Who The Hell Created The Baby Boomers & Why Did They Raise Their Kids That Way?
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- Опубліковано 7 вер 2024
- The speaker is Doug McAdam, professor of sociology at Stanford University and an expert on the 1950s and and1960s. I interviewed him in 1999 for my TV series on the 1960s (Making Sense Of The Sixties) which included a show on how largely middle-class white families in the 1950s (some would say) "spoiled" their children and why they did so. I grew up at that time and I wasn't spoiled. Many of the viewers on this clip have commented that they did not come from parent to spoil them. Most of them were not raised in the suburban middle-class.
Although I lived in Levittown Long Island which was a suburban middle-class community, my parents were below the middle class and I had to work to get my Boy Scout uniform and my first bicycle. Many of my fellow students in school in the 1950s were middle-class and by today's standards, many would say their lifestyle was exceptionally comfortable and exceptionally easy. I’m not sure about spoiled.
Prof. McAdam paints a clear picture of the parents of the baby boomers, some of whom had grown up in the depression. Most of whom had lived through World War II. They were told by the government, the church, and social leaders of the time, that the 1950s would be a calm time, a time of increasing wealth, a time of family life and family values. And for many, that is just what it was.
So how did the 1960s come from the 1950s if the 1950s was so great? Well, it wasn't great for everyone for sure, and about 40% of the baby boomers say that they participated in the rebellious events of the 1960s, some small percent in the political movements such as antiwar protests, and a much larger percent in the social protests, longhair, rock 'n' roll, marijuana, freer sex, etc.
McAdam also points out how many of the rebellious movements of the 1960s including the women's movement, the civil rights movement, Native American protests and so many others, were influenced by the civil rights movement and the way that black students largely in the South, conducted themselves during nonviolent protests on behalf of civil rights.
Anyone enjoying this interview might want to watch this incredible sequence on the boomers - ua-cam.com/video/_rTuPEdlhQs/v-deo.html
I am going to have to watch the entire boomer series from you. As a first year GenXer I have my own issues with the boomer generation as a whole but I had the same ones with the half of my generation who grew up basically like them as well. It is too bad that no one ever cared to look into Gen X we were not a large enough group in fact we are called the baby bust generation in some countries.
Actually boomers are known for their ability to network.
If one enjoys the typical New Left cliches that got us stuck in much of the disaster we are in now, I suppose.
for the sake of rhetoric, they didn't raise their kids.
all the reports i find say radios in factories during ww2 were so loud it was impossible to converse, accustomising their parents to constant babble.
controlling society 101
Gen.X was born between 1965 & '84.
"A generation is not a period of media influence. A generation is a reproductive period of at least 20 years lest teenage pregnancy be encouraged."
He is missing the BIGGEST thing that made the Baby Boomer generation what they were/are and that is the fact that they were the first generation raised with televisions. That had a massive impact on them. Mass media as we know it emerged for the first time.
I think if we had the full interview that the topic of TV and others would have been covered. My memory isn't the best, but I have watched other experts filmed by David Hoffman that have talked about the influence of television and Doug McAdams may have been one of them. You are correct about the TV and its impact - it was huge.
I did several entire videos posted on my channel on TV and its effect on us then and now. Thank you for pointing that out get smart.!
David Hoffman filmmaker
Agree very much. TV changed everything, including our generation's cognitive processes.
@@CIA.2024-u9b Birth control? What exactly is so cruel about that?
Now, the internet......
The dude never even came close to describing the harnshiness of the depression and WWII on people. My parents were used to folks going hungry so the boomers parents wanted their children to have everything they did not.
Well yeah. That skewed the focus of parenting significantly among that generation(s) that produced the Boomers. For them as long as a roof was over your head and food was on the table then everything else would take care of itself. And a lot was delegated to schools and other fairly novel social institutions. And it left that generation of parents woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with the myriad problems their teens and young adults would run into in the late 60s and 70s.
YOU ARE GENERALIZING A VERY LARGE GROUP OF PPL. WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME! My parents were from the Silent Generation. THEY are the children of the WWII generation (my grandparents’ generation.) Everyone that wants to blame their crappy life on an entire generation is just PATHETIC!
My Silent Generation parents were NOT good parents. They were unavailable and treated us like little adults. We had far too little money to be “spoiled.” THEY were the victims of THEIR WWII era parents. My parents, like their OWN parents, saw us as “little adults.” You were “just supposed to know” everything! Unfortunately, my parents from the Silent generation did not know how to parent because their parents didn’t really know how to parent!
I’m in the younger part of the so-called baby boom. The real name of my part of the boom is generation Jones, named by a demographer BECAUSE OF DISTINCT MEASURABLE DIFFERENCES! (Get it???) We’re NOT ALL THE SAME!
(Demographers research the differences and characteristics that define generations.)
You think everyone in the ‘marketing executive coined-name’ “baby boom” was a spoiled brat??? I’m here to tell that YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.
We were literally on our own as little kids. We were told to “just stay outside!” We were expected to “just know things” we couldn’t possibly know! We were latch key kids b4 there was a name for it!
My father still had what we know now as PTSD from the Korean War that ended some years earlier. He could be violent sometimes. We’d hide or go outside when he was angry. We were told to never touch him when he was sleeping, because his reaction might be violent, if he was startled awake.
My mother was not mentally healthy either. She’d get mad at us for doing kid-like things and run to my father who she KNEW could get out of control. He’d hit us & she was OK with that. I remember running from him, as he tried to kick me for some small thing, and promised to hit me in the head with his ring on. (Meaning I’d get hurt worse). I got away from him though. I was a fast runner. I remember his explosive anger at some small thing at the dinner table. Without warning, he picked up a crystal glass sugar bowl with a glass lid and threw it as hard as he could at a plaster wall that broke it into many small pieces right by us kids. The outburst came out of nowhere. This is why I hated having to sit at a table near him. You could get slapped hard for nothing. You could also get hit hard enough that your chair fell backwards.
My mother asked me, a 6-yr old first grader, to find her a babysitter. The weird thing is that I DID find a babysitter by asking older kids if they knew anyone who was a babysitter. I would find out just a few years ago that a younger sibling was molested there. I never knew this.
I want to know who all these “spoiled” boomers ARE, because I sure didn’t get any of the “spoiling.” I know I’m not alone in this. I grew up in a rural area and most ppl didn’t have much. I didn’t have many toys at all. We never, ever had a vacation. We also didn’t go to restaurants when I was young either. My clothes came from GoodWill or were hand-me-downs from a neighbor who had a several years older daughter.
I had to stand on a chair to wash dishes as a young kid. We frequently made our own food. My parents worked and didn’t want us to be around them when they didn’t work. You learned to be self-sufficient. If you had a problem, you had to figure it out without adult help. It was actually scary sometimes.
I loved my parents, but they were not well and had no idea how to parent. I am estranged from my mother (She never had much interest in me anyway.) All I ever really wanted from her was some attention. My father is dead. Weirdly, he and I made peace with each other before he died. He felt bad about his behavior. He said he loved me. My mother has never said this. She’s a narcissist. A gerontologist who she saw told me she is troubled. He acknowledged his sympathy for me, because he said, kids who grow up with this kind of parent always suffer. He was right. So don’t ASSUME everyone in the ‘baby boom’ had an easy, privileged life. Many of us did NOT.
I got therapy as soon as I left my parent’s house for college. BTW, I worked all through college and had student loans that took me YEARS to pay off. When I graduated there was a RECESSION. So finding a job wasn’t easy and there was inflation too.
Yet, I never ever thought of blaming the entire Silent Generation or WWII generation for my life. I’m not rich. I live on social security. I don’t have a house either.
Those of you who can relate somewhat to what I grew up with need to FIND A TRAUMA THERAPIST before you have kids. Or if you’ve had them, seek out a trauma therapist so you don’t hurt your own kids. It’s ESSENTIAL that you do this to break the cycle.
@@gf4670 Oh heck no. I was born in the very early '50s. My parents survived the Great Depression and WWII. My father served in the Pacific in the Army Air Corps and returned to work a Virginia State Trooper and then as a Safety Officer for major trucking company out of NYC. Nobody in my family was ill-equipped to raise children and deal head on with societal problems and social issues. What sociology professor was spouting all that nonsense you typed?
@@Singlesix6 LOL. None. But being a middle-aged man and veteran of two wars myself, who grew up with Boomer parents and WWII veteran grandparents and having now raised children to adulthood I can say that Boomers -- and their parents -- were generally lacking the social skills and emotional maturity to produce healthy, well-rounded adults and citizens. It's not an absolute but it is a generality, and it does hold water. Or should I point to the myriad studies that show Boomer lifetime substance abuse and addiction rates (including obesity) somewhere in the 87% range or the countless studies and reports about how unhealthy Boomers are now relative to their parents and grandparents at the same age and the strain it is and will have on Medicare et al thanks to decades of not taking care of themselves while trying to fill the void of depression and anxiety with booze and cigarettes and carbs and, all too often, cocaine thanks to negligent and often ignorant midcentury parenting and apathetic institutions that they then tried to pass on to their own children?
Now I'm glad that you had good parents in the 50s and 60s, but MANY did not and had to confront adulthood in the late-60s and 70s and beyond without the skills to deal with it in a healthy manner and it spiraled. Sometimes generationally. The crime and drug waves of the 70s and 80s didn't happen in a vacuum.
Now if you don't mind, I just got back from dropping my son off at Cambridge and I've got a Zoom call with him to get to.
(Now there's a sentence my parents never said.)
My parents grew up in the depression. My Dad grew up in a two room log cabin. He fought in WW2 and never talked about it. Mom was a teen during the war. They married in 1952 and had me five years later. They worked hard. Daddy was a brick mason. He built our family home. We were the first to have in door plumbing with a bathroom. It was the first brick home in our hollar. Yes, I know it’s hollow, but I’m a hollar girl. Mom worked at Blue Bell where they made Wrangler jeans. It was piecemeal work. We had the first tv and the second phone. I didn’t get everything I wanted, but Christmases were huge. My sister came along in 1965 and Mom was a little easier with her. She got to do things I didn’t, like join the Brownies. Our first big weekend trip was to Jamestown when I was three. I still remember that 62 years later. Our first vacation was on the Blue Ridge Parkway when I was seven. We camped on weekend every summer and our vacations, we camped and saw most of the eastern US. Mom saved quarters for gas for our vacations. They worked hard, taught me to do something right the first time, and to be honest. I’m thankful to be a Boomer and to have been raised by two of part of the Greatest Generation. They didn’t do everything right, but they did the best they could.
It sounds like your parents would have been successful no matter what generation they were born into!
