Boomer emotional maturity

low.why
Off the top of my head:
• They were raised by parents traumatized by war and severe economic hardship, plus things like Jim Crow and the Holocaust. For perspective, consider that The Wizard of Oz, as in the color film with Judy Garland, is several years older than the holocaust.
• A lot of their mothers were captive as homemakers and encouraged to drug themselves with barbiturates and benzodiazepines
• Many were exposed liberally to lead, tobacco, and alcohol in utero and in childhood. It was not even known to be bad for you.
•Corporal punishment of children was widely tolerated and encouraged.
• They lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation at a moment's notice
• Their parents generation were largely thought of as having "saved the world" and they could never measure up
• Many of them came of age as Vietnam and the draft were happening, plus things like Kent state and civil rights; it was their 2020
• They lived in a cycle of unprecedented economic growth where basically you had to be an ungrateful loser if you weren't achieving and getting rich and keeping up with the Joneses
• They had no access to alternative media, and basically were the first generation to deal with TV/mass media brainwashing throughout their entire lifespan.
• Culture was more conservative on the whole and had less emphasis on things like boundaries and more emphasis on things like obeying your parents. Plus if you were gay you were essentially viewed the way pedophiles are today.
• Lots of people were trapped in abusive family dynamics that were essentially sanctioned by society. Stuff like being able to divorce your spouse without a judge's permission didn't start happening til 1975. Women had to have their husbands cosign bank accounts if they wanted them, as late as the 80s in some places.
• Broken home type situations, where there was alcoholism or domestic violence or whatever, were not society's or your local community's business. If stuff was bad at home it was the norm for the family to suffer in silence.
Don't get me wrong, as a millennial I have plenty of resentment for boomers. I think largely they are unaware how much US institutions have been set up unilaterly in their interests up to and including today, how much their standard of living and wealth comes from the depressed standard of living of their children's generation (think home values then vs. now, and whom that benefits), and they're not handling the transition into elderly very well (i.e. grandpa needs to give up the car keys but the car keys are the C-suite of companies and congress). Plus so many of us have worked in customer service to have them be fussy entitled brats to us. BUT, they had a lot working against them right from the start. When they are old and frail and no longer my boss/congressman/landlord I will actually feel very bad for them on the whole.reddit
Category:Age