“It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I realized how utterly self centered and oblivious the boomer gen was.”
This is a very common GenX experience. And it’s all too typical that they call us “helicopter parents” because we don’t need the television to remind us that we have children at 10 PM every night. It’s also remarkable to see how little attention the Boomers pay their grandchildren, compared to how devoted our grandparents were to us.
A number of GenXers responded to this. A few samples:
- My Greatest Gen Grandmother was frugal to the end and made sure to leave something behind, she took each of us Grandkids to Disney World when it was our turn. She would drive the two hours every year for our birthdays. When she died, the boomer children squabbled over and squandered the inheritance in a few years. My Boomer Father has seen my 3 yr old son (I’m a late gen X and didn’t have kids until my early 40s) once in real life but goes to St Martin once or twice a year.. “spending the inheritance”. Guess which generation I strive to emulate?
- This has been my experience 100%. I let myself into an empty house from the time I was six years old, made myself something to eat, did my laundry, ironed my clothes (when I was a little older), and spent weeks alone starting at the age of eleven. I didn’t know I was being neglected, it was just my life. When my first daughter was born, I looked at her and felt overwhelming love and an awesome weight of responsibility. Over time, I came to realize the decisions that my boomer parents made. I decided to make different decisions. Not perfect ones always but as I get ready to send that daughter off to college, she knows that she is loved and will be supported by me and my wife of 28 years. I just told her today that she will graduate college with no debt and that my wife and I will be a support for her until we die. My kids barely know my parents (long-divorced) and my boomer in-laws are basically no help (with their golfing, vacations, active social lives etc.) They spend more than they make on two pensions and social security and with the complete lack of estate planning they have done, their three properties will no doubt have to be liquidated to pay their estate taxes. I used to be of the mindset of: “Generational labels were created to divide us.” That may be true in some ways, but the Boomer meme is real. And devastatingly accurate.
- “Helicopter parents” Translation: Seeing your children as valuable, worthy of protection and mentoring while not seeing your children as an anchor holding you back from more happy hour drinks, your next fling and getting your corvette stingray fully restored. My sister and I ironically or not got a small inheritance from my grandparents ( Greatest gen) and a bill for cremation from our parents (Boomers of course.) Although I was expecting nothing from anyone, it was a real blessing to know the grandparents were thinking of us long before they were gone.
Some Boomers responded as well, with all of the introspection and openness to criticism for which their g-g-generation is so well known.
- Boo-fucking hoo!! Let us all cry a fucking river of blood!😂Your world pass 18 is your responsibility. You think your life is hard because mean’ol boomer parents didn’t give you your way or no matter what they did you complain anyway? 😂😂😂 What pussy-asses we have in here. Let’s hear the scope of resentment towards me laughing at you fucking pussy-asses…. Come on pussies…. Let’s hear your weak ass responses and abomination of me.. If you complain, you’re a lazy fuck that depends on sympathy. 😂😂😂 I’m going to enjoy this…. Waiting.
- I believe your data was a result of limited sample size, because I’m a so-called, Baby Boomer, and I’m exactly the complete opposite of what you’re falsely claiming as fact and all the rest of the Baby Boomer’s I know are like me also. Your conclusion is nothing more than 🐴💩‼️
- In league with the enemy this fake issue is price for staying afloat, eh? The statues of men better than you being torn down because they were “bad men” is par to a non-existent division among our kind.
- Another entitled X needing that scapegoat for it’s lazy and unproductive life.