a home, a wife & kids in the suburbs.. many of these men would have not even finished high school and would have stayed in their little towns forever, had it not been for the war.

They BOOMED (along with the US), and their kids became "boomers"..

The rub is this.. There were SO many of us, that when WE matured, we had TONS of competition from each other, and we emerged, grown, just as the US started to stumble economically (Thanks Nixon.Ford.Reagan) I do not count Carter in this mix because his administration actually tried to combat the effects, but he was marginalized by the upsurging neo-cons..and he was a one-termer, hobbled by Nixonian-Ford policies)..

At the same time as all this was happening, parents of boomers started living a LONG time.. My mother had lost BOTH her parents by the time she was 32, and many parents-of-boomers had not only the wealth they accumulated post-war, but whatever they inherited from their parents..and many of those "parents-of-boomers" are still with us.

The 90's began draining their assets at a monstrous pace, and boomers are the ones who find themselves stuck in the middle with grown kids who still need "help", and an aging parent or two who have virtually spent all they had, and are now relying on their boomer children for support..and while this is all going on, boomers are expected to be "saving" for their own "retirement"...just as employers are forcing them OUT of the workforce in their 50's...

Boomers were the tip of the spear, so to speak, when workplaces everywhere , did away with defined BENEFITS pensions and unions, so many of us have never been able to amass much "future-worth", and with parents who are unlikely to have anything LEFT to leave to them, they are truly in DEEP SHIT.. we are also the ones who were forced to DOUBLE our share of FICA as we entered our most productive working years, and have been doing that for 35-40 years, in anticipation of OUR OWN later years..but as we reach that age, we are now called greedy because our government has "borrowed" all that money and given it away to their rich friends..

All I can say, is that all you young folks who want to begrudge us the little we stand to get, from all the years we worked, will see your own issues arrive later on in your life.. count on it !

We have all been where YOU are , but you have not yet been where WE are :)

[MADem]

11. Many were, not all, though. There were a load of folks who were 'left behind.'

The caucasians were on the tip of that spear, everyone else followed along behind. And not all caucasians, either. ER Murrow highlighted the plight of some of those who weren't booming along with the rest of the bunch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_of_Shame


That said, there certainly was an economic aspect that went along with all that reproduction:

Prior to the Baby Boom, there was a period of approximately 20 years in which having children would have been difficult due to the Great Depression and World War II. The Baby Boom reflected the sudden removal of economic and social pressures that kept people from starting families.<3> While austerity and restraint were the norms during the stress of the war years, after the war, couples reunited and returned to traditional roles. Returning (mostly male) soldiers re-entered the workforce; many women left wartime work to concentrate on child-bearing and child-rearing. Marriage became again a cultural and career norm for most women — and one result was babies.

The boom continued in the economic glow of the fifties, but dampened its rate as the recession of 1958 sloughed into the following recovery. One theory about the end of the baby boom is that it petered out as the biological capacity of boomer parents took its course. The key biological factor is female fertility. Women are fertile only into their mid-forties. Simple mathematics governs that a woman married in her mid-to-late twenties after the war ended in 1945 would remain fertile for another 20 years or so. The advent of the birth control pill in 1960 in the U.S. also contributed to the slowing birth rate, as earlier contraceptive methods were less popular or reliable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-World_War_II_baby_boom

[SoCalDem]

13. That's very true, and there are STILL significant pockets of poverty

and divorce started to factor into birth rates too..

The term "boomer" is mainly just a niche in time when we were born..we had no control over it.. it's just when we happened along..

Some "made it" some didn't..and many "made it" and then lost it :(

[Karenina]

33. WHAT, pray tell

is a "stereotypical" boomer??? There are 76 MILLION of us!!! :freak:

This shit is getting REEEEEDICKULUS!!!

[SoCalDem]

34. I don't think I stereotyped us

maybe you were replying to a different post? :hi:

[Karenina]

38. Mine was an addendum to YOUR post!!!

Sorry for not being clearer! :loveya: FOREVER!!!