My parents married on 1953..
Farm girl secretary..daddio Union Electrician..
Ranch home north of wealthy suburb.
7 kiddies..Army officers and college professors All on the Road we Lived on.
Seasons to Look Forward..
OPEC 1973 flipped Everything...People got Money M a D..
Many today don’t know about or understand what sacrifices parents made to give their children a good life. They made the most of what they had.
I grew up in Virginia also. I was a 1977 baby, but my 2 neighbors didn't have running water, and only 1 or 2 lights and 1 or 2 power outlets eventually. They heated and cooked by wood stove. We had water and electricity at the end of our dirt road. My dad worked for Moores and then Lowes selling building supplies to homebuilders. (He was smart and bought stocks). We heated by wood, and I had asthma as a child too. We were dirt poor but I never knew it until I was 10 or so. Going camping, or visiting Jamestown was a big deal to me too. Or a motorcycle ride to the mountains with my dad.
I've just been forced to move to Boston due to a rare disease and my mother just passed and her husband refuses to let me take over her home that was my grandparents land and all my family is buried there. 💔 It's sad. I feel like I've lost my whole life, and family. And I hate it up north and they hate me.
My mom's childhood house was a 2 room shack and they had 5 daughters. The babies slept in dresser drawers they laid out on the floor. They had an outhouse. They eventually got 1 light bulb and an outlet, and eventually running water. They bathed in the small pond out back. It worked. We had to burn that shack down after my grandfather passed away.
@@penelope-oe2vr I’m super sorry for what is happening
Sad about your mom and your being stuck away from home.
Terrible to hear you’re ill
I just started praying after decades not
Times are grim
I was fortunate to spend about a decade of my childhood living next door to my maternal grandparents. Grandpa was born in 1909 and served in the western Sahara as an army medic during WW2. Grandma was born in 1912 and she was one of the first special education teachers in Michigan. My grandmother's first husband, my biological grandpa, died of a heart attack in his mid 50s when I was a baby and my mom was in her 20s. Grandma first married and had the first of three children during the great depression while she was still in college and she had her youngest child, my mom, about three months before Pearl Harbor. Grandma married her second husband when I was 3 years old in 1971. Their garden was at least 6000 square feet and they put me to work in it to teach me how to grow food instead of being dependent on a supermarket.
My boomer grandfather had a giant garden but instead of teaching me anything I was turned into a potato picking slave for missing the school bus when I was like 10.
I was "spoiled". I had two parents in a stable marriage; a stay at home Mom, a blue collar, WWII veteran Dad. Not rich, but above "poor" enough that we never went hungry. Both of them spent adequate quality time with me and my siblings. We never questioned their love for us. We lived in a predominately white suburban area between the farms and a city with less than 40,000 people. Church on Sunday. Visit with grandparents after church every Sunday. Wednesday night prayer meetings. Age appropriate chores by age 3 (put your toys away). Dr. Spock stuff came and went, the love and care didn't ever stop - neither did the expectation to work around the house and help out. Friends with fewer demands on their time often waited (impatiently) for me to finish chores and go play. First job at age 8 cutting grass for my elderly, black neighbor. From my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and adult leaders and teachers I learned morals and the purpose thereof; to be honest and deal squarely with everyone; to take pride in a job well-done (with no corners cut) for the sake of the task at hand no matter how trivial; to have friends be a friend to others. My influences were not saints. My uncles came back from WWI using booze as medication. My parents had some real good arguments early on. Everyone kept their act together, imperfectly, despite their challenges.
I enjoy watching these videos from David because they help me examine my generation. They remind me of times and events gone by that I haven't thought about for decades. It is an interesting, forensic review. I find it very valuable. I am so appreciative that David Hoffman is making these and other videos available to the public via UA-cam. I believe the more we understand each other, generationally, the better we can care for each other and move through this life together with hope for the future.
Everything we needed and some of the things we wanted. But if you counted what other kids on the block had, we were golden!
You were almost the ideal family we used to see on tv and wonder if they really existed ! Good to know they sort of did and good to know also that they also weren't perfect. Thanks for sharing all of that.
I think it depends a lot on what happened to your parents during WW2.
My dad was a prisoner of the Japanese captured in Singapore aged 19 and put to work as a slave on the infamous "Death Railway" in Burma.
He survived, just. But the mental scars were deep.
That sounds like a really nice life! I wouldn't call that spoiled. I'd say that's about as close to what life should be like. I say we need more of that nice life for as many people possible. There's too much cynicism these days about the good life, especially during the baby boomer days. It did exist for a lot of people and no one should feel bad or out of place for that. I grew up a millennial in a similar way. Life isn't perfect for anyone. I've got my problems, but I've had a good life as well. The good life is possible. A lot can depend on the family you're born in. Some people have more baggage to work through.
@@luckydave328 wow, how tragic for your father. I could not imagine .... nope, could not. Best wishes to you all
@@B4iGo2it It did not go well. He lived a miserable tormented life plagued by illness and mental instability. He hated religion, the Japanese and the army and government. He also found it difficult to live with himself after killing many of his sick friends with a shovel as the Japanese were forcing him to bury them alive.
He had terrible nightmares every night.
PTSD was not recognised at that time.
I have some fond memories though. Believe it or not...he could be funny at times. However UA-cam is not the best place for this and I have already said more than I intended.
He starts out not even mentioning that the boomer parents barely survived the 1918 flu......then the Great depression, then WW2. They even tried to draft my dad again for the Korean war but he was so mangled from ww2 they wouldn't take him. I never got any of this prosperity, My dad was an alcoholic war crazed disabled vet. No mention of the many children being raised by very damaged men from the war.
Boomer is after WW2 1946-1960
1918 flu die off generation WW1 .
People who came from nothing then wanted to give their kids everything. It's a viscious cycle.
Yeah, Lincoln Logs, an Erector set, a driver's license at 15.5, a black and white tv, and a car when I could afford to buy one. And people think only children are always spoiled. No, I was treated fairly and loved and was expected to get a job and work at McDonalds, and a tree service, and a landscape company, and always expected to find my way to college. And I did. Everything wasn't a whole lot in the '50s and '60s. No cell phone, no Nintendo et al, and no computers. Reading was a joy, sports were outdoors, and life was generally good. I did get a bicycle for Christmas one year.
Im 63 i was told...your job is to pass in school grow up and be a useful member of society, the world does not owe you a living, life is not fair, suck it up and keep going.
Makes you wonder why people bring children into this world at all...I still can't figure out the logic
I’m 31. My parents are your age and I have come to accept that I will never have everything they had. My generation got royally fucked with no more pensions, the 2008 stock market crash and global recession, unaffordable college, massive student loans and stagnant wages. Then 2017-2019 gave us some hope with great economic years, but then 2020 hit with covid and the subsequent recession, supply chain crisis, inflation, and rising interest rates really screwed us over.
@@RepentImmediately I didn’t and I don’t regret it.
this right here is why i wont have kids because thats just a way of saying the point of having kids is not for yourselves, but keep the labor force going
"I'm 63... your job is to make money so you can consume and to not believe in Jesus and have morals, ethics, values and principles, because consuming is up to you and nobody is going to give you anything to consume..."
*See how you're proving us right Boomer...?*
I'm a boomer but no one laid out anything for me and my 4 brothers. Not sure if WW2, PTSD dads, beating the crap out of their kids and moms with post partum depression tuning out to 5 out of control kids was celebrating family, maybe it was, IDK. I tried all my life to make things better for the Earth and my fellow man, in spite of my own traumas but it certainly didn't give us much opportunity in life. All 5 of us were talented kids too. I wonder how many others didn't get a chance?
I can relate. I am a Boomer & when we were kids, it was ok to beat kids, even the nuns did it. My mom was a young widow, and took the job of maintenance of our building to make $30. more a month. Most mom's didn't work outside the home then. When I was around 10, ( my brother was 14, my sister was 9, younger brother was 7) Mom started having seizures & died of a brain tumor. Boomers were not spoiled, my brother had a paper route, to buy a bike, my brother, sister & I shared 1 bike. We didn't get a chance, no college, weddings, etc. that suburban ppl take for granted. Only my older brother bought a house.
I'm a retired nurse boomer, the baby in a 4 children's home. Dad career's military, and delicate, mother, spoiled wife with homemakers available at all times!
Well all of it, including nun school, until Castro!!
No, life hasn't been easy, but we did our best and we created good changes that really helped a lot of people, didn't we?
Looking to our youth's ideologies and values today, I'm not so sure anymore!! And God, we really believed that we tried to make changes for the better, but, then again, didn't we?
Wasn't our parents saying the same??
Maybe this is all about old age?
I think we did made many good changes, and still do!! Not wonder the Boomer's removal was necessarily planned! So I heard!🤣
We did history when we arrived and we will make history again on our way out!!
It was a Boomer's arrival and definitely, it will be a Boomer's departure!!
Keep praying!! Let there be light!
We need to defeat this evil in the world before leaving!🙏
You were the minority though….. you all had it so much easier than what us millennials go through.
Janet joiner well said I had a very dysfunctional family life as well. With very few opportunities, there are 5 of us, all high. School grads, but was told over and over again college is not an option. We where country kids and worked hard with chores. And yes we got beat if we stepped out of line. I have met many boomers who on the other hand had a charmed childhood. I d say there was a big divide back in the 60’s between the haves and the have nots. But we where brought up to be proud, honest and hard working, and be grateful for what we did have. It irritates me when boomers are stereotyped as being privileged, I could right a book on the horrors I lived through as a child. Dad also was in WW2, PTSD, yes it was a nightmare. No I didn’t get any encouragement to do anything. Only in the last few years i have been able to work less, and pursue some of my artistic talents, which I teach myself how to do things, and it gives me great satisfaction to make things.
@@local4075 As a boomer, my mom and dad both worked until the divorce when my mom raised 5 kids on one income. I went to work on a newspaper route at 12, a landscaping business with my uncle at 14, a restaurant busboy by the time I was 17. Paid my way through jr college simultaneously with 2 jobs with no loans.All four of my brothers and sisters had similar experiences.
Tell me how your life is so bad again? 🙄
I’m 42. As a teenager I always wished I could talk with older folks trying to bridge gaps & bring understanding. Now I say that about people in their 20s now. Baby boomers were resisting a very stuffy society. Where older Gen z/ younger millennials are rebelling against people who were into Nirvana lol.
I too have felt like bridging the gap before with my parents generation. I wanted to now what the heck is up with their generation and why they act and think the way they do. I think it's healthier for communities to have smaller gaps between the generations and have good relationships between the young and the old.
Very good point!
