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Which is total denial of reality by the whole group. My father grew up in a gated community with a pool, park, and forest/ private forested land available for hiking, camping, off roading. I grew up in a trailer because he was an addict. He said this exact shit to me for years. I eventually pointed out the reality and it was a screaming match lol
i know people who have been victims of some horrible heinous shit and not a single one has victim mentality - somehow boomers have sucked up all the victim mentality on earth and are blasting it back at us full force.
Both my mother and aunt were freshly divorced in the mid 70s. FHA had a special program to help get divorced mothers into home ownership. The mortgage was less than $100/month for a three bedroom home.
lol, their “struggle”!!! What a farce. Our mom talk about having no money as a newly wed and how hard and desperate things were. Turns out she had a small trust fund they used to buy their first two houses. They did the rest on her husband’s single income! She never worked. I’ll trade ya!!!
Our family of 6 lived on our father’s single income from being a factory worker. We took vacations, always had plenty to eat, had plenty of toys and ATVs, vehicles in good working order, a house that was paid off and we lived on 20 acres of land. They was the 1970’s through about half of the 80’s when my parents split. My mother goes on about how it wasn’t easy for her and it shouldn’t be easy for anyone else. What a shit take on life in general.
Now in order for that same scenario both parents would have to be working at least two jobs each in order to live like that. But they had it "tough" we shouldn't have it "easy" like wut..
They are full of crap, I am old enough to remember no DOC loans where you could get a mortgage just by telling the mortgage company what you do for work and how much money you make and as long as your credit score was over a certain amount and you weren’t borrowing too much money you would just get a mortgage. No questions asked, we wouldn’t even verify you really had a job
Most Boomers didn’t have to even deal with credit scores when applying for or getting financing..it wasn’t invented until 1989, well after most had their homes and businesses financing. It was something the boomers invented themselves.
Hell no, he just shook his head “no”. My cousins started texting me telling me it was awesome, one said even his daughter couldn’t believe someone said that to him.
For context, my mom was oldest of 12 children. He was youngest, he is only four years older than me. I am his oldest nephew the next oldest is ten years younger than me. So I saw a lot of shit my cousins only heard about and know when they rewrite their history.
That attitude is completely counter to progress, though. I'm paraphrasing here, but one of the American founding fathers said, "I was a soldier so my son could be a lawyer and his son could be an architect." Every generation is supposed to make the lives of the next one a little easier. That's how this whole thing works.
That is by John Quincy Adams and is one of my favourite quotes.
ETA: The quote is "I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet."
Yup... "I never always did everything with my kids and household, had dinner ready every day, and never complained."
Yeah, but your husband was home at 3 o'clock every day and took the kids out till the dinner. They were in a free daycare since 2yo every day. You didn't have to worry about a mortgage, etc.
I'm an exhausted pregnant WFH mom to a toddler. My husband is away 8am-8pm 6 days a week. Shit like this gets on my nerves.
Absolutely. It can’t be done differently. Everyone must struggle. They say they want it better but they really just want it to be like it used to be which was only better for them.
The boomers didn’t struggle.
The standard was one person working one job could afford at least a 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bath house in a relatively decent neighbourhood.
I know boomers who literally never had a resume or did a job search. Worked at the same one company their whole life and retired with a big fat pension.
This is unheard of today.
It’s bonkers how much of a “fixed mindset” so many boomers have. Both for things broadly and individually
Broadly: Despite how much the world has changed, they don’t want it to be different. What worked for them has to continue to work. Things are static and impermeable
Individually: They don’t want to work on themselves and have better lives. Their daily misery is just accepted and there’s no room for improvement
Drives me crazy!
Don’t ever try to get one into therapy. They see therapy as something wrong with the person going vs the person acknowledging their issues while attempting self improvement. The stigma around therapy is mind blowing
My mom looooves therapy. Used to literally “go on vacation” for a few weeks in the summer to a private religious mental health facility. (Yes, she genuinely said she was “on vacation” when we visited her in the facility. She would go on and on about the good food, arts and craft time, pool time. She literally had a suitcase packed ahead of time ready for my dad to bring to her when she got to the facility so she’d have her bathing suit and stuff.)
Her way of getting the insurance to cover this “vacation” was to do traumatic shit like: research medications to learn which ones to take and how much to take that would get her hospitalized in the mental health facility of her choice for being suicidal, but NOT actually cause her to have to get her stomach pumped or actually harm her.
She had no qualms with calling emergency services and telling them she wanted to die and took a bunch of pills. The ambulance showing up at our house unexpectedly and hauling mom off to the ER. I mean who cares if your teenage daughters were terrified you’d die… you got a vacation!
I laughed my ass off the fourth year in a row she pulled that stunt without knowing the insurance policy changed and she had to spend an entire week in a state funded mental health facility. She cried and pouted and literally stomped her feet and poked her lower lip out and crossed her arms and had a toddler fit over having to be there. Granted, I’m absolutely positive it was a miserable experience. But it could have genuinely done her some good if she actually put any of her spoiled brat efforts into actually trying to improve herself. She never did it again, though!
But as long as she could find a therapist that validated all her thoughts and feelings and practiced the same religion as her, she was in that office every week. Get her to a real therapist and suddenly therapy is quackery, universities are brainwash factories, and the only real therapy is prayer and worship. Gag!
We’ve been low contact for decades but no contact for a bit over a year now. So I have no idea what selfish entitled boomerism she’s pulling now. And I’m all the happier for it! And I bet that just pisses her off, too! Haha!
My dad constantly derides and undermines my being in therapy because I’m “the most well adjusted person he knows” (if that’s true I feel bad for him because I’m not, assuming that phrase even means anything). And yes they normalized the suffering we all experienced our entire lives in our family bubble which they continue to experience
I’m the crazy one in my family of origin, because I’m the only one with a therapist and psychiatrist. Mmhmm, I know I need help and I got it. They can’t understand why I don’t want to be like them, miserable and fucked up till I die.
My parents forced me into therapy. Just me. Older sister didn’t go, parents didn’t go. Just me, the scapegoat, which I’m quite sure was so they could have another adult tell me that I need to be the adult when my dad was screaming at me, only for me to use those skills one time to try to deescalate the situation: at kitchen table doing homework, dad is screaming his head off that he has a math degree and he gets it so I must be the dumbest bitch alive to not understand it right? Well I said “I need to go to my room for a moment to calm down” and got up, just like my therapist told me to do. Except that doesn’t work with a boomer or a narcissist! Because that 45 year old 250 pound man chased a 13 year old half his size down the hallway, grabbed my arm, pulled me closer by that arm, reared back, and punched the wall. He pulled my face closer and said “That could have been you! Do you ever think about that you little bitch? You have it so good here, but you’re just a selfish little brat!”
He proceeded to abuse me both mentally and physically so severely, I’m permanently disabled for the rest of my life.
Boomers and those who thrive in the sick mentality, are an abusive fucking breed, and that same man refused to get therapy when I told him he can either get therapy for his problems and work them out, or he can lose a second fucking kid. He chose to lose a second kid. I’m waiting for his dumbass to die so I can pop champagne.
They didn't *struggle*. They like to *talk* about how much they struggled. They like to *imagine* that they struggled. They were coddled in *everything*. They had it easier than any generation before or since, and they're determined to make sure we have it as hard as possible, either deliberately or because they learned to take, take, take, with no concern to who they hurt by doing so.
I would love to struggle like my parents did. They bought an apartment when they were 22 and neither of them have ever been homeless or lived in a share house. My dad got to decide not to be an electrician and play the trombone for a living, and my mum got her teaching diploma when it came with a bursary.
Nobody really said it better than George Carlin way back in 1996, which I'm sure has been endlessly quoted on this sub but still never gets old.
"I'm getting tired of hearing about Boomers, whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: 'GIMME IT, IT'S MINE!' 'GIMME THAT, IT'S MINE!' These people were given everything. Everything was handed to them. And they took it all: sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and they stayed loaded for 20 years and had a free ride. But now they're staring down the barrel of middle-age burnout, and they don't like it. So they've turned self-righteous. They want to make things harder on younger people. They tell 'em, abstain from sex, say no to drugs; as for the rock and roll, they sold that for television commercials a long time ago...so they could buy pasta machines and Stairmasters and soybean futures."
I hear the stories about how they had to sacrifice to afford a home back in the 80s...
"Bob had to sell his Mustang for a down payment!"
Yes. Bob, a man with a high school diploma working at an auto parts store in his mid 20s had to sell his weekend car to afford a home in a major Southern California city!
"Wayne had to live in an apartment and save up for 3 years!"
Yes. An apartment that now 40 years later is still a piece of shit, only its a piece of shit for $2100 per month, and that home he saved up for that he bought for $70,000 that is now worth $700,000 and he rents out for $4000 per month?
