The Present: Get a Job!

We had changed the world in our youth, and now we had to live in it as adults. The June Cleaver model of the modern American housewife was very suddenly as archaic as parasols and hoop skirts. The feminist movement had created new model of educated, confident and self-sufficient women who were determined to be treated as equals. Equals in the workplace and equals in the home. Neither the women nor the men had a template for how to deal with this new social structure. All we had been taught were June and Ward and when the men began to hear those dreaded words, “Fix your own dinner,” marriages began to dissolve, and the divorce rate sky-rocketed. The Boomer Century will involve you in a fascinating debate on modern marriage between Eve Ensler of The Vagina Monologues fame, and Dr. Steven Nock of the University of Virginia’s Marriage Matters Project.

World class economists will discuss the evolution from a smokestack economy
(9 to 5, Monday through Friday) to the information age (24/7, 365), and from “guaranteed” pensions to 401(k)s.

And, of course, there is that dreaded “Me Generation” thing. It was here that I discovered a hint of Boomer chauvinism buried deep in my soul. I guess it’s all those shared formative experiences. Is the “Me Generation” a fair or unfair characterization of the Boomers? Experts argue both sides. Decide for yourselves.

Irrespective of our diversities, whether leaning to the left or to the right, Boomers do seem to have one thing in common. We generally have an aversion to rules. We tend to change things. In fact as this generational pig moved slowly through the python of social and political institutions, we have left absolutely nothing as we found it. Good thing or bad thing? Again, read what the experts have to say and decide for yourselves.

While we are united by our shared formative experiences, we share very little else. We were divided by the Vietnam War and have remained divided ever since.

There is no greater example of that truth than our first two Boomer presidents. We tend to vote 51% one way and 49% the other.

And now, the oldest of us are perched on the doorstep of retirement, and the youngest of us, the baby Baby Boomers, are looking at an empty nest, and all of us are wondering, what’s next? What is going to become of me…

When I'm Sixty-Four