Wow..I've just seen a news story in ME, about 8 year olds in elementary school who WANT to dress up once a week
Boys WANTING SHORT hair, slacks, and even ties, and girls WANTING to wear dresses
It's a pendulum in a way.
Until 1968, kids couldn't wear denim, and girls HAD to wear dresses
He is absolutely correct 👍 I was in San Francisco during the 60's, I now live Off Grid in the mountains. My children are very much apart of quote " Normal Society " and I'm very proud of them. All I wanted for them is too be happy and at peace with whom they have become.Very excellent interview David, thank you for sharing this. 🕉️ Namaste 🕉️
I agree, television 📺 was the baby sitter in our house. Talk about mass brainwashing. Its gotten worse. We, my household, haven’t watched TV in years. We actually have household conversations; and I got rid of Wi-Fi years ago, as well. Smartest family decision, ever!
My parents were baby boomers, they stayed with the same job, did not call out sick, worked hard, and owned the same house their entire lives. They also got retirement, government, and VA benefits (free education), and companies did not routinely just fire people either. They were the last generation to experience economic stability and retirement. This has caused some resentment, especially when it's perceived the BB's expect to have X, Y, and Z.
Why they had no interest in me, my brother and sister? I figured it was because they were tired from working all the time. We were left alone with no parental supervision in the 70's...lucky to be alive. I was shocked when I had kids, how all the parents appeared to be living through their kids....
My generation (Latch Key Kids) will have to work until we die. The BB's don't seem to care.
I was born in 1981, and I can say the adult children of the 50's and early 60's, are the people I look up to most.
Love you David Hoffman
Well said!
Thank you
Thanks 😊
Thank you, I appreciate you saying that.
David: please do an interview on 'Generation Jones' because we had a totally different outlook and experience in life coming of age in the mid to late 70s and early 80s. We were way too young to experience the turmoil of the 60s as we were just kids, and we don't like being lumped in with the Boomers.
We're more like Gen X
Funny to me how ppl look back at the 50s with a nostalgic sense of normalcy when in reality that was the most abnormal time in American history, prior to the 50s and from the late 60s to now is real America; Poverty, crime, broken families and corrupt politicians. This is the American way
Normalcy is what you ID it as.... it's all relative. For me, I prefer the 60s.😉
Are ya nuts or somepin? Bullshit on what u say
The 50's were the Eisenhower years, he helped America become prosperous by taxing those with an income greater than $200K/year a rate of 90% of what they made beyond $200K. The Middle Class had more disposable income for cars, vacations, etc. The Middle Class suburb of Chicago I grew up in was prosperous as it was a hub for the railroads, especially inter-city passenger service as well as pre-AMTRAK cross-country service. My Greatest Generation dad was the head of the purchasing department for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad (a.k.a. The Milwaukee Road) and commuted to their HQ in Chicago Union Station from our home in Elgin.
Elgin also serviced the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad and a smaller interurban line, The Chicago, Aurora, and Elgin Railway ("The Roarin' Elgin), an electric railroad.
True
that's what happened after the boomers decided no to do anything for 60 years
But he never explained why boomers left their kids to raise themselves, or expected them to already know things without being told.
This man was very clear in his estimation of what the “baby boom” really was. The War had damaged our parents in ways they had no way to resolve, other than to try and live a script of perfect family life…an idea that had carried them through the Great Depression and WWII. They didn’t want to talk about their experiences in wartime, and wanted our lives to be perfect and untouched by those things that had dominated their lives. At the same time, we were in the Cold War, with safety drills we knew were useless in the case of nuclear attack. We also saw the injustice of segregation head on, and we wanted change. We rebelled because the dream we were living wasn’t our dream and we had little undertaking of our parents experiences. Thank you for sharing this David, it is important to grasp the seeds of our revolt.🖤🇨🇦
@Metal Fan The Doctors, egged on by big pharma had already normalized drug use by prescribing Dexedrine and Benzedrine for dieting…and for truck drivers etc, Valium for stressed housewives, and Barbiturates like Seconal, Nembutal, and Quaalude so they could sleep after the Speed.
Most people I knew had their first, and frequent drug experiments out of their parent’s medicine cabinets. That was also the era when most homes had comprehensive liquor cabinets, and drinking was a daily thing for many people.
There have always been accessible drugs, and people who use them to self medicate for any number of reasons. I suspect that will never change, either for the drugs or the people who seek them. Not all of us were deep into drugs, while many of us did explore…that will also, always be true.🖤🇨🇦
@Metal Fan Bear in mind, this was a time when most people smoked and many would be considered alcoholic by today's standards. There was a cavalier attitude toward inebriation in general that pre-dated the boomers (if you've ever watched Mad Men). Many of the counter-culture leaders were actually silent, WWII, or older. Think of William Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Alan Ginsberg, etc.
@Metal Fan LOL boomers didn’t normalize drugs. Drugs have been normal since the beginning of time. In the 19th century opium often in the form of laudanum was widespread.
Boomers didn't live during the Great Depression. Boomers were born from '46 - '64.
@@susankeith326 I was speaking of the Parents of the Boomers having lived through the Great Depression and WWII.🖤🇨🇦
The Depression was bad for many if not most people, as was WW II, so the 1950s was relatively easier. BUT, the baby boomers were raised by folks who had experienced the Depression and lived through the hell of WW II, so for MANY baby boomers it was NOT the greatest thing being raised by parents who grew-up during the GD and through WW II. The GD and WW II caused a lot of economic and mental stresses. Being or having been highly stressed is not good for raising kids.
I agree with you. Another issue here with baby boomers was the sex revolution. It became a major springboard for AIDS.
@@arturodiaz1063 No doubt as well as other STDs. I wonder if there's any study that looks at what family influences, if any, helped fuel the sex revolution. Sex is supposed to be a great stress release generally. I've read those who were abused either mentally or sexually as kids often turn to sex in adulthood or even before adulthood, as well as drugs, alcohol, etc
@@davidcarbone3385 I believe most parents, of the baby boomers, did not have a college education. The media aided the parents in the raising of their children with so called experts in child raising. The idea was that children should have a childhood without the responsibilities that many adults had in theirs. During that time, the pill gave girls the freedom to say "yes" to a guy and not worry about pregnancy, since sex was an expression of freedom and feeling good. Traditional values were challenged and here we are today.
@@MiBones You're right about that and most parents of every generation did not nd do not have a college education. Sounds as if you are speaking of the 1950s and 1960 when you say kids not being raised as their parents were. I think that's.a reflection of my comment about those parents knowing how unfairly difficult their childhoods were. The pill hasn't had quite a ubiquitous effect. Most of the 13 kids I've mentored the past 23 years have been inner city, Black girls. All were celibate, some still are. Only one has had a child; that was last year and she was already 22 years old. Traditional values are relative to each period of time. Every generation has challenged "traditional" values. Today's generations, those under 30 years of age, I have little concerns.
@@davidcarbone3385 I agree with you. I believe my comment was to Arturo Diaz. My mistake that I did not address him. The sex as a stress relief comment, bugged me. Quite frankly, the United States is so large, with so much diversity, that it is hard to qualify one set of circumstances and attitudes to one generation. we need to look at kids from the North, South, East coast, West coast, city and rural areas as different pockets of culture. And don't let me forget Race, Religion and I believe Creed. These areas of discrimination were used at the time. When I listen to the many commentaries of the Baby Boomers, they always seem to hit the same segment of people, with the same upbringing. Anyway, sorry for the rant, but sometimes I read a person's comment, (Arturo) and I see red. And I don't mean the Commies.
I’m a GenX late-life, drunken accident between two silent generation folks. I missed the hopefulness and opportunity this guy seems to be talking about. All my friends had early boomer parents and I really don’t know what that was like for them. Most of them seem to have done better in life than myself.
Drunken accident? Yikes!! Perhaps that's not the best way to frame your existence....
I'm gonna have to Google "silent generation", I have no idea who or when that is.
@@deepermind4884 The Silent Generation were the parents of Boomers , generally speaking.
Same here ! I was the 4th child of a Silent Generation marriage. My siblings were or are all successful Boomers and I'm the Generation X walking disaster zone . I'm in England btw.
@@deepermind4884 Well, my dad thought I was a surprise gift, but mom let me know I ruined her fun. Lol
I'm an elder Millennial with a silent generation father and boomer mother...my mother "loses interest in her children after they turn 6"
My mom was so disappointed I wasn't a "preppie," like one of those squeaky clean kids on tv in that right wing "Up With People" group.
Up With People was a singing group not a political party, lol. From a Goth before Goth was called Goth .
As a child of the baby boomers I just want to say in my experience they are the most selfish generation I've ever known .
As a boomer, I agree. Society has focused on us all through our lives. Now, everybody must be isolated, injected, masked, out of school, so that we can feel safer to hang on for a few more years. To hell with the younger people and children. I despise my Me generation.
my boomer parents were legit shook when i told them how much i had to pay for college 1 semester and i ended up only having to pay about a third what other students at my college were
The Great Depression caused the parents of boomers to be frugal.
They also wanted the children to have lives they didn't.
Baby boomers were called by Time magazine “the ME generation”. Everything has always been about them and it shows.
My mother is a boomer and she is extremely selfish and never saved or did anything to benefit her children.
This is why I don't speak to her anymore.
I'm trying to do different with my children.
Must be nice not to have a single gray hair, and tell the Boomers how they lived. I guess they are going through the upcoming inflationary period, and gas shortages then tell Boomers how bad it is like Boomers have no idea what inflation, or an oil crisis is like.
I remember elderly on fixed incomes eating dog food because they couldn't afford both food, and medicine. There were businesses going bankrupt everywhere, and double digit unemployment. You were scared to say a word out of line because there was a long line of people ready to take your job. Gas prices increased 7 fold. The president setting speed limits to 55, and thermostat settings to 68 and 80 to save energy. Long gas lines, rationing, and certain days one could buy gas to arrive to find there was no gas. Car pools were invented, and mandatory. People buying woodstoves because it was cheaper than electricity. The idea of underground homes were being considered. I remember being cold. This went on for a decade.
Millienials have no idea of what it was like to live under the bomb that they are so easy to dismiss. Instructions to early school children to seek out an adult if there was an attack because their parents were probably dead. News of the Soviets increasing their nuclear arsenal was a regular thing as were EBS test. Images of homes being blown away, and people burning as they stood. Children had nightmares about nuclear war. To hear an air raid siren, and believe nuclear winter was 15 minutes away. More than one person thought it would be better to die in the blast than survive. These dismissive Millienials should watch "Threads" to get a sense what it was like. They carry on about nuclear weapons when they know a tenth of what we knew. In 1986, the Soviet Union had a 40,000 megaton arsenal.