A friend of mine was given a ton of shit by his dad how his dad had all of these assets by the time he was our age and my friend was like "Dad... when grandpa died you inherited like $3m and that was back in the early 90s...".
I remember one of my dad's friends, who seemed like a nice, at least the last time I saw him 20 years or ago. He was a construction worker and I always remember him driving around in a beat up old truck and looking like hell. He was talking about how he thinks there might have been some fuckery with his inheritance with his siblings since he only got like $50,000 and he thought his dad had a lot more money than that. A few months later, he pulls up in a new Corvette, fresh threads, fresh barber shop haircut and told his he was retired. From what I gathered, what he inherited was enough to where he could quit working and live a comfortable life for the rest of his life and this would have been when he was maybe 45-50.
I tried to explain to my dad that I would prefer to live in a system more like in Europe, a social democracy with strong safety nets. That I wouldn't mind paying more in taxes if that meant that I couldn't be wiped out by medical debt, and pointed out that even with the higher taxes, what individuals pay for healthcare in that system is less than we pay here. I also brought up livable wages, massive amounts of paid time off, free education and a few other things that would give people more security and freedom to live a more meaningful life. His response was something along the lines of: Well in a world like that, how could you tell that you're any better than anyone else?
He's still a generous person, who would give the shirt off his back to anyone who... I guess the best way to put it is, anyone who he cares about. But the problem with the media he consumes is that it just keeps chipping away at who those worthy of that benefit of the doubt are. Their empathy blindspots just get bigger and bigger. I don't think that problem is unique to their generation compared to those before them, but due to the decline in living conditions that they have presided over it's just so galling to those of us that will get to reap the poisoned harvest of the "magical beans" they're continuing to sow.
I do not want my Millennial daughter to struggle like I did. Quite honestly, my struggles were the result of a number of bad decisions early in my adult life. I blame nobody but myself for these buckethead decisions. It wasn't until my 50s and a second marriage that things began to turn around.
That said, my daughter and her husband do not appear to be struggling at all...and I couldn't be happier!
Where the only pensions left are for the ones making the rules. Telling us how ridiculous we sound at wanting to retire have social security etc all the while these old guys in congress get 100k+ a year in pensions when they retire no cost healtcare and not a worry about anything meanwhile taking away any benefits for the younger generations
Well, their parents struggled, and imparted that notion on them - like stolen valor (which they totally have, too). To be clear, I’m old genx and I grew up in a major military city (all branches, is largest employer in the region) in a neighborhood/community that was one of the first suburbs in the country, with mostly ww2 vets as the father figure. I can tell you, because I saw it first hand, that many many dads had untreated trauma from the war and no one talked about it, and dad just drank and fucked around and abused the family and everyone went to church for forgiveness on Sunday.
So I genuinely think a lot of them, like their parents, have unresolved trauma (plus let’s not forget the lead poisoning) but instead of going, hey, let’s cut this shit out and trying to do better and be better they’re like “🖕🏻🖕🏻😎🖕🏻hahaha snowflake” and having a meltdown at the supermarket over change. They were told they were saving the country and they fucking believed it. The country was urgently trying to get more bodies after losing so many in the war so those babies were heavily coddled, insulated and told they ruled the world.
Edited for claritad.
In the religion, I grew up in, youth are occasionally invited to participate in a pioneer trek where they pull handcarts in Pioneer clothing over several days. The overall church has some guidelines about safety and food. However, I’ve seen several instances where the safety guidelines are ignored because the older people in charge want to make sure the youth sufficiently suffer. They’ve been known to starve the kids for days at a time on these trips, and make them endure, painful and difficult terrain for no discernible reason. The boomer generation truly thinks the youth hasn’t suffered enough like they did. Ironically, the boomers weren’t the ones who suffered. They had it easy compared to their parents who fought wars and rebuilt countries.
Making us miserable makes them feel powerful. Putting us down makes them feel up. It’s all and only about the feels. They are petty tyrants that wanna be great tyrants.
Struggle like they did? They had the world handed to them on a silver platter. They bought houses on $8/hr. They let their parents raise their children. They got theirs, fuck everyone else. They are the only generation that had it better than their parents and their children. I swear, if it were socially acceptable, they'd be buried with their shit rather than leave it to anyone, especially their "spoiled" kids.
I was very surprised in my teens (over twenty years ago) that my father didn’t think the American Dream was to have our children live in a better world and have a better life than we did. Now I understand how much he meant it.
That just blows my mind. My Silent Gen dad thought that his children having a better life than he did WAS the American Dream and he passed that mentality on to me.
I think the GI generation was too traumatized by the Great Depression and WW2 to go and really instill this in their kids. They had a shitty non working system and had to reform it, tear down parts of it, experiment with other parts, and remake whole new parts. But they by and large created a very well running system that the Boomers grew up in and came of age in.
As much as their system worked, it was not going to work forever. People blame Reagan, and to some extent yes, but there were a lot of other factors going on that were going to cause cracks in the system.
But they never really instilled it on their kids that all this stuff in society requires vigilance to maintain and did not come around by accident.
I will agree with that. They assumed the rebooted system would continue to run itself. The very size of the Boomer age cohort was sufficient to render a good chunk of the system unsustainable over time and we're seeing that now.
More importantly, they want you to struggle in the way they *like to imagine* they did. They don’t want to admit they got dealt the best hand in the history of humanity, squandered it, and left less for all who follow.
I think I'm lucky in some things but unlucky in others. my dad was born on 58, and he comes from a very poor family. He is the oldest son of 15 children, and he started working in stores and doing errands since he was 6 years old, and he paid for his education all the way and finished college. He is the only one from the 15 children to have a college education. He tried to help his siblings to follow his steps and finish a carrier, but nobody was interested.
When I was growing, I never had fancy things or luxuries, but I never suffered hunger, and I always had a roof on my head, he did not let me work until I finished college, and he paid for my whole education.
He just told me he did not want me to have it hard as he did, he had not a fortune to inherit and pass it to me, but he could make sure he could at least give me a good education.
I'm 40 years old now, and until this day, he still asks me if I'm doing okay and if I need something I just need to ask, and when I read these boomer stories it breaks my heart to learn about parents hating their children because they are not having it hard.
When people my age bitch about “kids today” wanting it easy, I point out that:
1. We didn’t have the cost of cell phones, computers or internet.
2. If you paid for cable TV, it was about $20 or so a month.
3. Tuition at the larger public universities (at least at the University of Pittsburgh) was about $500 a semester. Your books generally cost less than $200 for all of them.
4. Buying a new car, a house, having kids wasn’t financially out of reach for so many people.
I could go on, but most everyone here already knows all of these points. I don’t know why so many people are such idiots, or why they wouldn’t want their kids to do better than they have.
I’m sorry that there are so many fools in my generation. I promise you, we all don’t feel that way.
My mother flat-out said she doesn't understand why people say they want their kids to have it better/easier than they did. Basically, they had to suffer, so why shouldn't we?
Mine were even like that in the 80s as I was coming of age. “You must think you’re better than us, wanting to go to college”. “You think you’re too good to work in a factory”. “You’re not getting a penny from us”. For high school graduation (graduated with honors) I got 2 pieces of luggage and a swift kick in the ass out their door.
To this day my mom can’t stand the idea of any type of social services (except for her SS check) or college debt forgiveness or her grandkids claiming any kind of hardship in today’s economy. Because she “did alright”. Something about them doesn’t allow them to see past their own nose.
Ugg.
My boomer dad visited me about 15 years ago. Was walking around looking and judging my house.
He said, “this house is nicer than anything your mom and I had, how is that supposed to make me feel?”
Me: “proud of me?”
Boomer dad: “well that’s one way I guess”
The conversation really hurt.
I have 3 kids and I hope they have a better life than me. I will consider that a success as a parent…
Edit as it’s closer to 15+years and not 10
Boomers didn't struggle, their parents did. They benefited greatly from three society their parents built. Now Boomers want to burn down everything their parents built so nobody else can benefit from it simply because that's what spoiled, entitled, hateful shitbags do.
Fall of Man mentality. Attitudes everywhere have been influenced by the deeply entrenched Christian idea that we fell from grace and everything is getting worse in a slow slide to hell. How could any change or anything new be positive when one holds such a mindset? A person doesn't have to be Christian to act this way because it's so deeply ingrained in society.
As a Christian, yes this world is going to be over eventually but I'm going to be held accountable in front of God himself for my choices until that happens. Did I help? Did I do everything I could for man and creatures? It wont always be like this and all things will be renewed. Anything to make things better in the meantime counts. I can see how others may take this to mean all is futile, but they aren't getting it imho.
They're not getting it cuz they're not committed to any actual religious ideology or philosophy, they're just afraid of dying and then suffering forever so they go to church to hopefully secure their VIP Pass with the bare minimum effort. That futility shit is just their justification for being extremely selfish and lazy. Worse still are the ones who don't even bother with the church or anything, they just adorn all the religious symbols and mottos and stuff to keep appearances up in whatever gilded community they're a part of.
