Debunking this myth about Baby Boomers also reveals something about Gen Z

I've passed on old homemade customs to our children, such as cooking, baking, sewing by hand and machine. Also showed them how to macrame, cross-stitch, knitting and crochet. Sports such as Archery, swimming, ice and roller skating plus cycling. Son had opportunity at school to do driving, daughter didn't but she's waited until we got a car again. Unfortunately, it didn't come.

I've love an eclectic collection of music. One thing that happened at my kids secondary school way back. Daughter was first to come out, having a free period that day.

Having to wait for son to be done with his last period, I had a playlist on my phone. Of course, to pass the time, these two choir girls, me and daughter, began singing along the tunes. We were having a blast!

A bunch of kids came out and two met their parents.... That's when it got heavy lol! Them two shouted at their parents saying: "See I told you that her mother loves the same music we do... Why can't you be like that Mum?"

I wanted to disappear right there and then, I felt I was receiving daggers from their intense stare. Thankfully, it was the head teacher who settled the situation. "This Mrs loves music of any kind and that's wonderful how she bridges the generation gap. However, your parents aren't into that, still they should respect your choices..."

By then son came out, we left towards our car and never looked back. All I heard behind my back was: "Wow, that's a hip Mum!"

Oh dear... I felt so small...but both munchkins said: "Mummy, we're proud of you and you're very hip!" šŸ¤Ŗ
 
I don't like the way the article lumps free love, illegal drugs and being against the war in Vietnam altogether and obviously considers all three bad things.

I was against the war in Vietnam and took part in a few peace marches. It was well known among many college students at that time that McNamara thought it was impossible to win that war and some of us were horrified and sickened over our brothers and classmates being killed for no reason. We did support the troops. We supported the troops by trying to get them brought home alive.

I don't care what Gen Z thinks of that or whether or not they think I'm cool.
 

Supernatural said:
I've passed on old homemade customs to our children, such as cooking, baking, sewing by hand and machine. Also showed them how to macrame, cross-stitch, knitting and crochet. Sports such as Archery, swimming, ice and roller skating plus cycling.
Click to expand...
Good for you! That's great and I am sure they appreciate it.
Supernatural said:
both munchkins said: "Mummy, we're proud of you and you're very hip!"
Click to expand...
I am sure you are!
Della said:
I'm cool
Click to expand...
Of course you are!
 
I really don't buy the "generation" nonsense. I don't think that if you were born between date X and date Y, you have to think Z. People are born all the time, it doesn't make sense that people born between two arbitrary dates are going to feel and act all the same. I'm sure you never met anyone, who was born between 1946 and 1965, who did not think or feel exactly like you do;).
 
The first day of the 1968 Woodstock Festival was the 15th of August, which just happened to be MY 23rd Birthday. I was not there. Too busy making a living in Toronto, driving a 5 ton flat bed truck, delivering steel pipe to construction sites. My point is.............Where have all the Hippies GONE now ? Some of them are still visibly wearing their hair long, BUT with big bald spots, and those little threads tied around their wrists. The mind set is still there, but many have managed to meld into capitalists, who own stores that sell crap art and bagels. The University world is the place where they have settled into their "tenure nests ". JimB.
 
I didn't even hear about Woodstock until many months, maybe a year after it happened. As the article points out, only a sliver of us were there, yet it incorrectly defines a whole generation, most of whom weren't even old enough to drive. Had I known about it, I wouldn't have gone. I had a job that I could not leave.

On Vietnam, I thought it was a necessary idea at first, but that was due to a lack of information. As the article pointed out, a massive population shift turned against the war as the propaganda began to wear thin. Of course, there was still plenty of support for the war. There always is in a war, and there are always opposing viewpoints.

Drugs? Well, yes. There was an awakening to the world of drugs, but from what I hear, they are smoking stuff and sniffing stuff that I had never heard of back in my day, and there's more people doing it than ever. The Boomers hardly have a corner on that market.

The one most significant change for me during my lifetime as a Boomer, was the realization that so much of what the older generation taught me was bullshit. They were not necessarily at fault. They just didn't know what they were talking about on many issues that were holding them back from becoming real people.
 
Alligatorob said:
Don't you think most generations think that of their olders? I kind of suspect its human nature.
Click to expand...
I don't have enough evidence to know that for sure. It's possible. I just don't know. But come to think of it, I look at half the people my age, and think they don't know what they are talking about, so maybe the younger generation has figured out what took me a lifetime to realize.
 
Not one that likes being referred to as a "Boomer". Most of that fit that label as now used were on the East Coast. Historians analysis of recent generations before their time tend to get much wrong. A majority of Americans were not anti-war until the early 1970s and hated hippies that news media continually fed with the worst stories. The portrayal in Easy Rider was close to the truth. It is true some of those in each generation fit supposed characteristics but in all generations there are many that do not. Pigeonholing generational groups like that lacks wisdom and spews historical inaccuracy.
 
Iā€™m not a fan of having another label and being categorized . It took me a while to even realize I was a baby boomer with certain traits due to the year I was born and Iā€™ve got to admit, I find it somewhat hokey.

I donā€™t really know what Generation Z is but Iā€™m sure we have more in common with ALL people than not.
 
This whole thing about defining generations seems a lot like someone writing horoscopes. It's more fun than accurate, and that may be what keeps it going.
 
I reject one thing that was written. That was that young baby boomers at the time weren't so against the Vietnam War. That's bull. I was a teenager then. Even those of us that were not protesting, were against going to another country with a rifle, and murdering people that we didn't know or didn't have a problem with. Nor did we want to go to another country and see our fellow Americans die violently. For every young American man that enlisted, there were countless young Americans opposed to the war.

As we looked back through adult eyes (at least with me), we realized our anger should not have been directed towards the men who served our country and fought in Vietnam, but rather the people that got us in the war. Both political parties were guilty. My party got us in there, and the other party kept us in there.
 
Paladin1950 said:
As we looked back through adult eyes (at least with me), we realized our anger should not have been directed towards the men who served our country and fought in Vietnam, but rather the people that got us in the war. Both political parties were guilty. My party got us in there, and the other party kept us in there.
Click to expand...
I never understood the anger toward vets. They were mostly cannon fodder fulfilling the draft requirement that every young man had to spend two years in the service. It probably seems odd that that was a requirement at one time, especially in peace time, but it was the law. It was like paying taxes, and you just did it because it was required. I became eligible for the draft at the beginning of the war, before I even realized what an ugly thing it would become. But that same year, I had a knee operation that put me in convalescence for a year, and when I went to take the Army physical, they made me 4F. I was happy about that because I saw my military obligation as a two year waste of my life. Later, I was grateful when I understood the war was driven by the propaganda machine of politics, and a waste of so many other lives that went well beyond the expected two years of obligation and ended in termination by death.
 
Even those of us of the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation were anti-war. We avoided anything to do with war after WWI. Roosevelt wanted us to get into WWII right when Churchill began lobbying him to do so, but, he feared not being re-elected had he not listened to the voters. However, without liberal media outlets such as are in existence today, most were unaware of this. Once we were attacked, and Germany declaring war almost immediately thereafter on us, we had no choice. Most abhor war, but when mad men begin savagely taking on the world in the most possible ways to deprive us of our liberties, it becomes a different story fast. Each generation has to find its own way of getting its message across regarding all facets of life, and manage to come through.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top