We had the Vietnam War, and the draft. We had the hippies, and yippes who seemed preoccupied with drugs, and communism, but the majority of us were conservative.
We did get to know a time before the drug culture. A time when kids could play outside alone, go out on Halloween by themselves, and have cars and houses unlocked without fear. Drugs bring crime with them. Cartels, pushers, addicts, thieves, and other crimes. My county went from one of the best places to live to the third worse complete with meth labs. It drives me crazy how people think it's their right to get stoned.
I know "Ok, Boomer", "Boomer Reducer", Boomer being a slur, and Boomers are the cause of all the world's problems. How we are so spoiled. Go get your participation award, and tell me how bad you have it.
I remember it well, thank you!! I feel like I'm going crazy sometimes listening to the boomer bashing from some people!
but that's not why you can destroy the future of later generations, which they didn't even do with us. You raised your children as if they were dogs, beating and beating all the time, this is not done. They ended our economy and today they still think they are victims, why are you like this???
I think part of it is confusing gen Z with millenials, milenials are 30s to 40s with my generation gen Z left out of these conversations and confused for milenials who got distracted by social media and haven't done much imo. My generation might fight WW3 with Russia soon and I'm the oldest of gen Z at 23 so we haven't gotten to make our mark yet we are just beginning to but it's weird seeing the Boomer vs Millenial battles online while us and our gen X parents are quietly watching lol
I was 12 years younger than the oldest baby boomers and didn’t consider myself in the same boat with them at all.
I grew up on a farm and most of my classmates did as well. Small rural school. Not a great education. But all 4 kids in my fam went to college- on our own dime- so we chose state colleges, which were still affordable then. My parents had no input at all into our college applications or choices etc. They werent interested. we were taught to be obedient to do our chores to work hard etc. we were working way too hard for little kids. Driving tractor by age 8. Driving the cows in by age 4. we were spanked whenever dad decided it was prudent to do so. I think they settled down on it by the time they got to their fourth kid. My mother calls how we were raised “benign neglect. “When I said that laughingly to my therapist in los angeles (no rural life for ne, nooo)she said very seriously, “that is abuse. Neglect is abuse.” Huh.
it is, did you guys ever study after school?
@@ebr7753 nope. we all have college degrees though. bc it was easier then I figure. Also much cheaper
@@ebr7753 They don't after school. However, they invented the degree as a requirement for getting a basic job that otherwise wouldn't need a degree - as an anti-competency rule against younger generations.
The 30's kids, they did the best they could.
Yes, they did. My parents Dad (1916) Mom (1929). Childhood defined my Jim Crow, a Depression, then a World War...all by the time they were 30! They are The Greatest Generation ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
The best they could with the very little they had. Incredibly strong people and it was very apparent throughout their lives
@Alexander-fy8ecBoth have insufferable people. Boomers are "cringe" for ignorance, millennials are "cringe" for degeneration... then along comes gen z and alpha to top the degeneration. Each generation will remain cursed like this if we don't change our ways
THIS IS WHAT STUDY , EVERY GENERATION HAS A HISTORY OF HELL!! GRANDPARENTS , LOST ALL IN THAT WAR ABOUT SLAVES ?? OXYMORON , SLAVES AND US BARELY SURVIVED ( GREAT GRANDMOTHER SAW HE FATHER THE LAST TIME AT AGE 8 AND HE TOLD HER THEY YANKEES ARE AFTER ME, TELL YOUR MOTHER , HE STARTED RUNNING AND SHE SAW THE YANKEES' AFTER HER FATHER , THERE IS STIL A WARRENT FOR HIS ARREST DEAD NOR ALIVE BY OUR GOVT , MY FAMILY WERE SPIES SINCE REVOLUTIONARY WAR TO VIETNAM BUT AFTER VIETNAM WE WOULD NEVER DO IT AGAIN, NEVER !! MY GRANDFATHER IN WW1 , GASSED, DIED AT AGE 41 , THE WAR, THE DEPRESSION AND HE HAD LEFT THE SOUTH , BUT HAD TO RETURN IN ORDER TO EAT DURINNG DEPRESSION, ALL WE HAD LEFT WAS LAND LAND LAND AND A GOOD REPUTATION AS FIGHTERS AND EDUCATED ! AND THEN PARENTS , PTSD FATHERS, MOTHERS FORCED TO STAY BAREFOOT AND PREGNANT AND THEY HATED IT , THEY REALLY HATED IT AND THE MEN , WW2 MEN WERE NOT GOOD FATHERS BUT LOVE TO BEAT US ! WE DID NOT LIKE OUR FATHERS , WE BOOMERS AND NO , BUT NO ONE SPOILED US THAT IS ONLY FOR RICH LITTTLE SHITS YANKEES KIDS !! WE WERE ALL BASICALLY POOR!
The banking industry created the boomers. They're the wealthiest and greediest generation in American history. When my mother was my age in the '90s, she thought it was humorous to joke about my generation getting screwed out of their inheritance. Her punchline was, "...being of sound mind and body, I spent it all."
I'm a boomer, and I have only good opinions on how I was raise. 2 parents teaching me morals and respect of others. Grandparents and others to teach me all the skills and abilities I have. ( who knows what a tufter is in the furniture industry?) Wood and metal working. Not to sound inflated. My brother and I can mill lumber, clear the land and truly build a home. I WOULD SAY MOM,DAD AND THE OTHER PEOPLE DID A GREAT JOB ON US!
most people now can't become tufters, you need a college degree if you want to get somewhere, and a stem degree to ACTUALLy get somewhere
How does a guy this young know about what life was like 40 years before he was born ?
He thinks he’s a boomer poor baby
I believe it's just research. It's the next best thing when personal experience isn't something someone has.
He doesn't
The fact you guys on here listing these factory jobs that your parents held and some how supported a family of four off of that shows how great the pay was to the cost of living.....if you have four kids today yo ass better plan on making 250k a year....I wish I could walk down to the factory get hired build a house off that income and raise 3 kids lol that shit is unheard of
250K still not enough because progressive tax increase. Baby Boomers voted for fiscal irresponsible plans, welfare plans and massive national debt. All leading to the massive inflation and heavy tax burden we have today.
You don't need to have 4 kids
People had four kids because contraception was unreliable and not necessarily even permitted. My own mother, married with 2 kids, her doctor flat out refused to give her contraception. She had her third delivery 11 months after the second. In hospital she found she was indeed entitled to contraception: she had an IUD fitted. One just failed: another pregnancy. Another malfunctioned and injured her, and she was told she was too scarred for another pregnancy to be possible: then that happened. And so on.
Looks like the USA is gonna vote Grump to bring those days back, except it will be the law, not just your doctor, forbidding contraception to women.
No, it's not unheard of... learn to budget; live within your means.
As a baby boomer myself, same story as most, dad served in Army, got out started a business and family. Now the adventure began, parents had opportunities, the country dealt with so many things over the next 30 years.
what I wanted to know is why you, even having heroic references from your parents, who lived through the second war, the great depression, among others, are still so proud, without empathy, and selfish.
You mistreated your children like a punching bag, you always used and manipulated your children so that you were privileged, you only cared about you, everything was (and still is) for you, nothing for others, you are evil by nature.
In fact, I just wish that one day all the Baby Boomers would suddenly drop dead on the floor at the same time, it would be one less burden for us younger generations to bear.
The term "spoiled brat" comes to mind.
We laud them as the Greatest Generation , the parents who were the kids of the great depression who fought in WWII and Korea. Why not blame Dr. Spock and his dubious parenting theories. Not everyone had a parent that gave them everything they didn’t get as a kid.They didn’t have PTSd therapy back then. You just lived with what you saw in the war and went on
money-worshipers know they were the greatest generation.
they destroyed so many lives in 3rd world countries, to make fat little kids.
Ma'am, you're a baby boomer, I knew it just from reading that ridiculous comment!
@@boobleshotter4518 you should have had the luck of growing up with a dad who suffered from PTSD or maybe a mom who was a pow in 2 different Russian prisons during WWII then you wouldn’t make such ridiculous attacks on people who lived it. You can call me all the names you want but karma will bite your entitled a*s.Try to have a nice life inspite of yourself.
I was told by Parents, teachers, The community, what a care free time of my life. All I can say is try living under the boot heel of a single mom with an ax to grind. We were lucky to have food on the table.
I remember the first time I realized that I was a "Boomer". In 1961, I was in 7th grade, when our teacher explained the concept to us. Before that, I began to realize, there were more kids of my age group. Our community was growing & constantly building new schools to keep up with the growth.
You was born 1948?
@@zymeerwhitman8761 What is wrong with the year 1948?
I’m a dead center GenXer and my parent are late silent generation. They both grew up poor and worked hard to improve their lot in life. I think there is a temptation in my generation and among the millennials to buy into these stereotypes about boomers. One of the reasons is their great numbers and political influence.
Thank you, I'm a Boomer, 71- My family didn't have a house in the suburbs, dad died when I was 5. He was 49 & mom was 54 when she died. We lived in a cold water, unheated tenement. Our church gave our mom a break on tuition, so we could attend the Catholic school she attended. Mom voted for JFK. There were 4 of us siblings & only our older brother was able to buy a house, (in MI, much cheaper than Ct.) Boomers were spoiled, but many children now get a trophy just for being on a team, are driven to playdates & have a trampoline in the backyard. At the Girls Club, there was 1 trampoline for 30 kids,LoL. There are many stereotypes of Boomers. A mom & dad, white picket fence around a house in the suburbs, a " Leave it to beaver"lovely & loving family where kids didn't get yelled at or beaten. The nuns hit kids every day. We are not all grumpy conservatives. LOL. We broke free from the " Greatest" generation's racism, address mental illness, cleaning & caring for the environment, acknowledge child & elder & domestic abuse. We are more enlightened than our parents, but they survived the Depression & WW II, and most experienced the " American Dream".
The boomers did a lit of things socially that were good. But they faltered on economics and fucked up the economy for the younger generations. So, they have their strengths and weaknesses. Like all generations. And my generation, the millennials bought into the scam of "go into debt for college and you'll get into the middle class and be able to start a family with your hard work". But we still want to continue the tradition of social change, getting rid of racism and prejudice, and trying to make the world better even though many of us have so little power and money.
What?! You’re watching a video of a boomer explaining their attitudes and you’re saying Gen Xers are buying into stereotypes?!
I'm Gen X and no I don't stereotype Boomers. I think they're weird but they by no means had the wrong idea with their ideology on life. I know no Gen X that's anything like millennials or Gen Z. I don't think boomers did bad with Gen X. Millennials now is another subject in it's own.