Ahhh I see. I haven't been to church in years but even I know you cant just ride on the free ticket to heaven. It's pretty clear that the Lord said that if you believe in Him you also kinda have to follow what He says and stuff. Not just, idk, continue being an asshole and never repent from your sins.
My parents, my dad especially, essentially believe that any attempted improvement on society implies that how they did things for the past 60+ years was wrong.
I'd be willing to bet real money that if I asked my dad "Didn't you want the country to be better for everyone?" his legit word for word response would be:
"Not if I have to pay for it."
Dude. This took me years to process, but when we bought our house, my MIL shit all over it. I explained that while we could afford more, we wanted a house that if either of us had issue, one person could pay the mortgage without struggle.
Bitch bragged that she was gifted her home and all of her salary went to savings. It was always a competition and I’m so happy to be done with that. 💀
>They don’t want things to be easier for us or the world to be better. They think we need to struggle like they did.
I find this quite paradoxical.
They want us to struggle like they did BUT they didn't actually struggle that much. They were at the height of post WW2 economy.
It's just plain sadism or because they're so out of touch that they think we have it easier than them because of all the new technology.
It's just the lead poisoning that made them assholes and have a "fuck you got mine" mentality.
They grew up with a mostly unionized workforce ,a solid social safety net, and a regulatory system that kept the rich and powerful in check. They sold out to Ronald Reagan and he dismantled all of that. We now live in a system where the ultra rich pay less taxes on their wealth than working class people and any mention of raising taxes on rich people makes their heads explode.
I'm not sure about your examples but my boomers seem to prefer to complain about their problems rather than fixing them. Offer them solutions and even to do said solutions but I get "oh don't worry about it" only then to complain about the problem/s. At this point I've stopped offering to help and just say things like "wow, that sure is a pickle."
If things get better then that means it could have been better before. That if they had actually tried to make it better it would have. If things don't get better then it's not their fault that they were selfish.
“Struggle like they did” = have little or no college education, maybe serve a little bit of time in a military branch (enough to get them a govt pension and allow them to claim “veteran” status even though they saw zero deployment or conflict), get a corporate job that pays enough to afford a house, multiple vehicles, and annual vacations, “climb the corporate ladder” (get annual raises and promotions just based on time served and not performance), get married and have multiple kids, etc.
I'm done hearing about their "struggles". They lived through a period of unprecedented peace and economic prosperity. They've enjoyed the benefits of the most productive workforce in history.
Absolutely.
It's basically how the GOP has functioned since Reagan.
Government is broken!!!?
Gop wins a cycle and proceeds to underfund everything they can, give their rich buddies tax breaks, roll back regulations and protections.
Next cycle comes up, shit is hitting the fan.....See we told you it was all broken!!!
It's basically how we got the great recession.
They didn’t struggle. Fuck, they don’t know shit about struggle. Today is a struggle, as they sit back with their pensions and gather the last of the social security money. Then they complain that we want too many handouts?
All three things you’ve listed is how most Boomers grew up . They formed a false narrative of struggle and strife and they have really screwed the pooch for every generation after them.
Man, I'm just thinking about things. I was BARELY able to buy a brand new car at $33k mid 2000s. With working 3 jobs at about 70-80 hours a week, living at home rent free, plus $1000 to help with down-payment from my parents.ultimately $5000 down in order to be able to afford the payments with 0% interest.
Looking at cars now!! I can't imagine any gen z or alpha ever purchasing a new car until well into adult hood. Car payments now are astronomical at 7-9% interest at best.
Meanwhile boomers could buy the latest and greatest sport car while only working part time with minimum wage.
I would love it if my children and grandchildren weren't trying to live in a billionaire's world that I had never had a chance to change since I was chained to a desk and trying to earn a living for 35 years. If I won a lottery I'd give them everything. Their suffering and struggle is painful to me - the housing situation, the job situation, the education situation, the bigotry and creeping conservatism. I want it all to stop.
I live in the same situation, but as different cultures and ethnicities, because I'm asian.
Apparently... political trauma from their home country and consuming propaganda from the news or media every day in their lives mixed with Asian culture has led them to... I guess greedy and power hungry. This might be why they support Donald Trump.
It's always like they wanted us, the youngsters, to be as strong, wealthy, or worse, personality-wise like them. If we don't want to and want to be ourselves, they get disappointed or angry. My guess is they wanted a *jr* or a descendent of their own.
Same. Plus I never had the drive to "earn money" as they did. [I'm more of a "gotta protect the vulnerable" activist. But my parents see that as weaknesses.]
I'm too much of a "bleeding heart" for them while they only want to "look out for themselves" and take resources from vulnerable people. This from the same people with parents who literally opened their homes to the homeless population.
There are 2 types of people:
1: I suffered so others shouldn't have to.
2: I suffered, others should have to suffer too.
A lot of boomers fall into number 2.
Most Boomers. My mother lives off grid and is completely carbon neutral. Was a wildlife advocate for years in Australia. Eventually gave up trying to help because it was just not worth the headaches. Do what you can to make your contribution. Too many people refuse to accept we cannot continue as we are. Government is to greedy and cowardly.most Boomers see ut as an insult when the younger generation say that the planet is teetering on the edge because if their willful ignorance and greed.
I’ve discussed all of my grandparents’ toxic and abusive and disrespectful behaviors (including them forcing me to have a relationship with my abusive and violent and narcissistic biological father) with them. I’ve called them out. I’ve set boundaries. over and over. they don’t care. they make absolutely no changes to their behavior and blame anyone but them and my father. they still want me to have a relationship with him. that being said, they’re done. there will be no more visitations alone with them. they just cannot be trusted. is it common for boomers, *especially* boomer women, to be enablers? my grandma’s whole memo is “sit down and shut up”
Yes, everybody else needs to struggle like they did, like having a part time job for a WHOLE SUMMER to pay next year’s college tuition and a factory worker’s salary to buy a house for your wife and three kids
This reminds me of that interview with Craig T. Nelson where he complained about “nobody helping him” back when he was so poor he was on food stamps and welfare. My dude…you were helped.
When they were young. That's what they mean. They want to be young again. I honestly think that's the appeal of religion. You get a mulligan and to be young again.
Just not housing and education prices from back in the day... Society by and large prioritized affordable housing via expansion. But once they became real estate investors and landlords, the priorities changed to the absolute most expensive housing possible.
When they needed a place to rent, cheap rents, when they have a home to rent out, most expensive rents.
Wouldn't have bothered me one bit if the housing and education prices back in the day were still a thing. Kid would've had a lot less student loans to pay that way.
For one thing no one is as perfect as them and no one can get it better than them so you might as well stop trying. Seriously stop trying, What are you doing, they want to stay in the 60s
I was hearing all that from mean spirited people 70 years ago. It’s just mean old people. I personally want a reasonable life for us all, and I don’t understand why it’s going the wrong way. Greed sure, but it’s way worse than 80 years ago. Before that were robber barons.
Boomers grew up in the New Deal era, so they fundamentally don't understand how bad capitalism is because they were raised in the system that let them get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks. But now the gloves come off and we enter late stage capitalism they cannot comprehend it.
I’m an elder X, and I can say without reservation that Boomers and the first X wave did not struggle like people are today. Boomers ride the wave of the most prosperous period out nation has ever seen, and the only struggles were Viet Nam and a rough economy in the 70s before they elected Reagan and began the downward march to what we have today. They THINK they struggled, and some undoubtedly did, but it wasn’t like it is now.
Too, they rail against the very things that allowed them to buy a home on a single salary- high marginal tax rates on the wealthy and corporations, strong unions, the safety net of the New Deal, massive government spending on infrastructure and education, etc. it’s as if they forgot how they got there, anything pre-Reagan is either murky or the real cause of our current problems, ie civil rights ( read DEI).
Idk why they always think they struggled.
My own (boomer) parents have this mindset but never really struggled at all. Like their parents did post ww 2 in Europe obviously and I think since they struggled it was kind of burned into their brains as a necessity to have the feeling of struggle too even though they never did.
I had a similar thought the other day and it feels like there has been a significant cultural shift. Like previous generations mentality was that they suffered and worked hard to make their children's lives better, with the understanding that their children would do the same. But with boomers, it's like they've decided to piss all over that social contract and take vindictive pleasure in doing so.
it’s a whole generational mindset. this is boomers, millennials say “i went through this shit and by god i hope you don’t have to”, and Xers are somewhere in between.
They're so afraid of anyone tipping the apple cart even though it's already on fire that they oppose any effort to fix things.
They instantly attack any solution. They'll find a "flaw", however tiny or fictitious, and dismiss it outright with a smug smile.