[hlthe2b]

19. SOCALDEM has said quite a a mouthfull

An incredible concise, yet comprehensive overview of this birth cohort (and those that sandwich it) cause and effects. I hope some of our younger DUers will read this and it will help dispel some of their preconceived notions.


I just re-watched all episodes of HBO's Band of Brothers, including the documentary features on the 101 Airborne Easy Company's surviving members' histories and lives after WWII (any who have watched Band of Bros, get thee to Blockbuster!) I was quite taken with (and relieved) with the relative prosperity these guys had after the war.. God knows they deserved it, but now with 25% of homeless identified as veterans, there can be no doubt that our society and our way of life has taken a harsh turn for the worse.

[SoCalDem]

22. Viet Nam vets mostly..

Korean war vets probably had been WWI vets as well, so they had benefits to rely on, but by the time viet nam came along, things had started to unravel and the "meanies" were in power..

[CountAllVotes]

25. Benefits?

WWI?

Are you kidding me? My grandfather was gassed in WWI and lived to be about 60 years old. He was a mess and a totally disabled vet. He received a paltry $73.00 a month. How is that for "compensation"? :grr:

:kick:

[SoCalDem]

27. WWII vets got the lion's share..but probably for only a short time

As they got older, the benefits vanished:cry:

The immediate post-WWII years were probably the best time to be a vet..

WWI vets got screwed because the US was not a very prosperous place and then the depression came along.. The 50's & early 60's were the heady times of the US..before and after have kind of sucked :(

[CountAllVotes]

32. well my Dad never got anything

he had malaria, dengue fever, Beri-Beri and a host of other ailments that scarred him for life after being in the tropics during WWII. He didn't even tell anyone about his physical state after returning to the USA as he was a proud member of the Marine Corps.

Hence, he never got a cent as he did not want anything for his service to our country. He took his secrets to his grave. Not even the doctors knew as he laid in the hospital bed sweating with the fevers from malaria as he died. :cry:

[datavg]

20. Sorry...

...but I beg to differ. It is the older boomers who've benefitted most heavily from the stock and real estate value runups, and it's those same people who are the most likely to advocate sticking the baby busters with their healthcare bills. This isn't so much the case with people who were born after the boom peaked in 1957.

It's a gigantic pump and dump, but this time they're pumping and dumping an entire country if not a whole planet.

This is what scares the hell out me.

In the dictionary, under the term "elitist baby boomer" is Hillary Clinton's picture. She had it all from the very beginning. She grew up in secure surroundings, her parents paid for Wellesley and then Yale Law, the country had plenty of opportunities when she finished law school...the pieces were all there. All she had to do was assemble them and that's precisely what happened.

At least Bill grew up poor early on and his mother had it tough and he had to hash it out as a law professor for a few years. Hillary has never had it tough...not in her entire life.

The people I really feel sorry for are the kids in college today. We are so up to our asses in debt (public and private) that one can't help but feel sympathy for those who will clean up after us.

[pnwmom]

3. The stereotypical baby boomer has always been just that -- a stereotype.

It lumps a lot of people together on nothing more that they were born among the wave of births that occurred after the end of World War II.

We all have our own stories, but the outlines of mine are similar to yours. The reason we're both baby boomers is because of the years we were born, nothing more.

[hlthe2b]

4. Goodness.. Where did you ever the get the impression...

that "boomer" in this term meant something other than birth cohort? What exactly is the sterotypical "Baby Boomer" in your view,hedgehog?

[sandnsea]

5. So now marketing demographics

don't exist. The term "boomer" has never meant anything more than a space in time. :eyes:

I hate when otherwise intelligent people play dense because they don't like to face what someone else has said.

I hear you hedgehog, I am obviously not the typical yuppie boomer either.

[ben_meyers]

15. There's 2 different terms

"boomer" and "yuppie" are not the same thing at all. Not all boomers are yuppies! Or should I say were yuppies, because most of us aren't young anymore.
And I don't trust anyone under 30 either.