Lol It's the same way boomers, or any generation to the preceding generation, "These spoiled kids, their noses always in books/radio/TV/video games/internet/phones". It's all the same stuff. Expand your perception of time and step outside of your humanity
We are pretty hilariously stupid and forgetful creatures
Same crap, different demographic
The Boomers are the parents of GenX 1966-1980ish. We are the most overlooked,least respected,acknowledged,irrelevant generation of all generations.Even our music is maligned. We saw no real wars-What do they call Gulf War?Why is this? Any thoughts on this?
They were angry because they were spoiled. Spoiled Brats are usually angry.
You dont know sh!t. My boomer folks and their sisters and brothers would get new shoes for christmas and get the left and right one wrapped separately to seem like 2 gifts. Sit the heck down kid. Stick to subjects you actually know one thing about.
Madison Avenue aimed straight for us boomers. The music industry aimed right at us boomers. We had our own clothes, our own music, our own tv shows and everything was about us. Now what do we get? Commercials about erectile dysfunction and adult diapers. Thanks Madison Avenue.
lolz you complain about commercials while your grandchildren's generation starve from struggling to afford groceries, priorities boomer?
@@seankingwell3692 what struggle? When they run short they go to their parents and when their parents don’t have it they come to me. Who can I run to?
OK ZERS! WE WERE THE COOLEST , HELL WE WERE POOR BUT SO WAS EVERYONE ELSE!! IT DID NOT MATTER UNTIL I FOUND OUT , DANG WE ARE POOR !!
@@michaelmitchell5098 About one quarter of the children of Boomers have nothing (or very close to it) to do with their parents. The arrogance that you just displayed is exactly why. The majority of Boomers are sociopaths incapable of empathy....even for their own children.
My life up until I went no contact was so volatile that when I was being evaluated for childhood trauma I FORGOT that my father had been to jail 3 times. Literally the least traumatizing thing they'd put me through. They had me in almost 100k of debt before I turned 18.
My mother was 10 times worse.
A LOT of you are going to spend your final years with unwashed diapered asses and nothing but a bank statement to keep you company. And you deserve it.
There is a lot of negative mythology about boomers that has grown and grown in recent years. Early boomers that I knew had very tough childhoods and entered a seriously unstable world in their teens. There was turmoil everywhere and threat of nuclear destruction hanging over our heads.
When people talk about the 60s they are always talking about the USA as if nowhere else existed.
I grew up in the UK.
This person was right though, that the 60s youth culture was not because they were spoiled but was rather a positive reaction to the injustice and terror they saw around them. They were right to protest.
The 60s generation brought to bloom human rights, civil rights, children's rights, women's rights, gay rights, animal welfare, environmental concerns etc etc.
I wonder how many rights would people have today if it were not for these awful boomers ?
They were not just complaining about the world they were trying to improve it. Because of the negative mythology this is largely unappreciated these days.
Many people's issues is that while they were like this in their youth, many have switched sides as they aged. Many boomers actively vote against actions that would help their future generations currently, and not everyone was a part of or supported the counterculture movements.
@@YACHI0000 There is a huge difference between early boomers and later boomers. It is more than a bit misleading that they are clumped together.
Those born 1946-1956 in my experience are more likely to have concerned, humanistic values. They were the peace and love generation. The younger boomers were not part of the awakening in the mid 60s but grew up at a time when much had gone wrong, the greatest hopes not achieved and disillusionment and cynicism had largely set in.
They matured at the time of the Gordon Geckos "greed is good" era when the drug of choice was cocaine. They saw the earlier boomers with their peace and love and optimism as "losers".
I think we need to make this difference a lot more clear for the purpose of these discussions.
Ps. I think there is even quite a difference between people born at the beginning of WW2 say about 1940 reaching into so-called boomer years to about 1950 - and those people born after 1950.
I noticed it at the time that the second wave of 'hippies' (not the best term but the one most widely used and understood) those that left school in or after 1968 had not felt the same spiritual and creative urge that those just a year or two older had been overwhelmed by.
The hippy thing was to them more of a fashion trend, an identity, a cool look and cool music with long hair, eastern philosophy, patchouli oil, henna and joss sticks just as a few more years down the same path we started to see "white rastas".
This was far easier to turn around and drop as they matured.
Those moved more by the earlier intellectualism, radical politics and psychedelic experience (as opposed to just getting high) have not found it so easy to shake off what was a profound and revelationary experience.
I don't know a single person in their early to late 70s that voted for Trump in the USA or Brexit in the UK. I know plenty in their 40s, 50s and 60s who did.
@@luckydave328 I'm curious, were the latter hippies marketed to as hippies?
@@nodakrome From what I remember...yes. For me Woodstock summed it up. Greed had already moved in. The most beautiful movement of youth was marketed and exploited.
Before that there were lots of free festivals also with top bands and not filmed or recorded and with no merchandise.
Woodstock was the first time I heard about "bad acid". Again hustlers with no soul. A quick buck.
I can look at the movie now and enjoy the bands - but at the time I remember thinking "It's all over". I was broken-hearted. A soul destroying event run by serious hustlers. If you want to know what broken dreams of peace, freedom, happiness, justice, equality and above all LOVE ...there it is.
Woodstock. A monument to Mammon cloaking itself in the appearance of Love. Sick.
David Hoffman had another video where he interviewed Boomers. Many of them talked about how oppressive was their childhoods in the '50s. There was such stifling conformity and enforcement of rules. Their parents, in wanting to return to 'normal', created a suburban fantasy that Boomers reacted to.
In the UK people wanted a better life for themselves and their families after WW2. They thought they deserved it after going through the war and they did not want to return to the kind of life that people lived in the 30s where there was lots of poverty. They put all their energy into 'the future' and creating more life after the death and destruction of WW2. It was a vote of hope. All the investment into rebuilding after the war created job opportunities and an economic boom in the 1960s. People believed in progress.
The REAL tragedy of mass murder take theirs as global population doubles at a ever more rapid pace is the emerging generation is unsafe from pollution, swarm, and as a planet bound species intending to have future for generations requires agreement.
Verbal abuse , which liars are, is primarily a physical stimulation of the brain nervous system with aggression to traumatise, control ie cripple emotionally intellectually. That learned behavior is the ages old skeme. Surely we can distribute the human knowledge that is knowable and stop the perpetual manmade miseries by honestly facing the human condition and plan to stop abuse style learned behavior.
Give up let go of rape god.Give up let go of reproductive enslavement of a child and adults.
Give up let go of misogynist dysfunctions.
As global population rolls on doubling 8- 16 billion greed and breeding take on more dire impact than ever . With or without the added complexity of free pollution and for profit killer feed.
I grew up in the 50s and 60s And it was the best time of my life glad I grew up then.
so...your taxes have funded Guantanamo Bay since day one.
wow...you have tortured a lot of people illegally.
kids, even...a 6 year old girl, for sure. this is fact.
not if you were black
@@ebr7753 I'm not.
Cool you enjoyed it. But you spoiled it for the rest of generations to come 'till this day.
@@errrzarrr he, as an individual, didn't.
As a child I remember my mother answering the question of; "What do you call this style Frances???" She would turn her head slightly and respond; "Early Depression!!!" That would soon change in 1963, when we had The First, Color, big screen,(29") remote control Television in the den wall!!! Wow!!! Like how Mod!!! Of course a person could jingle change in thier pocket, and change the station, or turn up the volume!!! 😅 LoL it is still in the wall 59 years later!!!
Two points I think are important to understanding the socioeconomic forces impacting the baby boom:
1. The nascent suburbs built in the wake of WWII were heavily subsidized by a package of tax-funded incentives that amounted to welfare. An economy like the US does not organically produce a blue collar class that can afford a comfortable single-family home, in an automobile-centric suburban community, without substantial governmental assistance. The subsidies for this class of Americans was part of the nation's economic plan in the wake of WWII. People forget that a lot of New Deal programs, enacted on the eve of America's entry into WWII, remained in place through and after WWII.
2. The nascent suburbs and their associated nascent school districts were expressly segregated. Levittown was subdivided with documents that incorporated express racial covenants and openly marketed as such. Most other suburbs followed suit. For at least a decade after the Civil Rights Act, this was still the model, implemented on a de facto basis. This segregation, coupled with the generous welfare being poured into the (white) suburbs, became the primary engine of American apartheid in the second half of the 20th Century.
White baby boom children grew up in those suburbs, attended well-funded segregated public school districts, matriculated at prestigious universities, and moved into positions of power and influence, as well as professional careers, where they are now approaching retirement age. This is why our upper middle class corporate and professional positions today are so segregated.
Certainly, the subsidies dumped into the suburbs didn't confer the same degree of economic benefit uniformly to all white Americans, as the narrator notes. It did benefit enough white Americans at a macro level that, in terms of population-wide socioeconomic metrics, it created two Americas, one white and one black.
The counter-culture of the 60's/70's emerged, I think, because enough young people saw through the smoke and mirrors and recognized the rot that was at the core of this economic plan. It was built on the dream of a consumer culture that would drive American capitalism. Consumerism, for its own sake, fueled as noted by other commenters via the endless stream of slime emanating from the televisions that appeared in most homes. The overlay, as revealed by the Civil Rights movement, was that this was exclusively for the benefit of white kids.
Who created the baby boomers? Uh their parents, the Greatest generation. The generation that fought Hitler...I was born in 65 and I understand that I fall into the boomer generation and if I read the description from another publication I am generation X. I can relate to both generations and whatever generation I am I am just damm happy that I knew and met many people from the Greatest generation. I met hundreds of holocaust survivors through my career and it absolutely changed my life meeting those beautiful people. I met hundreds of WW2 veterans who were absolutely amazing people and even the ones who thought they didn't have much of a story, they had absolutely incredible stories to tell that to this day I am blown away by the courage of those guys still. Being stuck in 2 different generations I always saw as a aggravation but the older I get I see now that I was extremely enriched by the place I found myself in personally and professionally. I met many survivors who either had a small scar of the tattoo they had removed or they still had the tattoo forced onto them. Some absolutely refused to have the tattoo removed, some could not get rid of them fast enough. I always made a point to ask them if they would share their story of survival and around 90% were eager to share their stories.