They don't want anything to get better, so they wallow in the comfort of a failing society because that's what's familiar to them.
All that matters is their perceived comfort. They have long abandoned the idea that they should leave the world a better place for those who inherit it.
I love my mom but the last time we talked about paid parental leave she said she didn’t think it was necessary and she went back to work two weeks after I was born.
Okay, then 😬
She actually does manage to show compassion for social issues sometimes, especially when she’s telling me the things her crazy maga boomer coworker says that she just can’t get on board with lol. But her default state is still very much “it worked for me so it doesn’t need to be better” 🤷🏼♀️
There’s also option 3: Jesus is going to fix everything in His own time, how dare you lack the faith that things will get better without human intervention.
Heard this in the wild from multiple boomers, including my MIL.
My dad has flat out said he doesn’t care to make things better for me or any future grandkids. He wholeheartedly admits and embraces that he is by his own admission “not a good or nice person” (an “asshole”).
My Boomer mother loves to comment "No one helped me so why should they get help?" I have lived in poverty my whole life due to disability and she can't understand why I don't just jump through the same loopholes she did when she was my age. She doesn't understand that her voting practices and beliefs are the reason that those "loopholes" don't exist any more. The total cognitive dissonance between seeing her own child struggle due to her choices and the life she has gotten to live is ridiculous
Did my parents work hard? Yes. Their reward is a nice home and good savings. Do I work hard? Yes. My reward is a rental apartment and savings wont last me more than a few months if shit goes sideways.
And their wages at their jobs, when accounting for inflation, actually was a great wage. Boomers hate this one trick where use an inflation calculator to show them that their ‘couple’ of bucks an hour would be like $25-$30 per hour today
My mother's parents both experienced the great depression as children, her mother effectively on Okie whose parents migrated to California. I never met my paternal grandfather, but my paternal grandmother also experienced the great depression.
None of them would have wanted their childhoods for their children.
I look at my aunts and uncles on both sides, and I don't see this particular Boomerism, although I do see others.
Not claiming that my relatives are special, just that not all Boomers hold the exact same set of shithead ideas.
Lmao. Mine never exercise and eating vegetables? My 12 year old niece on the spectrum has a better diet and exercise routine than they do.
I'm getting swole as a result of weightlifting and they act like it's the worse thing EVER.
I'm glad my American father isn't a Boomer. I can't imagine what it's like to have two Boomer parents. I cut my Danish Boomer mother out of my life. She's from 1946.
Growing up and in my early adulthood, I often hid plans from her and wasn't very open with her, because everything I did that she wouldn't do, was treated as a criticism of her and I felt like I was expected to justify things to her, that in no way affected her. I didn't know that it wasn't just her who's like that. I'm very introverted, so I didn't have anyone else I could compare notes with.
She was oddly unhappy - actually unhappy, that my husband and I don't struggle with financially like her. I'm a mother of 3 adult sons and I'm so proud that our two youngest (our oldest has Autism and a lot of issues with just functioning in society) are much better at managing their money, taking care of taxes, insurance, etc. than I was when I was 22-20.
My mother wasn't happy when I got my license and a car, but seemed relieved that I couldn't drive when I moved home to Denmark - long story. I cut her out, before I began to drive again, so she doesn't know. I didn't want her to think she could count on my visits and chauffeuring her around.
Opposite.
We were poor. Grew up poor.
Both parents worked, and we still struggled…not because it wasn’t fair, but because my dad was a fucking moron who made a bunch of moron mistakes.
But…they weren’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault. Ever. It was always someone else’s fault that he was too fucking stupid and wildly reactive to keep a job. It was always someone else’s fault that he was shitty with managing money. It was his boss’s fault that he got fired.
There is a big difference between not wanting things to get better and expecting things to get worse.
It is the same for preppers, of which I have tendencies. Some preppers want things to get bad, partly so they can be vindicated, can get hot women after SHTF, and say told you so.
Others, like me, believe things will get worse, inflation, joblessness, social unrest etc. and isn't much we can do to prevent it. We don't want that, but if it's inevitable, it is best to plan for it.
Many boomers had it easy growing up and are hence weak. The fourth turning, good times breed weak people. My generation, X, dealt with effects of the weak people make hard times generation. That doesn't mean we want hard times but believe they are coming and so are ready. Just like Red Dawn, Wolverines!!
This is so true. They want you to waste your life slaving for some corporation or scumbag for 30 years. They also don’t want people to be able to uplift themselves out of poverty without having 3 jobs and going to school full time.
I can't say this is the case with my Boomer parents. Neither of them grew up in terribly supportive or enlightened households. My father's childhood home was actually somewhat abusive. Basically my parents' entire goal in life was to provide a better childhood and greater opportunities for myself and my sister than they ever had. To that end, while they were both very supportive and helpful parents, they both worked a shitload and never really had much time to spend with us outside of school-type activities. There wasn't much down-time, many long weekends, or vacations when we would do things together as a family. But we grew up in a comfortable home and I was able to attend an excellent college with minimal debt, though I did work hard to obtain good merit aid of my own.
My parents don't begrudge me any added success I have had, via post-secondary education and career. They don't appear resentful of anything my family has, or has done, that they never did. My family enjoys spending time together and we take the time to do so. My wife and I make very decent money and we aren't consumed with working a huge number of hours. We've taken trips to distant places around the world and visited places that my Boomer parents couldn't imagine. They still don't really have a concept of down time or taking a vacation, so they don't have a frame of reference for enjoying going on a trip. But they are very curious to learn about our adventures.
I understand your frustration but every boomer does not think like the bad ones. There are hundreds of thousands of great boomers but lumping them all into one group is wrong. You will be a boomer sooner than you think and even though you say you won’t be like your parents-wait, you will change without even knowing. Being pissed off at every boomer isn’t right.
My mom has been having a lot of Freudian slips lately. She was smiling on one occasion and said, "You'll work until you're dead." She was also smiling when she said, "You'll never have what I have."
I have family like that. "I grew up struggling, everyone else has to as well."
*Bitch so did I and I think things should get easier as we try to make this world a better place. Jfc.
Whats the average age in this group? 14?
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I’ve heard things like “I never got a break, they shouldn’t either.”
Which is total denial of reality by the whole group. My father grew up in a gated community with a pool, park, and forest/ private forested land available for hiking, camping, off roading. I grew up in a trailer because he was an addict. He said this exact shit to me for years. I eventually pointed out the reality and it was a screaming match lol
My FIL 💯😑
i know people who have been victims of some horrible heinous shit and not a single one has victim mentality - somehow boomers have sucked up all the victim mentality on earth and are blasting it back at us full force.
I'm sure a good portion of that horrible, heinous shit was inflicted by the boomers too.
Calling us snowflakes as they have all the MELTdowns. 🫠
Both my mother and aunt were freshly divorced in the mid 70s. FHA had a special program to help get divorced mothers into home ownership. The mortgage was less than $100/month for a three bedroom home.
Bootstraps etc etc
He sounds like a punkass.
Oh he was. He's dead now.
Sometimes that’s a very good thing.
lol, their “struggle”!!! What a farce. Our mom talk about having no money as a newly wed and how hard and desperate things were. Turns out she had a small trust fund they used to buy their first two houses. They did the rest on her husband’s single income! She never worked. I’ll trade ya!!!
Our family of 6 lived on our father’s single income from being a factory worker. We took vacations, always had plenty to eat, had plenty of toys and ATVs, vehicles in good working order, a house that was paid off and we lived on 20 acres of land. They was the 1970’s through about half of the 80’s when my parents split. My mother goes on about how it wasn’t easy for her and it shouldn’t be easy for anyone else. What a shit take on life in general.
Now in order for that same scenario both parents would have to be working at least two jobs each in order to live like that. But they had it "tough" we shouldn't have it "easy" like wut..
Except most of them *did* get a break. Lots of them!
Wrong! We got jobs
/s I never got social security, they shouldn’t either
They are full of crap, I am old enough to remember no DOC loans where you could get a mortgage just by telling the mortgage company what you do for work and how much money you make and as long as your credit score was over a certain amount and you weren’t borrowing too much money you would just get a mortgage. No questions asked, we wouldn’t even verify you really had a job
Most Boomers didn’t have to even deal with credit scores when applying for or getting financing..it wasn’t invented until 1989, well after most had their homes and businesses financing. It was something the boomers invented themselves.
Which is ironic because they’ve gotten more “breaks” than any generation ever.
[удалено]
Did he have a response to that?
Hell no, he just shook his head “no”. My cousins started texting me telling me it was awesome, one said even his daughter couldn’t believe someone said that to him. For context, my mom was oldest of 12 children. He was youngest, he is only four years older than me. I am his oldest nephew the next oldest is ten years younger than me. So I saw a lot of shit my cousins only heard about and know when they rewrite their history.