[hedgehog]

17. How many yuppies started out as hippies?

After Nixon was elected, you can't imagine how much I resented the yippies whose activities in Chicago helped elect him and by extension helped extend the Viet Nam war. I think the term Yuppie implied tha at least some members of that cohort were former hippies who cleaned up and got a job from one of Dad's friends in order to enter the upper middle class.

[Breeze54]

24. "Young, Up and Coming" = Yuppies...

Those were the most hated of the boomers, IMHO.

They were also referred to as 'turncoats'.

Newly graduated from college and out on the take!

[KharmaTrain]

6. Another Definition...

I grew up in a similar environment as you. I'd always thought that the Baby Boomers were predominately the children of those who served in WWII...black, latino, white, orange, comquat. These were the children of the GI Bill and the Post WWII economic boom.

The term has been perverted as to indicate the people of the generation as opposed to where they came from.

[aquart]

10. No.

That completely discounts the stresses on the people at home that made them forego childbearing during the war. It discounts the hours women were working. It discounts the deprivations of rationing. It discounts the level of national anxiety.

And it discounts the expansive nature of an enemy which was fighting to CONQUER, SUBJUGATE, and ANNEX.

[KharmaTrain]

14. Huh???

It far from "deprives" those who weren't in the War as, if you had watched the Ken Burns series "The War", you would have seen how everyone was involved with the war one way or another. These also were known as the "Depression children". My mother had and lost a child during the war while my father was in England...trust me, I know all about the suffering many people went through during those years.

I include the many people working in defense industries as part of the war effort. This not only includes the millions of women who went to work but also the large number of blacks who migrated north. Everyone shared in the "deprevation", but that also bonded people. This was the world I grew up around...compounded by being Jewish and living with the survivors of the holocoust.

[whistle]

8. I guess that is what they claim, although I always thought that 1959

...was that end of the baby boomer era. You can test yourself here:

http://www.bbhq.com/bbexam1.php?caller=intro

[aquart]

9. Soldier. Home. Laid. Boom! Baby.

Four years of no men, no babies. Women in factories. No time for babies.

Homecoming, everybody made up for lost time. EVERYBODY was celebrating EGGS, SUGAR, BUTTER and no more FOOD, cloth, and gas rationing. Oh, and the fact that WE WON!

What bothers me about your Rust Belt upbringing is the quality of your American history lessons.

[hlthe2b]

23. As I mentioned in an earlier post... perhaps our younger DUers

could watch Band of Brothers, the story of the 101st Airborne paratroopers from HBO, and their incredible history at Normandy, in Holland, the horrendous Battle of the Bulge, and vicious fighting in Belgium, France and Germany. The special feature documentaries of the survivers of this Division--Easy Company and what they did with their lives is really a good history lesson. It was good to see after their hell that they came back to an AMerica well prepared to help them prosper, quite unlike our country today (and quite unlike what boomer Vets came back to post-Vietnam). THESE WWII vets were the parents of baby boomers. That was the benchmark and with every subsequent generation, including the boomers, things have gone into the crapper by comparison, given Reagan, Bush I and now BushII policies. Now, we have 1/4 homeless identified as a Veteran! Reagan drove deficits so high that Bush II is allowing the dollar to drop like a cowpatty in value, so that he can pay 50 cents on the dollar towards Reagan's bonds that have come due. We are all going to suffer--tremendously the next decade.

[NOLALady]

29. Not true of ALL WWII Vets.

"It was good to see after their hell that they came back to an AMerica well prepared to help them prosper"

This wasn't true of all WW2 Vets. The America that my Father came back to wouldn't even allow him to vote.

[hlthe2b]

31. No, of course not... I speak only to the group as a whole...

America, post WWII and with FDR policies in place was well positioned to become the superpower that it did. Returning veterans, as a group, benefited from that (thankfully, given there could be no group that deserved it more). African Americans came back still without civil rights. Japanese Americans, who were placed in internment camps were released but many had lost property with no dispensation.

Some American GIs went on to suffer the effects of radiation from nuclear tests... We are talking population dynamics and demographics in generalities, but there are obvious exceptions, always.