David I literally stumbled upon your videos yesterday and have watched several since and I absolutely love hearing people's stories. Ive always been intrigued by hearing people's stories about their experiences in life especially from days that sadly most of those people are now gone and can no longer share these stories and it's up to people like you to keep putting out videos that have the people themselves telling about their experiences. Good for you for having such a curious mind when you were so young. I only wished I had the forethought to record the conversations I had with Holocaust survivors way back in the 80s. When I hit my mid 30s I started watching loads of movies that were based on true experiences of Holocaust victims and at 56 I'm completely obsessed with documentaries about people's experiences from days long gone but experiences documented by thousands in history books and family memories of a loved one who is no longer with us. Film makers like you are literally some of my greatest heroes because of the incredible curiosity that you have for others. Thank you David. I'm so glad I found your videos. Absolutely a priceless gift to the world.
The parents of the baby boomers were America's greatest generation. They were dedicated to building a world for their children that was better than the one they had inherited. These middle class communities were the zenith of human endeavor. Civil rights problems were not their fault. They didn't create the drugs or other problems that poisoned America.
The importance of the emergence of Civil Rights, conscientious objection, end of conscription, Child Rights, Adult Rights, and the Gay Pride leading the parade of honest men
Are " self evident truths"
Reproductive enslavement of a child or adult is contrary to defense of the US Constitution Amended to abort the ancient roman tick rapegod mass murder make more; take whatever " economic theory" .
To this very day the greatest crime in human history is the euro psuedo religiousitic roman tick population swarm and destruction leveled to Turtle Island and her Nations. Hog tied to DNA zoo status to magically disappear in white lies of immunity weakness to diseases like bullets, Cavalry and roman tick genocide horror.
Self regulation ; self determination Liberty of an individual challenges " the technology" of a whole human temporary childhood maturation process , education, development physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, sexually and as an adult BEFOR consent status.
The strides of boomers to inch forward on the human potential to avail the realm of consciousness beyond the trauma aggression easiest lessons stunt, crush,maim and kill .
Math environmental science and human development as well as human knowledge from the beginning inform where a human life span transpires .
From there the complexity is the journey in the unknown future ever ahead.
All I know is both of my parents are very out of touch with reality. They both display a lot of narcissistic traits. Fundamentally they are good people. No drinking, didn't hit us or yell at us. Yet they and their friends all kinda are just bad parents or something. It's like they think the world revolves around them and we're just minor characters in their story. Totally out of touch. Zero respect for personal space or boundaries. Could just be my parents
no its their entire generation
Boomers, born 1946 to 1964 inclusive, grew up with radio, television & magazines, so they were the first generation to be so very much influenced by the media, in contrast to all previous generations that'd been influenced by the previous generations
Jessica.You are ignoring the power of newspapers for example at the start of the 20th century. I collect those old newspapers. Yellow journalism they called it.
David Hoffman filmmaker
The Middle classes had a semblance of normality during the 1930s and 1940s, it was the working classes who suffered-pretty obvious given that the lower your standard of living in the first place, the lower it would become during hard times. The fact of managing to remain middle class during the depression and WW2 said you were lucky.
Gen Z is much more like Gen X than Millennials - maybe obviously - and generally has highest respect for the Silent Generation, at least from my experience
What is the Silent Generation?I was born in '71,and I'm not sure what generation that lands me in.Being in a generation named after a punk rock band would be cool,but I think maybe I'm a little pre-Generation X.Not sure.
@@fakereality96 Thx
David
David.
Keep on working.
Thank you so much. I plan to. You and others enjoying this interview might want to watch this incredible sequence on the boomers - ua-cam.com/video/_rTuPEdlhQs/v-deo.html
David Hoffman filmmaker
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker I really do appreciate these videos you put out, they help me understand my father better.
Thanks David 🕉️
Agree. Very insightful content, David!
Proud to be a baby boomer. We brought about change for women, black people, political outlook, anti war. Disco era, black consciousness, black love, beauty. Computer beginning. We set the stage for electronics etc
I’m a boomer. Not everyone was prosperous, but there was a sense of optimism among those of my parents’ generation, an optimism and a patriotism that came from the euphoria from winning WWII. Maybe it wasn’t as much optimism as relief. But there was a darker side: dads with PTSD from the war, alcoholism, the disintegration of extended families brought about by families moving cross country for job opportunities. But my parents’ generation didn’t talk about the problems, because in their experience, you just needed to keep your head down and keep plugging away. Their kids, on the other hand, meaning the boomers, took a look at that kind of stoicism in the face of calamity and said we didn’t want our lives to be that way. In a way we WERE spoiled, not so much by our parents, but by being a huge segment of the population during a prosperous era. In our defense, I believe that many of us did try to change things. I don’t think we succeeded because the cold, hard facts of life and survival reared their ugly head, and in the end most of us had to buckle under and carry our load. But we did plant some seeds.
Well said.
@Oceanic Oneness I’m just reflecting on the history of the era I grew up in and thinking about why boomers were the way we were. I think people are the same from one generation to the next. It’s the circumstances that continually evolve and each generation reflects its own circumstances. As to why we had children? Biology. Culture. It’s what people do.
Of course there was optimism for & from boomers, parents of boomer grew up in the depression & actually went without the majority of the time. Anything was better than that
@@blackmcbain3145 Not denying the truth of what you're saying. As for your own family's history, I can't imagine the horror and outrage you all must have experienced. Many middle class white kids were shielded from the cruelty of racism by our parents, but we saw it on tv. It changed my attitudes from that of my parents. I saw the people being hosed down in the streets. I heard about the church bombing that killed those little girls. I read about Emmett Till. I think that rejection of that ugliness was part of what fueled our rebellion against the WWII generation. We started to see what lay beneath the facade, and did not like it. But there were just as many of my generation who continued to propagate the racism of our parents' generation, so I don't think boomers can claim much success in changing our own attitudes overall. But perhaps, as I said, some of us planted some seeds.
You knew all this and did nothing to stop it.
Your opinions are invalid, u failed ur children
Go in ur corner and be quiet
Not all the "greatest generation" was that great. alcohol was there main drug of choice and it was normal to consume vast quantities of it. a lot of baby boomers had drunk ass parents that just let their kids run amuck
Listening to this man speak, I find it rather ironic that so many boomers are so disparaging of millennials. I was raised by late-boomers and I am an elder millennial myself. The way he was describing how he was raised matches my own experience, to a degree. And the millennials are also highly political, rebellious, angry about injustice, often activists, and we were raised to believe we could literally do anything regardless of our natural talent or predisposition. Food for thought, although instead of boomers’ avocado bread, we prefer ours on toast ;).
Boomers and millenials are very similar.
Gen X isn’t quite as disparaging of Millennials (I’ve noticed the latter part of Boomers doing it) and I think it has to do with changes they don’t want to accept.
Having said that,although I see good in both generations and personally like some of the changes?I find both generations narcissistic.
A Gen X newscaster called both generations,narcissistic booked generations (to ours). I agree.
I dont think most boomers care about millennials or what they think or do. I think millennials perpetuate this myth all by themselves through incessant social media whineing.
Honey, avocado toast was a MILLENNIAL thing. I have a millennial daughter. She’d tell you the same thing.
@@macnchessplz
There ARE funny sites of Gen Xers who see millennials as SPOILED. And actually, millennials were spoiled compared to gen-Xers. Gen X is having no patience with whining. I have a millennial adult child. I’ve always told my kid that THEY HAVE THE POWER WITH THEIR VOTES. I urge them to be active and make change. It’s really is WAAY past time for CHANGE.
Millennials are NOW THE LARGEST GENERATION. THERE ARE MORE MILLENNIALS ELIGIBLE TO VOTE THAN THE BBOOM GEN, WHICH IS DYING OFF!
So, if you’re a millennial, YOU REALLY DO HAVE THE POWER TO ELECT WHO YOU WANT. Or, you can just keep yelling at BBOOMers or gen -X. It’s all up to you now-TAG: You’re ‘it.’
I was born in '58. My memories of my childhood in the suburbs of Kansas City are so comfortable. I know now that not everyone had it like I did, but boy did I have a great time. The neighborhood kids of all ages played together all year, every sport. It was a simpler time when a human could be a human and not some half robot with a screen in our face all the time. I miss that and I always will. Now nothing is the same and I just don't belong here.
Born in 59. Same here. Looking back it was a wonderful time to grow up. I had a wonderful caring mother. She never had to work. She raised 4 children. My father worked. Things are so different today.
We were the kids who grew up in the time of social change. Leaders being killed. Vietnam on TV nightly. School intregration. Rioting in the streets. Destruction of the family unit with divorce becoming acceptable. It was a troubling time in America.
My folks still had their only TV in 1968. A Philco from about 1952. It had no UHF built in. We had a 2 tube downconverter on top of the TV cabinet. You turned the Philco TV to VHF channel 2 or 3. Then had the downconverter switch output set to 2 or 3. Then you turned the downconverter to pickup the UHF channel to watch Star Trek in black and white. We had a 30ft triangular mast and a 4 ft diameter parabolic UHF deep fringe antenna aimed at the one city that had UHF. When an aircraft was in the line of site to the transmitter you got flutter in the TV image. A neighbor had a color TV; I saw a few star trek episodes on it.
In Dial corded telephones we had a party line up to 1965. You shared your line with some neighbor. Phones were made to ring on one ring freq and not another.
The number of labels attached to people gets bigger and bigger.
Over- analyzing ...... I'm tired of it..... Putting everything under the microscope with only White glass... Life is life
My grandparents were from the silent generation and my parents were and are baby boomers. I lost a parent already so that’s why I had to put it like that. I’m Gen x . When I learned about the difference between the silent generation and the boomers I wondered how that could have possibly happened. As someone else in the comment section brought up television in the comments that now makes total sense to me.
The reason for the boomers is that the WW II generation had sex like rabbits after returning from the war. There was the post war boom so jobs were available unlike during the depression. Housing and taxes were much, much lower then. College was affordable and an expectation for many boomers. Television brought the world into American's living room. After 1960 or 1961 the oral contraceptive was available. All venereal diseases were curable. Jobs were available to the boomers. Medicare was available to elder parents and grandparents after 1965. Were the boomers spoiled? Yes, I think, but they took advantage of what was then the modern world.
Amazing analysis!
I understand things a little better on a human level.
Basically, people back then had more financial and social security in everyday life, at least a significant proportion of people of this generation. The disadvantage is that many baby boomers are no longer aware of the problems of the new generation.
I'd be curious to have a documentary on why generation x raised millenials and zoomers in the way they did. Generation X was the first generation to start participation awards, safe spaces in classrooms, and helicopter parenting methods. I'm curious why that was. What about their 80s upbringing caused them to be so anxious and overbearing?