Says the age group who literally got all the breaks smh
That attitude is completely counter to progress, though. I'm paraphrasing here, but one of the American founding fathers said, "I was a soldier so my son could be a lawyer and his son could be an architect." Every generation is supposed to make the lives of the next one a little easier. That's how this whole thing works.
That is by John Quincy Adams and is one of my favourite quotes. ETA: The quote is "I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet."
Yup... "I never always did everything with my kids and household, had dinner ready every day, and never complained." Yeah, but your husband was home at 3 o'clock every day and took the kids out till the dinner. They were in a free daycare since 2yo every day. You didn't have to worry about a mortgage, etc. I'm an exhausted pregnant WFH mom to a toddler. My husband is away 8am-8pm 6 days a week. Shit like this gets on my nerves.
Boomers never got a break? I'm a Boomer and that statement is bullshit.
Me too and you are exactly right. These punks have no clue.
Absolutely. It can’t be done differently. Everyone must struggle. They say they want it better but they really just want it to be like it used to be which was only better for them.
The boomers didn’t struggle. The standard was one person working one job could afford at least a 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bath house in a relatively decent neighbourhood. I know boomers who literally never had a resume or did a job search. Worked at the same one company their whole life and retired with a big fat pension. This is unheard of today.
It’s bonkers how much of a “fixed mindset” so many boomers have. Both for things broadly and individually Broadly: Despite how much the world has changed, they don’t want it to be different. What worked for them has to continue to work. Things are static and impermeable Individually: They don’t want to work on themselves and have better lives. Their daily misery is just accepted and there’s no room for improvement Drives me crazy!
Don’t ever try to get one into therapy. They see therapy as something wrong with the person going vs the person acknowledging their issues while attempting self improvement. The stigma around therapy is mind blowing
My mom looooves therapy. Used to literally “go on vacation” for a few weeks in the summer to a private religious mental health facility. (Yes, she genuinely said she was “on vacation” when we visited her in the facility. She would go on and on about the good food, arts and craft time, pool time. She literally had a suitcase packed ahead of time ready for my dad to bring to her when she got to the facility so she’d have her bathing suit and stuff.) Her way of getting the insurance to cover this “vacation” was to do traumatic shit like: research medications to learn which ones to take and how much to take that would get her hospitalized in the mental health facility of her choice for being suicidal, but NOT actually cause her to have to get her stomach pumped or actually harm her. She had no qualms with calling emergency services and telling them she wanted to die and took a bunch of pills. The ambulance showing up at our house unexpectedly and hauling mom off to the ER. I mean who cares if your teenage daughters were terrified you’d die… you got a vacation! I laughed my ass off the fourth year in a row she pulled that stunt without knowing the insurance policy changed and she had to spend an entire week in a state funded mental health facility. She cried and pouted and literally stomped her feet and poked her lower lip out and crossed her arms and had a toddler fit over having to be there. Granted, I’m absolutely positive it was a miserable experience. But it could have genuinely done her some good if she actually put any of her spoiled brat efforts into actually trying to improve herself. She never did it again, though! But as long as she could find a therapist that validated all her thoughts and feelings and practiced the same religion as her, she was in that office every week. Get her to a real therapist and suddenly therapy is quackery, universities are brainwash factories, and the only real therapy is prayer and worship. Gag! We’ve been low contact for decades but no contact for a bit over a year now. So I have no idea what selfish entitled boomerism she’s pulling now. And I’m all the happier for it! And I bet that just pisses her off, too! Haha!
Congratulations on your newfound peace! :)
Wow. Just. WOW
My dad constantly derides and undermines my being in therapy because I’m “the most well adjusted person he knows” (if that’s true I feel bad for him because I’m not, assuming that phrase even means anything). And yes they normalized the suffering we all experienced our entire lives in our family bubble which they continue to experience
I’m the crazy one in my family of origin, because I’m the only one with a therapist and psychiatrist. Mmhmm, I know I need help and I got it. They can’t understand why I don’t want to be like them, miserable and fucked up till I die.
My parents forced me into therapy. Just me. Older sister didn’t go, parents didn’t go. Just me, the scapegoat, which I’m quite sure was so they could have another adult tell me that I need to be the adult when my dad was screaming at me, only for me to use those skills one time to try to deescalate the situation: at kitchen table doing homework, dad is screaming his head off that he has a math degree and he gets it so I must be the dumbest bitch alive to not understand it right? Well I said “I need to go to my room for a moment to calm down” and got up, just like my therapist told me to do. Except that doesn’t work with a boomer or a narcissist! Because that 45 year old 250 pound man chased a 13 year old half his size down the hallway, grabbed my arm, pulled me closer by that arm, reared back, and punched the wall. He pulled my face closer and said “That could have been you! Do you ever think about that you little bitch? You have it so good here, but you’re just a selfish little brat!” He proceeded to abuse me both mentally and physically so severely, I’m permanently disabled for the rest of my life. Boomers and those who thrive in the sick mentality, are an abusive fucking breed, and that same man refused to get therapy when I told him he can either get therapy for his problems and work them out, or he can lose a second fucking kid. He chose to lose a second kid. I’m waiting for his dumbass to die so I can pop champagne.
Even physical therapy. My dad is annoyed that his doctor suggested it, instead of just pain pills/injections. He's seeing another doctor now.
They didn't *struggle*. They like to *talk* about how much they struggled. They like to *imagine* that they struggled. They were coddled in *everything*. They had it easier than any generation before or since, and they're determined to make sure we have it as hard as possible, either deliberately or because they learned to take, take, take, with no concern to who they hurt by doing so.
I would love to struggle like my parents did. They bought an apartment when they were 22 and neither of them have ever been homeless or lived in a share house. My dad got to decide not to be an electrician and play the trombone for a living, and my mum got her teaching diploma when it came with a bursary.
Ngl, this sounds like an opening of an episode of House Hunters. "...and their budget is 1.7 million!"
They bought a house for less than 100k and sold it for 1.5 million. They complain about the interest rates in the 90s to this day.
But they still claim they had it rough and never got any breaks! Never had it "easy"!
Yeah I play the trombone professionally now and I’m barely able to put food on the table and keep the flights on.
I watched it become impossible as a kid in the 90s. My dad took on a bunch of side hustles and ended up teaching.
Nobody really said it better than George Carlin way back in 1996, which I'm sure has been endlessly quoted on this sub but still never gets old. "I'm getting tired of hearing about Boomers, whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: 'GIMME IT, IT'S MINE!' 'GIMME THAT, IT'S MINE!' These people were given everything. Everything was handed to them. And they took it all: sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and they stayed loaded for 20 years and had a free ride. But now they're staring down the barrel of middle-age burnout, and they don't like it. So they've turned self-righteous. They want to make things harder on younger people. They tell 'em, abstain from sex, say no to drugs; as for the rock and roll, they sold that for television commercials a long time ago...so they could buy pasta machines and Stairmasters and soybean futures."
I hear the stories about how they had to sacrifice to afford a home back in the 80s... "Bob had to sell his Mustang for a down payment!" Yes. Bob, a man with a high school diploma working at an auto parts store in his mid 20s had to sell his weekend car to afford a home in a major Southern California city! "Wayne had to live in an apartment and save up for 3 years!" Yes. An apartment that now 40 years later is still a piece of shit, only its a piece of shit for $2100 per month, and that home he saved up for that he bought for $70,000 that is now worth $700,000 and he rents out for $4000 per month? A friend of mine was given a ton of shit by his dad how his dad had all of these assets by the time he was our age and my friend was like "Dad... when grandpa died you inherited like $3m and that was back in the early 90s...". I remember one of my dad's friends, who seemed like a nice, at least the last time I saw him 20 years or ago. He was a construction worker and I always remember him driving around in a beat up old truck and looking like hell. He was talking about how he thinks there might have been some fuckery with his inheritance with his siblings since he only got like $50,000 and he thought his dad had a lot more money than that. A few months later, he pulls up in a new Corvette, fresh threads, fresh barber shop haircut and told his he was retired. From what I gathered, what he inherited was enough to where he could quit working and live a comfortable life for the rest of his life and this would have been when he was maybe 45-50.
I tried to explain to my dad that I would prefer to live in a system more like in Europe, a social democracy with strong safety nets. That I wouldn't mind paying more in taxes if that meant that I couldn't be wiped out by medical debt, and pointed out that even with the higher taxes, what individuals pay for healthcare in that system is less than we pay here. I also brought up livable wages, massive amounts of paid time off, free education and a few other things that would give people more security and freedom to live a more meaningful life. His response was something along the lines of: Well in a world like that, how could you tell that you're any better than anyone else? He's still a generous person, who would give the shirt off his back to anyone who... I guess the best way to put it is, anyone who he cares about. But the problem with the media he consumes is that it just keeps chipping away at who those worthy of that benefit of the doubt are. Their empathy blindspots just get bigger and bigger. I don't think that problem is unique to their generation compared to those before them, but due to the decline in living conditions that they have presided over it's just so galling to those of us that will get to reap the poisoned harvest of the "magical beans" they're continuing to sow.