[WinkyDink]

12. "Boomer" has nothing to do with ANYTHING except BEING BORN post-WWII!

[hedgehog]

16. There seem to be two definitions of boomer.

One is the simple fact of being born between 1946 and 1964.

The second, more subtle definition implies certain attitudes, life experiences or culture.

For example, one might discuss the pressure baby boomers are starting to put on the retirement system as they age. Fair enough. That's definition 1. But definition 2 is the one used by ads such as the one featuring Dennis Hopper for Amerprise

( http://www.ameriprise.com/amp/global/press-center/press-release-80.asp)

The ad addresses a certain kind of boomer with the health and economic status to engage in vigorous or expensive activities such as travel. The suggestion that all boomers are healthy, that all boomers are wealthy is a crock. It's like suggesting that all college kids spend their spring breaks in Florida. I never had the time nor the money. My spring breaks were spent studying and doing extra hours at my job. All my life, I've been presented with an image of what my contemporaries were doing as if ALL my contemporaries were following that path. Some certainly do fit that image, but I couldn't even begin to guess what percantage do. 10%? 20%? 50%? You got me.

[Sparkly]

18. Not two definitions. There's still only one definition.

Ads may seek to appeal to one set of a particular demographic, but people born during the post-WWII baby boom are "baby boomers." There is no other definition.

[Breeze54]

26. The 'yuppies' were a sub-group of the boomers.

The greedy, selfish pricks!

[hlthe2b]

28. i.e., greed at all cost, Republicans! eom

[WinkyDink]

35. Maybe so. But the O.P. didn't say "Yuppies".

[Breeze54]

36. I wasn't responding to the OP.

:shrug:

[hlthe2b]

21. Well, I can tell you the difference between the oldest & youngest

Baby Boomers, their relative experiences, influences, and fortunes (on average) is like night and day. Being one of the tail end birth years, I can assure you that the Dennis Hopper ad may as well relate to Martians as to me.

[AlGore-08.com]

30. I agree; I was born at the tail end of that time line. My older cousins are culturally "Boomers"

I never was. For example, my male older cousins (and a couple uncles) all fought in Vietnam or spent their college years avoiding the draft. By the time I was in college, Reagan was in office.

My older cousins grew up watching "Leave It To Beaver" and "Father Knows Best". I grew up watching "M*A*S*H*" and "Maude".

Their first Presidential vote was for JFK (or Nixon, for some of them). My first Presidential vote was for Walter Mondale.

They grew up during the sexual revolution. By the time I was an adult, AIDs was on the scene.

My cousins grew up in a time of (relative) comfort and ease. They never worried about how to pay for college or saving up enough to buy a house or anything like that. I have never been financially secure.

Our experiences have been those of two different generations. I never have been a boomer, and I'm not "Gen X" either.

[Breeze54]

37. AIDS was discovered in 1981, officially.

So, you weren't really one of the boomer babies anyway,

if you were born in 1961. ;) You were just a baby!!

[lumberjack_jeff]

39. the "second, more subtle definition" isn't a definition, it's a stereotype. n/t

[goodgd_yall]

41. And then there is the equation of baby boomer

with the radical political and cultural change of the 60s and early 70s---in reality this probably involved less than a majority of young people at the time (just a guess), but it was an active bunch who challenged the establishment. That's enough to get a whole generation defined by their activism. But it isn't accurate.

[SoCalDem]

43. "...the pressure baby boomers are starting to put on the retirement system as they age. .."

The pressure we put on the job market when we ENTERED it, aided in our own demise.. When there were SO many of us, it was relatively easy for the "masters of industry" to discount our labor, and it helped to kill unions.. "you don't like it? well..there are millions just like you who WILL work for less".. (remind you of anything currently going on?)

We just did what we could, and tried as hard as we could (like most of the people just about anywhere, anytime)and we end up where we end up..

Most of us do NOT control our own destinies as much as some think we do :)

[cgrindley]

40. Yep. Being born between September 1945 -1964 = boomer (nt)

[Joe Fields]

42. There is no such thing as a stereotypical boomer. n/t.