I can answer that as an X’r . The latchkey kid effect, so many x’rs where traumatized by the lack of parenting we went one of two ways, either we became apathetic adults or we overcompensated and became helicopter parents, not all but that’s the short answer
I believe boomers raised millennials... Gen X was for millennials like an older cooler sibling. And millennials were always the little kid, and never really grew up. It's not so black and white, but you know. That's I saw it go in my own life in Finland.
we had been abandoned, our families ripped apart in divorces usually multiples, the drug dealers met you on l the playground, our parents that went to nam then spent 20 years finally getting their shit together and many of us raised our parents because they where no longer the precocious little princes and princesses that they though they where. from experiance haveing 3 combat vets fresh from nam living in your front room and all having both DT's and PTSD at any loud noise isnt freeking fun and having to hold the hands of adults and guide them through things they never dealt with because it was taken care of for them is also not fun. i stated working a paper rout at 10 and running a trap line because my parents couldn't seem to handle money. I am not alone in this by a long shot. oh the participation trophies didnt come from us our parent had freeking rooms full of trophies and gold baseball gloves and ribbons for every damned thing, we thought thats how you did it. more fool us.
Generally speaking, zoomers are the children of GenX.
Boomers raised Millennials, which were the ones that started getting participation trophies. Gen X raised Gen Z
i'm 59, so i'm a "late" baby boomer. i agree 110% with this video. well done! and one comment i would ad is, i see it all the time, esp. at work, the people who had the happiest childhoods almost always become the angriest adults. they're very angry, overly political and cannot accept the way things are or are going to be. they tend to live in the past. glad i was kind of a geek growing up!
I'm a late baby boomer born in 1962 and this guy is not speaking of my up bringing. You can't really generalize about a whole generation. He's speaking mainly of the upper middle class and Ivy league types.
I found him very annoying. Yes, I'm a boomer...but everybody these days are looking for someone to blame. How about looking around your own surroundings, your choice of friends, your faith, or lack thereof.
@@DeannaM1171 you boomers are the exact thing hes talking about LOL, talk about entitlement and fragile ego's... this entire comment section is filled with 50-60 year olds acting like a bunch of teenagers.
Eagle Jim. Please read my description. You are partially correct. The entire section he is speaking about answers the question of how the white suburban middle-class American dream family lived at that time. Not upper-middle-class. Not Ivy League types. But tens of millions of American suburbanites.
David Hoffman filmmaker
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker You're right, I didn't watch the whole thing. I grew up in a more lower middle class/working class environment. I've seen several documentaries describing the baby boomers and the 60's, and just don't find that the descriptions match up with my experience. I do believe though that it was probably accurate for a large portion of the country.
Exactly, I was born in 1951 and nothing he said really reflected my upbringing as well. ✌️
We learned how to hunt, fish, grow food. We learned how to make food from the basics, flour, milk, eggs, sugar, butter. And you’re right about the tvs. We were at the beginning of the space age. We know change, rapid change. We learned about conflict and how to solve problems.
This guy has a wonderful vocabulary. Bright man.
These explanations are very illuminating. Adding to the economic picture: Europe's industrial base was destroyed in the war, while America never suffered invasion or bombing, and of course the rest of the world was undeveloped. This, along with the Marshall Plan, allowed America to wholly dominate the world economy. Now combine that with strong unions and heavily graduated taxes, and you get an extremely strong middle class and in a lot of cases, a fairly well-off working class, too. Adding to the cultural picture: we should never minimize the impact of television.
In Scotland, traditionally kids were not brought up to be the focus of attention. That started to change in the nineties as the late baby boomers and Gen Xers were becoming parents. In many ways I think the young people my age (47) and my 'big brothers and sisters of the late baby boom' have raised are lovely - very aware of things like mental health and emotional problems, kind, supportive and open-minded. However I do think it has created a gap between those whose parents couldn't put that sort of time or emotional connection into their relationship with their children, and the luckier kids. On the other hand sometimes I think us 'oldies' had it better because we didn't have high expectations for personal happiness, we weren't brought up to think of ourselves as highly important, so maybe we don't expect perfection? Then again, there must have been many Americans who weren't so wealthy, had strict parents and weren't enjoying this luxury, happy life that American teenagers seemed to have in the fifties and sixties - or even as late as the seventies and eighties? I think somehow, we have to get a balance between the two approaches, and of course some parents have always managed to do that, while others are not so good.
He never mentioned the economic key to what happened. The Boomers made real estate more profitable than ever simply by their numbers. They and their parents both failed to recognize the problem of real estate inflation for what it is. Real estate inflation is why deindustrialization happened. People didn't just decide unions are bad one day because they found Reagan charming. Companies were going out of business left and right in the '60s and '70s because they couldn't afford to pay union wages because unions expected businesses to pay for real estate inflation. Businesses tried to but even when they did, there was a feedback cycle that made it impossible to keep up with inflation. That's why they couldn't keep up with foreign competition. The market only allowed the most profitable businesses to afford unions like the auto makers. Back in the turn of the century there was much more awareness on the left and right that real estate inflation is economically destructive and effectively takes from the poor to give to the rich. That's what Henry George said, and he was a very conservative free trade guy. And you had people saying similar things on the left. We need to develop that awareness again today to fix the economy. The problem is that we're indulging royalists again. And this isn't limited to America. The Russian and Ukrainian economies both suffer because they voluntarily adopted the kind of plutocracy the IMF forces on countries who would be more egalitarian. We need something like the IMF or World Bank but a bank that coerces countries to be more egalitarian raise taxes on capital and lower taxes on labor instead of more plutocratic and the opposite taxes.
Kissinger and Nixon pushed for ping pong diplomacy… and the US went full Petro dollar, real estate became a market that became income / rental and house flipping while they gave tax breaks for companies to shut No Capital Gains … the US bleed millions of jobs right through the 1990’s …. It became a service economy low wages… tons of people went to work a government jobs local, state, federal and come with retirement benefits etc…. The government is the largest employer now… And why they have become corrupt and incompetent and completely over reaching and regulating..
Whose generation is it really? If we are all mostly still alive, sharing the same experiences, all growing up with television, popular music, and refined automobiles etc. etc.?
This generational phenomenon is carefully manufactured corporate demographic jargon, made to sell people idealized versions of themselves, wherever they can find it.
it's weird tho that the silent generation and boomer politicians are making decisions for the future generation when they won't even be here lol
Grows up in the most prosperous time in human history, is set for life in terms of buying property, having a career, supporting a family. But wah wah because it turns out when you become an adult you realise the world isn't sunshine and rainbow and some times it's not as nice as we want it to be? Just remember grandpa, we only say F you grandpa now because you said F you grandpa first.
There was something very poignant about his description of looking in a magazine and seeing his life and his generation reflected back at him. I was born in '95 and always felt too young to really relate to most core Millennials while also too old to relate to core Gen Z youth culture either. I'm part of a small, weird little psuedo-generation of people that lived one foot outside of the smartphone age, and one foot in it, the last cohort of human beings that might ever know what life is like before the internet became the central point of culture, commerce, and business, but also young enough to have grown up alongside it and witness it transform into the corporate monster that it is today. I don't think I've ever truly felt this experience reflected back to me by the media and world around me, but I do hope as we get older, more of this story can be told.
I’m a ‘95 baby as well, and I couldn’t agree more. 👏🏼
Hello 🤗
The GI or Greatest Generation, great as they were, made three crucial errors the repercussions of which were still suffering from today.
1) they created suburbia with its social isolation, lack of coherent organic neighborhoods, breakup of extended families and communities, car culture, and rampant consumerism.
2) they never dealt with trauma of the past including PTSD and instead distracted themselves with their hyper conformist homogeneity and avoided negativity or self reflection
3) they inherently trusted the federal government to always do the right thing, a trait they shared with the two generations prior to them, the Losts and the Missiobaries.
I also grew up on Long Island and agree with what was said in the clip. The whole decade (more or less) of the 1960's got their energy from the early 1960's civil rights movement which inspired the rest of the movements of that time. I also think that JFK inspired a lot of the young people at that time to do what they could to improve the country. He gave optimism to all people at that time, from what I recall.
I grew up in Smithtown, Long Island in the 60s in suburbia. It was wonderful. My parents were very traditional and middle class. Everyone in school was white, Catholic, middle class. Then we moved to New England and wow, what a difference. But that was good exposure to different people and ideas.
"Living out an idealized life that they postponed through tough times."
Man that sounds like a lot of my generation. Multiple wars, market crashes, culture shifts, struggling to find work, etc. Now having kids late. They were lucky that they could afford houses, luxuries, etc. Hard work and toil are worth it if you're progressing and seeing tangible rewards. Otherwise, those things lead to revolt.
I am intrigued by the "experts" on life in the 50's and 60's who are too young to have lived it. Not impressed with his Stanford credentials.
He didn't address "working class" families, many of whom struggled daily to provide for their children. Older boomers were conservative. Many younger ones, like those born in the late fifties, were very different. So there are two distinct groups. With so much negative press the last while, it seems that those in power would like to see them gone, now that they have been used up by the system, and are "useless."
Please read my description. The question he was asked in his responses all relate to a discussion of the white suburban middle-class in the 1950s, the American dreamers. Other sections of my documentary series on the 1960s looked at the working class.
David Hoffman filmmaker
As David wrote, Prof McAdam didn't describe the experience of most of us. The one thing that he hit right on, for me, was prosperity; money has never been a concern in my life, college was motivated by what I loved, not by money, though college sure was not something I loved, I'm sure my parents saw prosperity different.
I was a later Boomer child, born in '63. If he was identifying with his peers in a magazine IN '63, he wasn't necessarily a "late Boomer", he would have been in the middle of it. But what do I know 🤷♀️.
-spoiled, rich kids.
Born the 1954, the middle kid in a family of 5 kids, it wasn't a Leave it to Beaver life for anyone. While they put on a good show, most parents were damaged. Dads were WWII vets with PTSD who were told "Okay, the war is over, now go on home and be normal." My Dad got on the bus to basic training the day after school was out in his senior year. No commencement, no cap and gown, no prom, and his diploma was picked up at school by his mother. 4 years later, he came home 22 years old and had seen and done things he could never talk about. A happy-go-lucky teenager one day and a battle-hardened vet the next. "Time to get married and have a family!" is what they were told. He did. He was smart enough to enroll in college and get his degree. Things went reasonably well until the 60s when Vietnam, civil rights, assassinations, race riots, the Cuban Missle Crisis, and the Cold War, and footage of the war on TV every night became the topics of the day. Mothers were trying to raise the family and go to PTA meetings, church, and social events while Dads wobbled around. "Mothers-Little-Helper" was a routine item by the mid-60s. I turned 16 in 1970 and the most terrifying thing was the thought of turning 18 and getting drafted. That kept me awake - a lot. And led me to "experimenting" to get a little relief from the world around me. On the other hand, our parents value sets and ethics taught us to be self-sufficient. Graduation gifts were often a full set of luggage because school was out and we were being shown the door either to college or a job. No basement dwellers allowed! If we were lucky enough to have a car, we learned how to fix it. If my jeans got a hole, I had to learn how to patch it. We lived together with friends to save money. It was a sign of weakness to ask our parents for anything - especially money. We had to be responsible for ourselves because there were no other options. I had politely excused myself from my parents' home at 17. My 16-year-old girlfriend and I got an apartment, got jobs, paid bills, bought and paid off a good car, and took care of ourselves. A year later, I'd had 4 jobs, each paying a little more than the previous. At that year's end, I was earning what would be $40 an hour today. We had moved 400 miles away for work. Leased a brand-new apartment and lived very comfortably. Life has been a struggle to maintain since I can remember. I have little patience for whiners. Such has been the world of boomers.