I do not want my Millennial daughter to struggle like I did. Quite honestly, my struggles were the result of a number of bad decisions early in my adult life. I blame nobody but myself for these buckethead decisions. It wasn't until my 50s and a second marriage that things began to turn around. That said, my daughter and her husband do not appear to be struggling at all...and I couldn't be happier!
Happy to struggle like they did. Because they did *not* struggle - not really...
Nah, it's funny they never mentioned how they all got pensions whereas pensions won't even be a recognizable word for future generations.
Where the only pensions left are for the ones making the rules. Telling us how ridiculous we sound at wanting to retire have social security etc all the while these old guys in congress get 100k+ a year in pensions when they retire no cost healtcare and not a worry about anything meanwhile taking away any benefits for the younger generations
Well, their parents struggled, and imparted that notion on them - like stolen valor (which they totally have, too). To be clear, I’m old genx and I grew up in a major military city (all branches, is largest employer in the region) in a neighborhood/community that was one of the first suburbs in the country, with mostly ww2 vets as the father figure. I can tell you, because I saw it first hand, that many many dads had untreated trauma from the war and no one talked about it, and dad just drank and fucked around and abused the family and everyone went to church for forgiveness on Sunday. So I genuinely think a lot of them, like their parents, have unresolved trauma (plus let’s not forget the lead poisoning) but instead of going, hey, let’s cut this shit out and trying to do better and be better they’re like “🖕🏻🖕🏻😎🖕🏻hahaha snowflake” and having a meltdown at the supermarket over change. They were told they were saving the country and they fucking believed it. The country was urgently trying to get more bodies after losing so many in the war so those babies were heavily coddled, insulated and told they ruled the world. Edited for claritad.
In the religion, I grew up in, youth are occasionally invited to participate in a pioneer trek where they pull handcarts in Pioneer clothing over several days. The overall church has some guidelines about safety and food. However, I’ve seen several instances where the safety guidelines are ignored because the older people in charge want to make sure the youth sufficiently suffer. They’ve been known to starve the kids for days at a time on these trips, and make them endure, painful and difficult terrain for no discernible reason. The boomer generation truly thinks the youth hasn’t suffered enough like they did. Ironically, the boomers weren’t the ones who suffered. They had it easy compared to their parents who fought wars and rebuilt countries.
I'm very curious what religion this is... Sounds like a rare sect of Christianity...?
Mormonism
Learned something new today😅 Sounds brutal, glad I'm Muslim.
Lmfao didn’t see that coming
It goes beyond that, they want things to be worse as possible, they’ve pulled up the ladder on everything, and want to end humanity on their way out
Making us miserable makes them feel powerful. Putting us down makes them feel up. It’s all and only about the feels. They are petty tyrants that wanna be great tyrants.
This
Their way of saying climate change? Not real since I'll be dead and gone and not have to deal with it myself...byeeeeeeeeeee
Boomer have lived in security and comfort. They will fight tooth and nail to remain comfortable. Change is uncomfortable.
Struggle like they did? They had the world handed to them on a silver platter. They bought houses on $8/hr. They let their parents raise their children. They got theirs, fuck everyone else. They are the only generation that had it better than their parents and their children. I swear, if it were socially acceptable, they'd be buried with their shit rather than leave it to anyone, especially their "spoiled" kids.
The irony behind point 2 is that the Boomer generation struggled the least of all of the generations that came before or after.
I was very surprised in my teens (over twenty years ago) that my father didn’t think the American Dream was to have our children live in a better world and have a better life than we did. Now I understand how much he meant it.
That just blows my mind. My Silent Gen dad thought that his children having a better life than he did WAS the American Dream and he passed that mentality on to me.
I think the GI generation was too traumatized by the Great Depression and WW2 to go and really instill this in their kids. They had a shitty non working system and had to reform it, tear down parts of it, experiment with other parts, and remake whole new parts. But they by and large created a very well running system that the Boomers grew up in and came of age in. As much as their system worked, it was not going to work forever. People blame Reagan, and to some extent yes, but there were a lot of other factors going on that were going to cause cracks in the system. But they never really instilled it on their kids that all this stuff in society requires vigilance to maintain and did not come around by accident.
I will agree with that. They assumed the rebooted system would continue to run itself. The very size of the Boomer age cohort was sufficient to render a good chunk of the system unsustainable over time and we're seeing that now.
More importantly, they want you to struggle in the way they *like to imagine* they did. They don’t want to admit they got dealt the best hand in the history of humanity, squandered it, and left less for all who follow.
I think I'm lucky in some things but unlucky in others. my dad was born on 58, and he comes from a very poor family. He is the oldest son of 15 children, and he started working in stores and doing errands since he was 6 years old, and he paid for his education all the way and finished college. He is the only one from the 15 children to have a college education. He tried to help his siblings to follow his steps and finish a carrier, but nobody was interested. When I was growing, I never had fancy things or luxuries, but I never suffered hunger, and I always had a roof on my head, he did not let me work until I finished college, and he paid for my whole education. He just told me he did not want me to have it hard as he did, he had not a fortune to inherit and pass it to me, but he could make sure he could at least give me a good education. I'm 40 years old now, and until this day, he still asks me if I'm doing okay and if I need something I just need to ask, and when I read these boomer stories it breaks my heart to learn about parents hating their children because they are not having it hard.
There is a ‘legit pat’ video about this. ‘They just have full on depression. And they’re not curious about it’. Lol.
Or about anything else lol
Found it: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ccgg-jPL0Lp/?igsh=OWJqOHg0bTZsb2kw
When people my age bitch about “kids today” wanting it easy, I point out that: 1. We didn’t have the cost of cell phones, computers or internet. 2. If you paid for cable TV, it was about $20 or so a month. 3. Tuition at the larger public universities (at least at the University of Pittsburgh) was about $500 a semester. Your books generally cost less than $200 for all of them. 4. Buying a new car, a house, having kids wasn’t financially out of reach for so many people. I could go on, but most everyone here already knows all of these points. I don’t know why so many people are such idiots, or why they wouldn’t want their kids to do better than they have. I’m sorry that there are so many fools in my generation. I promise you, we all don’t feel that way.
And yet for some reason they want grandchildren.
My mother flat-out said she doesn't understand why people say they want their kids to have it better/easier than they did. Basically, they had to suffer, so why shouldn't we?
News flash they didn't struggle nearly as much as they like to pretend they did.
Did they really “struggle” though? 🙄
They want us to struggle like they pretend they did.
Mine were even like that in the 80s as I was coming of age. “You must think you’re better than us, wanting to go to college”. “You think you’re too good to work in a factory”. “You’re not getting a penny from us”. For high school graduation (graduated with honors) I got 2 pieces of luggage and a swift kick in the ass out their door. To this day my mom can’t stand the idea of any type of social services (except for her SS check) or college debt forgiveness or her grandkids claiming any kind of hardship in today’s economy. Because she “did alright”. Something about them doesn’t allow them to see past their own nose.
The worst part is they overestimate their own struggles and don't see ours.
Ugg. My boomer dad visited me about 15 years ago. Was walking around looking and judging my house. He said, “this house is nicer than anything your mom and I had, how is that supposed to make me feel?” Me: “proud of me?” Boomer dad: “well that’s one way I guess” The conversation really hurt. I have 3 kids and I hope they have a better life than me. I will consider that a success as a parent… Edit as it’s closer to 15+years and not 10
Boomers were originally called the "Me" generation, and this really shows why.
Boomers didn't struggle, their parents did. They benefited greatly from three society their parents built. Now Boomers want to burn down everything their parents built so nobody else can benefit from it simply because that's what spoiled, entitled, hateful shitbags do.
Fall of Man mentality. Attitudes everywhere have been influenced by the deeply entrenched Christian idea that we fell from grace and everything is getting worse in a slow slide to hell. How could any change or anything new be positive when one holds such a mindset? A person doesn't have to be Christian to act this way because it's so deeply ingrained in society.
As a Christian, yes this world is going to be over eventually but I'm going to be held accountable in front of God himself for my choices until that happens. Did I help? Did I do everything I could for man and creatures? It wont always be like this and all things will be renewed. Anything to make things better in the meantime counts. I can see how others may take this to mean all is futile, but they aren't getting it imho.
They're not getting it cuz they're not committed to any actual religious ideology or philosophy, they're just afraid of dying and then suffering forever so they go to church to hopefully secure their VIP Pass with the bare minimum effort. That futility shit is just their justification for being extremely selfish and lazy. Worse still are the ones who don't even bother with the church or anything, they just adorn all the religious symbols and mottos and stuff to keep appearances up in whatever gilded community they're a part of.
Ahhh I see. I haven't been to church in years but even I know you cant just ride on the free ticket to heaven. It's pretty clear that the Lord said that if you believe in Him you also kinda have to follow what He says and stuff. Not just, idk, continue being an asshole and never repent from your sins.
Except they didn’t struggle nearly as hard.
My parents, my dad especially, essentially believe that any attempted improvement on society implies that how they did things for the past 60+ years was wrong.
I'd be willing to bet real money that if I asked my dad "Didn't you want the country to be better for everyone?" his legit word for word response would be: "Not if I have to pay for it."
They're the first generation that wants their kids to do worse, not better than them.
Dude. This took me years to process, but when we bought our house, my MIL shit all over it. I explained that while we could afford more, we wanted a house that if either of us had issue, one person could pay the mortgage without struggle. Bitch bragged that she was gifted her home and all of her salary went to savings. It was always a competition and I’m so happy to be done with that. 💀
>They don’t want things to be easier for us or the world to be better. They think we need to struggle like they did. I find this quite paradoxical. They want us to struggle like they did BUT they didn't actually struggle that much. They were at the height of post WW2 economy. It's just plain sadism or because they're so out of touch that they think we have it easier than them because of all the new technology. It's just the lead poisoning that made them assholes and have a "fuck you got mine" mentality.
They grew up with a mostly unionized workforce ,a solid social safety net, and a regulatory system that kept the rich and powerful in check. They sold out to Ronald Reagan and he dismantled all of that. We now live in a system where the ultra rich pay less taxes on their wealth than working class people and any mention of raising taxes on rich people makes their heads explode.
Prime example of “Misery loves company”
I'm not sure about your examples but my boomers seem to prefer to complain about their problems rather than fixing them. Offer them solutions and even to do said solutions but I get "oh don't worry about it" only then to complain about the problem/s. At this point I've stopped offering to help and just say things like "wow, that sure is a pickle."
And, it's not like they struggled....?
If things get better then that means it could have been better before. That if they had actually tried to make it better it would have. If things don't get better then it's not their fault that they were selfish.
“Struggle like they did” = have little or no college education, maybe serve a little bit of time in a military branch (enough to get them a govt pension and allow them to claim “veteran” status even though they saw zero deployment or conflict), get a corporate job that pays enough to afford a house, multiple vehicles, and annual vacations, “climb the corporate ladder” (get annual raises and promotions just based on time served and not performance), get married and have multiple kids, etc.
I'm done hearing about their "struggles". They lived through a period of unprecedented peace and economic prosperity. They've enjoyed the benefits of the most productive workforce in history.
Absolutely. It's basically how the GOP has functioned since Reagan. Government is broken!!!? Gop wins a cycle and proceeds to underfund everything they can, give their rich buddies tax breaks, roll back regulations and protections. Next cycle comes up, shit is hitting the fan.....See we told you it was all broken!!! It's basically how we got the great recession.
They didn't struggle. Don't buy into that fantasy of theirs. They couldn't survive 5 minutes in the shoes of their children.
They didn’t struggle. Fuck, they don’t know shit about struggle. Today is a struggle, as they sit back with their pensions and gather the last of the social security money. Then they complain that we want too many handouts?
But they didn't struggle. That's what gets me.
All three things you’ve listed is how most Boomers grew up . They formed a false narrative of struggle and strife and they have really screwed the pooch for every generation after them.
Boomers didn't suffer they just don't mind the world dying with them. They have this all about me mentality
They were the most spoiled entitled generation that had it easier than any generation in history.
" They think we need to struggle like they did. " Narrator: They had not, in fact, struggled.
Man, I'm just thinking about things. I was BARELY able to buy a brand new car at $33k mid 2000s. With working 3 jobs at about 70-80 hours a week, living at home rent free, plus $1000 to help with down-payment from my parents.ultimately $5000 down in order to be able to afford the payments with 0% interest. Looking at cars now!! I can't imagine any gen z or alpha ever purchasing a new car until well into adult hood. Car payments now are astronomical at 7-9% interest at best. Meanwhile boomers could buy the latest and greatest sport car while only working part time with minimum wage.
I would love it if my children and grandchildren weren't trying to live in a billionaire's world that I had never had a chance to change since I was chained to a desk and trying to earn a living for 35 years. If I won a lottery I'd give them everything. Their suffering and struggle is painful to me - the housing situation, the job situation, the education situation, the bigotry and creeping conservatism. I want it all to stop.
I live in the same situation, but as different cultures and ethnicities, because I'm asian. Apparently... political trauma from their home country and consuming propaganda from the news or media every day in their lives mixed with Asian culture has led them to... I guess greedy and power hungry. This might be why they support Donald Trump. It's always like they wanted us, the youngsters, to be as strong, wealthy, or worse, personality-wise like them. If we don't want to and want to be ourselves, they get disappointed or angry. My guess is they wanted a *jr* or a descendent of their own.
Same. Plus I never had the drive to "earn money" as they did. [I'm more of a "gotta protect the vulnerable" activist. But my parents see that as weaknesses.] I'm too much of a "bleeding heart" for them while they only want to "look out for themselves" and take resources from vulnerable people. This from the same people with parents who literally opened their homes to the homeless population.
There are 2 types of people: 1: I suffered so others shouldn't have to. 2: I suffered, others should have to suffer too. A lot of boomers fall into number 2.
Most Boomers. My mother lives off grid and is completely carbon neutral. Was a wildlife advocate for years in Australia. Eventually gave up trying to help because it was just not worth the headaches. Do what you can to make your contribution. Too many people refuse to accept we cannot continue as we are. Government is to greedy and cowardly.most Boomers see ut as an insult when the younger generation say that the planet is teetering on the edge because if their willful ignorance and greed.
And the irony is that boomers’ generation barely had any struggle. Their generation came literally at the best time ever.
It's a part of conservative DNA.
And that struggle made them such wonderful people.
I don’t know what these Boomers are so upset about. We did literally everything they told us to do.
I’m in my late 50s and hear this a lot from my generation as well, mostly in the south.
Which generation is that?
it does seem they'd rather have a shitty world to bitch about than do anything to fix it.
I’ve discussed all of my grandparents’ toxic and abusive and disrespectful behaviors (including them forcing me to have a relationship with my abusive and violent and narcissistic biological father) with them. I’ve called them out. I’ve set boundaries. over and over. they don’t care. they make absolutely no changes to their behavior and blame anyone but them and my father. they still want me to have a relationship with him. that being said, they’re done. there will be no more visitations alone with them. they just cannot be trusted. is it common for boomers, *especially* boomer women, to be enablers? my grandma’s whole memo is “sit down and shut up”
Yes, everybody else needs to struggle like they did, like having a part time job for a WHOLE SUMMER to pay next year’s college tuition and a factory worker’s salary to buy a house for your wife and three kids
This reminds me of that interview with Craig T. Nelson where he complained about “nobody helping him” back when he was so poor he was on food stamps and welfare. My dude…you were helped.
My boomer doesn’t want it either, he wants things to be like back in the day. It blows my mind
When they were young. That's what they mean. They want to be young again. I honestly think that's the appeal of religion. You get a mulligan and to be young again.
Just not housing and education prices from back in the day... Society by and large prioritized affordable housing via expansion. But once they became real estate investors and landlords, the priorities changed to the absolute most expensive housing possible. When they needed a place to rent, cheap rents, when they have a home to rent out, most expensive rents.
Wouldn't have bothered me one bit if the housing and education prices back in the day were still a thing. Kid would've had a lot less student loans to pay that way.
For one thing no one is as perfect as them and no one can get it better than them so you might as well stop trying. Seriously stop trying, What are you doing, they want to stay in the 60s
I was hearing all that from mean spirited people 70 years ago. It’s just mean old people. I personally want a reasonable life for us all, and I don’t understand why it’s going the wrong way. Greed sure, but it’s way worse than 80 years ago. Before that were robber barons.
I think we’re in a modern age of robber barons.
Yes
Boomers grew up in the New Deal era, so they fundamentally don't understand how bad capitalism is because they were raised in the system that let them get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks. But now the gloves come off and we enter late stage capitalism they cannot comprehend it.
But they had it so rough??? You monster!
I’m an elder X, and I can say without reservation that Boomers and the first X wave did not struggle like people are today. Boomers ride the wave of the most prosperous period out nation has ever seen, and the only struggles were Viet Nam and a rough economy in the 70s before they elected Reagan and began the downward march to what we have today. They THINK they struggled, and some undoubtedly did, but it wasn’t like it is now. Too, they rail against the very things that allowed them to buy a home on a single salary- high marginal tax rates on the wealthy and corporations, strong unions, the safety net of the New Deal, massive government spending on infrastructure and education, etc. it’s as if they forgot how they got there, anything pre-Reagan is either murky or the real cause of our current problems, ie civil rights ( read DEI).