As a Boomer, we had a lot of promiscuous sex with many anonymous partners without protection. While at the same time, experimenting with mind expanding drugs in a consequence free environment listening to great affordable rock music. Good times. Too bad for the younger generations. Time and place. They would've done the same and had a blast.
Church was important. In our small town there were race directed white churches along with their schools. We had Irish, Polish Slovak, and Italian. We were the first generations to go to college from our families. We weren’t rich, but provided. We had only a few black families and we played with them. My years in the sixties teen years was a sheltered life.
As a millennial I feel like I was the center of attention but very negatively. So thanks
My toy cabinet was below the Admiral tv on which dad watched Huntley/Brinkley.
Here are some observations about those times, the 1950s early 60s, from firsthand experience.
In many ways it was the ideal time, thanks to the men who, upon returning from War, went immediately into whatever job came their way with expectation of 40hr work weeks straight through to 65yrs if lucky to make it.
Contrary to current narratives, women did very well. Being a housewife, raising a family, was a richly rewarding endeavour that being a corporate executive, for instance, can't hold a candle to. Most 'housewives' had outside interests too, music teaching, social activities... if truly motivated, they could become doctors, scientists, artists, writers.. and many did. it was tough, just like for anyone.
In fact, the creative output from those times has not been equaled (goes for political leaders too), with the bulk of recent music, movies, books.... being overtly derivitive, and imitative of those years. Think of vaccum tubes in modern musical amps, and the countless synthetic effects straining to capture the old sounds.
As far as the environment goes, we have much to relearn from those times. At core, it was an imperfect, but sustainable society. No need to recycle, everything was unquestioningly reused, returned, repurposed. Even diapers were reused. Buying a bottle of Coke, say, was a big occasion and the bottle immediately returned. Today we see people loading shopping carts full of gallon plastic containers of Coke which supposedly simeone else will recycle (they won't).
The era's flaw was its increasing fascination with, and trust in, technological innovations. Anything promising less work, magic tech solutions, was quickly embraced. Packaged powdered foods and drinks (Tang) were initially thought better than Grandma's old orange juice made from real oranges etc.
This trend was temporarily interrupted by the drug-induced haze of the Sixties. Yes, drugs were indeed the fuel of the Sixties, and the 'high' soon became a downer. Technology then resumed its interrupted inroad.
Subsequent generations have identified ever more closely with gadgets that promise an end to existential loneliness. What were promoted as tools, have become avalanches of intrusive instruments of mass-manipulation and surveillance. Is it too late to step back, reclaim some of that 1950s' wisdom?
The drug effect was massive. Teaching university in China for 12 years, seeing no evidence of any drugs anywhere, and very moderate drinking, I returned to Canada to find a population lost in a drug and alcohol obsessed culture of idiocy.
@@myleshagar9722 Very true. Almost everything was tried in an effort to get high. Banana peels were a craze for awhile.
IMO, the 3 most important impacts on the Boomer Generation, were the Vietnam War, Civil Rights Movement, and the Women's Liberation movement. The effects of the Vietnam War can't be overstated enough. It led the boomers into the GOP. The GOP back then was far more main stream than it is today and governed on policy and ideas instead of hate and fear.
A main effect of the Vietnam War was the constant, live as possible. media coverage of the actual fighting shown every night. Today, all the wars are invisible.
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL BORN IN 1930's, 1940's, 50's, 60's, 70's and Early 80's !!! First, you survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, your baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints. You had no childproof lids on medicine ..medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode your bikes, you had no helmets, not to mention, the risks you took hitch-hiking .. As children, you would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun. You drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle. You shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. You ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but you weren't overweight because.You did not have Play stations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........YOU HAD FRIENDS and you went outside and found them! You fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents YOU WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. You had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and you learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!
Thank you for an accurate summary. I was thanking about our freedom and playing outside deciding what we wanted to do with almost no toys. My siblings and I had some epic dirt clod fights with the other neighborhood kids, cards pinned to our bike spokes, shared everything with other kids, etc. You listed so many truths, we were loved but not coddled or strapped in. No fast food, a lot of our food from the garden and what we canned in the summer. I wish I could have let me kids take off unsupervised, play, and explore creeks etc
IT SURE WAS A HARD KNOCKED LIFE !!
I vomited in my mouth a little reading that
It was a generation that was spoiled due to housewife Mothers, a great economy, they were soo many of them too. My Gen. X was little and the family life had deteriorated, boomers weren't really ready to be parents , economic ups and downs, we raised ourselves.
Their parents called them the Me Generation. Bruce Gibney's "A Generation of Sociopaths" is a great book that explains a lot about the impact of this generation. Its a must read for anyone interested in this topic.
Isn't odd how people half as smart as this guy never get in politics? honest men have principles that politicians don't.
I often say, as a mid ‘90’s kid with boomer parents I didn’t appreciate the character and humor of that generation until I grew up.
Now, I’m going to really miss boomer comics, weekend bbq attire (cargo shorts, long socks, sneakers), and I’ll definitely miss hearing, “Listen here, pal” and all the wisdom the boomers acquired in their unique lives. I’m around boomers more than my own generation. I don’t know what the world will look like when they’re gone...
You'll replace them. Nothing will be significantly different, other than tech. However, some of these wild ideologies (LGBTQIA, far left/right, ANTIFA, the return of white nationalism, MGTOW, toxic feminism) will get out of hand. It's already causing sexual identity issues in young children.
I am approximately the same age as David Hoffman (relatively late Boomer). My parents split up when I was 13. From that point forward, I effectively raised myself. I owned a motorcycle, which freed me from the need to be transported by adults. At 14, I was living shacked up with my same-age girlfriend. No boundaries or constraints shackled me but the few that I imposed on myself. By late 15, I was out of the pot-dazed, sex-drugs-& rock and roll counterculture and focusing on more approved pursuits, such as schoolwork and preparation for university. I had no political or intellectual motivation for anything that I did during my early adolescence. I was driven solely by hedonism and the exhilaration of personal freedom.
The Boomers are a brilliant generation- probably more creative than any before or after them; the explosion of fantastic music at that time fed into our generation as well as feeding into the creativity of artists at that time.
As for being ‘spoilt’ not in my family or the families I grew up around. We got gifts at birthdays and Xmas and that was it; we all had chores and the girls I knew could run a home at age 15 if needed.
We spent little on clothes and appearances- I had one pair of jeans that lasted me about six years; I made my summer dresses; we never had money to eat out (very few food places anyway- McDonald’s didn’t come near my area until I was in my 20s), so we were all skinny.
I actually feel sad for the generations that have come later with their ‘manufactured’ grievances.
My sister who is 14 years older said I was always in front of the TV. She was born in 1944, so yeah, TV changed my life and reality. I remember watching the Watts riots at 8.
It’s hard for me to connect with my baby boomers bc I was born in 1964, the last year of that generation. My connection is only with the history of the world and all of its people and struggles during that time through media.
Ditto, born in 64 and told feel I fit description of boomer at all.
Its interesting to compare the experience of a baby boomer raised in the suburbs to being one of their children and the cognitive dissonance of a space created for families with a focus on the child but the boomers focus on themselves see's these streets emptied during the day with kids that don't play outside anymore, it creates several liminal spaces where neither child nore adult occupy including the home.
Well, that's the 20 and thirty something youngsters creating that for their youngsters. I'm a Boomer and my sons were born in 1980, 1984 and 1987. All 3 played outside the majority of the time, even though they had...I think it was Nintendo.
As a kid of boomer parents who bootstrapped themselves out of poverty and put three kids through state school on one salary, I have a lot of trouble understanding any criticism of that generation. I love my parents and my in laws. They are an image of hard work and accountability. I want nothing more than to teach those values to my own kids, whom I worry about every minute of every day. I have little tolerance of criticism of so-called “boomers”. We all have to get an education, get a job, put in our time, let interest compound. I learned that pretty quick. No sense in wasting time complaining when you are 20 and you have energy to work 3 jobs.. I thought nothing of it, put myself through grad school, and I credit that to my boomer parents. Work ethic is taught.
Hahaha “boot straps” yea old man you’re clueless…. 8 Jobs at McDonald’s still won’t get you a mortgage
The concept of a work ethic was touted by the WWII generation that had affordable mortgages, minimum wage laws that met needs, gasoline that was 33 cents per gallon, and health care that was affordable. When those benefits were _not_ around any more, then we saw who really believed in working as an ethic. That sounds like your parents, and many boomers.
@@local4075 I am a middle boomer and never could afford a mortgage either because the time I got out of high-school inflation was already getting out of control.
PS: You still may be able to afford a mortgage nowadays, depending on how much you charge those 8 Jons from McDonald and whether they are return customers.🤣🤣🤣
My mother is a boomer who "lost interest in her children after they turned 6" and got on drugs at age 38 after going through fertility treatments to get pregnant with me at 32. She's now 71 and is basically still a child.
I'd say a lot of people criticize the boomers because too many of them made a modern economy where bootstrapping yourself out of poverty is nearly impossible now. They got to go to college for almost nothing, while the younger gens had to sign their life away to get the chance of getting into the middle class. They perpetuated the scam of student loan debt and college while we were in school. "Go to college, work hard, take out loans, and you won't be poor" they said. But it was all a lie, because the cost of college outpaces what they are willing to pay us for those jobs, and the cost of living. They also cut trades programs for high schools, and never let career counselors tell us about trades. Then, they shamed those of us who went to college for not going into a trade. And now, they tell us that we are not buying enough useless crap we can't afford, and how they want grandkids, but we are supposedly too selfish to give them grand kids. Nevermind that many of us can't afford children right now, and we have to wait so we don't raise them in poverty. That's just a few reasons many of them get criticized.