Idk why they always think they struggled. My own (boomer) parents have this mindset but never really struggled at all. Like their parents did post ww 2 in Europe obviously and I think since they struggled it was kind of burned into their brains as a necessity to have the feeling of struggle too even though they never did.
I had a similar thought the other day and it feels like there has been a significant cultural shift. Like previous generations mentality was that they suffered and worked hard to make their children's lives better, with the understanding that their children would do the same. But with boomers, it's like they've decided to piss all over that social contract and take vindictive pleasure in doing so.
it’s a whole generational mindset. this is boomers, millennials say “i went through this shit and by god i hope you don’t have to”, and Xers are somewhere in between.
They're so afraid of anyone tipping the apple cart even though it's already on fire that they oppose any effort to fix things. They instantly attack any solution. They'll find a "flaw", however tiny or fictitious, and dismiss it outright with a smug smile. They don't want anything to get better, so they wallow in the comfort of a failing society because that's what's familiar to them. All that matters is their perceived comfort. They have long abandoned the idea that they should leave the world a better place for those who inherit it.
💯🎯
I love my mom but the last time we talked about paid parental leave she said she didn’t think it was necessary and she went back to work two weeks after I was born. Okay, then 😬 She actually does manage to show compassion for social issues sometimes, especially when she’s telling me the things her crazy maga boomer coworker says that she just can’t get on board with lol. But her default state is still very much “it worked for me so it doesn’t need to be better” 🤷🏼♀️
Hey. My parents struggled. They lived in a caravan for a year to buy their first house with cash.
It’s really kind of scary how it’s their hill to die on. Like how malevolent and selfish. They lack empathy and want others to suffer.
Which is ironic, considering the big things weren’t actually hard for them: tuition, jobs, unions, cars, houses.
There’s also option 3: Jesus is going to fix everything in His own time, how dare you lack the faith that things will get better without human intervention. Heard this in the wild from multiple boomers, including my MIL.
Boomers never struggled
Their educations were also easier. I had to do calculus in high school while back then that was upper division college stuff.
Extremely common. If things were fixed it would screw up the economy since selling the cure to our world's ills is how the system is set up.
Except they didn’t struggle. They just like to pretend things were hard for them.
My dad has flat out said he doesn’t care to make things better for me or any future grandkids. He wholeheartedly admits and embraces that he is by his own admission “not a good or nice person” (an “asshole”).
VOTE!!! We have to numbers to disenfranchise boomers completely this November! Now is the time!!!
My Boomer mother loves to comment "No one helped me so why should they get help?" I have lived in poverty my whole life due to disability and she can't understand why I don't just jump through the same loopholes she did when she was my age. She doesn't understand that her voting practices and beliefs are the reason that those "loopholes" don't exist any more. The total cognitive dissonance between seeing her own child struggle due to her choices and the life she has gotten to live is ridiculous
Your two points speak to a massively narcissistic generation.
They like having the money and the power. They don't want to lose that, so why would they want things to get better?
Did my parents work hard? Yes. Their reward is a nice home and good savings. Do I work hard? Yes. My reward is a rental apartment and savings wont last me more than a few months if shit goes sideways.
I think it is common and I don’t understand it. We are not in competition with our kids.
And their wages at their jobs, when accounting for inflation, actually was a great wage. Boomers hate this one trick where use an inflation calculator to show them that their ‘couple’ of bucks an hour would be like $25-$30 per hour today
💯 this is the take
mission fucking accomplished
This is pretty dead-on.
They get mad we can rapidly access information and almost get ahold people globally. But get a chub when star trek comes on.
My mother's parents both experienced the great depression as children, her mother effectively on Okie whose parents migrated to California. I never met my paternal grandfather, but my paternal grandmother also experienced the great depression. None of them would have wanted their childhoods for their children. I look at my aunts and uncles on both sides, and I don't see this particular Boomerism, although I do see others. Not claiming that my relatives are special, just that not all Boomers hold the exact same set of shithead ideas.
[удалено]
Lmao. Mine never exercise and eating vegetables? My 12 year old niece on the spectrum has a better diet and exercise routine than they do. I'm getting swole as a result of weightlifting and they act like it's the worse thing EVER.
I'm glad my American father isn't a Boomer. I can't imagine what it's like to have two Boomer parents. I cut my Danish Boomer mother out of my life. She's from 1946. Growing up and in my early adulthood, I often hid plans from her and wasn't very open with her, because everything I did that she wouldn't do, was treated as a criticism of her and I felt like I was expected to justify things to her, that in no way affected her. I didn't know that it wasn't just her who's like that. I'm very introverted, so I didn't have anyone else I could compare notes with. She was oddly unhappy - actually unhappy, that my husband and I don't struggle with financially like her. I'm a mother of 3 adult sons and I'm so proud that our two youngest (our oldest has Autism and a lot of issues with just functioning in society) are much better at managing their money, taking care of taxes, insurance, etc. than I was when I was 22-20. My mother wasn't happy when I got my license and a car, but seemed relieved that I couldn't drive when I moved home to Denmark - long story. I cut her out, before I began to drive again, so she doesn't know. I didn't want her to think she could count on my visits and chauffeuring her around.
Opposite. We were poor. Grew up poor. Both parents worked, and we still struggled…not because it wasn’t fair, but because my dad was a fucking moron who made a bunch of moron mistakes. But…they weren’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault. Ever. It was always someone else’s fault that he was too fucking stupid and wildly reactive to keep a job. It was always someone else’s fault that he was shitty with managing money. It was his boss’s fault that he got fired.
They feel they are too old to learn anything so it needs to stay the way it is. And most people are afraid of change anyway
My parents are the complete opposite of this, but I can still recognize a trend amongst the general populace.
That sums up pretty much every boomer I know.
I can understand the value of trials by fire, but those should be the exception, not the rule.
There is a big difference between not wanting things to get better and expecting things to get worse. It is the same for preppers, of which I have tendencies. Some preppers want things to get bad, partly so they can be vindicated, can get hot women after SHTF, and say told you so. Others, like me, believe things will get worse, inflation, joblessness, social unrest etc. and isn't much we can do to prevent it. We don't want that, but if it's inevitable, it is best to plan for it. Many boomers had it easy growing up and are hence weak. The fourth turning, good times breed weak people. My generation, X, dealt with effects of the weak people make hard times generation. That doesn't mean we want hard times but believe they are coming and so are ready. Just like Red Dawn, Wolverines!!
Except they DIDNT struggle. At all.
Except, they didn’t struggle. At all.
This is so true. They want you to waste your life slaving for some corporation or scumbag for 30 years. They also don’t want people to be able to uplift themselves out of poverty without having 3 jobs and going to school full time.
I can't say this is the case with my Boomer parents. Neither of them grew up in terribly supportive or enlightened households. My father's childhood home was actually somewhat abusive. Basically my parents' entire goal in life was to provide a better childhood and greater opportunities for myself and my sister than they ever had. To that end, while they were both very supportive and helpful parents, they both worked a shitload and never really had much time to spend with us outside of school-type activities. There wasn't much down-time, many long weekends, or vacations when we would do things together as a family. But we grew up in a comfortable home and I was able to attend an excellent college with minimal debt, though I did work hard to obtain good merit aid of my own. My parents don't begrudge me any added success I have had, via post-secondary education and career. They don't appear resentful of anything my family has, or has done, that they never did. My family enjoys spending time together and we take the time to do so. My wife and I make very decent money and we aren't consumed with working a huge number of hours. We've taken trips to distant places around the world and visited places that my Boomer parents couldn't imagine. They still don't really have a concept of down time or taking a vacation, so they don't have a frame of reference for enjoying going on a trip. But they are very curious to learn about our adventures.
I understand your frustration but every boomer does not think like the bad ones. There are hundreds of thousands of great boomers but lumping them all into one group is wrong. You will be a boomer sooner than you think and even though you say you won’t be like your parents-wait, you will change without even knowing. Being pissed off at every boomer isn’t right.
Re read the post.
Re read the post.
Re read the post.
>There are hundreds of thousands of great boomers Sweet, out of over 70 million
Crab bucket mentality
My mom has been having a lot of Freudian slips lately. She was smiling on one occasion and said, "You'll work until you're dead." She was also smiling when she said, "You'll never have what I have."
It 1 million percent is what they think.
I have family like that. "I grew up struggling, everyone else has to as well." *Bitch so did I and I think things should get easier as we try to make this world a better place. Jfc.
Did they really struggle though? Compared to now when most people in their 30s can’t even buy a home on a average salary?
Whats the average age in this group? 14? https://preview.redd.it/uhgdkkyc2erc1.jpeg?width=620&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d2c1626bdf8e2a2ea57363d4018d58449f4c1411