Is it fair to say that every member of a generation behaves in the exact same way? No. Is it fair to say that a generation of people share certain characteristics? Yes. Each generation has a collective personality, which is shaped by the events of the time. For us, 9/11, the Credit Crunch and global warming defines who we are. For the Baby Boomers it was the post-war boom, which brought an explosion in population, unparalleled economic growth and a sea change in the way children were brought up.
Boomers are easy to identify. As of their birthday in 2010, they’ll be aged between 46 and 64.
BOOMING POPULATION
The demographic model of the UK population looks like the side profile of your average middle-aged man: skinny chest and legs, and a great big sagging belly and arse in the middle. The skinny upper torso is the ‘Silent Generation’, in other words our grandparents, who were born before 1946. The skinny legs at the bottom are Generation Debt, born after 1964. The great big muffin top in the middle is the Baby Boomer generation, a population explosion that followed the Second World War.
The outbreak of peace in 1945 brought a tidal wave of euphoria to our grandparents, millions of whom returned home from the war to start new families. In the early Fifties, the majority of young suburban wives fell pregnant, which resulted in a sharp rise in births during the post-war years – the Baby Boom. By the end of the Boom in 1964, a whopping 11 million babies had been born.
You might think that we could have benefited equally, but with the advent of the Pill, birth control was so cheap, easy and effective that millions of Boomers put off having children until much later. This explains why our generation is so small in comparison.
BOOMING OPPORTUNITY
Boomer children were born into a golden era of opportunity. Britain was passing from an era of austerity in the Fifties (rations on food and energy, low employment) to an age of affluence and security in the Sixties, as the government pumped millions of pounds into rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. Many industries had been nationalized in the late Forties and early Fifties, bringing the Bank of England, the telephone network, the airports, coal, gas, electricity, steel and transport into public ownership.
The new welfare state created in the late Forties brought an incredible sense of security to the country, promising to cover life’s risks ‘from the cradle to the grave’. The government built new schools and hospitals, provided rent-controlled housing, and handed out free education, free healthcare, unemployment benefit, sickness allowances, and pensions that you could actually live off.
In this public information film from 1948, Charley questions the need while the commentator explains how everyone in the UK will be protected from want, http://bit.ly/1948film .
With social security ticked off the to-do list, our parents set about raising the material standards of life. The international economy boomed, and Britain reached near full employment. Most of the jobs were for life. With so much opportunity Boomer teenagers grew up knowing that their prospects were better than their parents’ had ever been. Truly, the British population had never had it so good.
New household goods flooded the market, catering for every possible need, and the old utilitarian products of the post-war period gave way to a bewildering array of cheap, attractive plastic goods, most of which came from the United States, the promised land of consumerism.
The trend for previous generations was to save for new purchases, making do and mending old things before they splashed out on something new. But with cheap credit and a bewildering array of choice, the young Boomers threw the old values of thrift and saving out of the window. During the Sixties, consumer spending on household goods rose by 86 per cent and on motor cars and motor cycles by 333 per cent. The accessibility to desirable goods became so ubiquitous that Rab Butler, the Home Secretary in the early Sixties, boasted that ‘People are divided not so much between “haves” and “have-nots” as between “haves” and “have-mores”.’
Shopping was cheap but love was free. The sexual revolution allowed women to openly express themselves sexually for the first time, gays and lesbians started fighting for and winning their own rights, and the old rules of cohabitation and sex before marriage came tumbling down. Teenage Boomers of the Sixties had the incredible chance of living their twenties after the Pill and before AIDS; they were the first and last generation able to enjoy unlimited sex without any payback.
Work, social security, shopping and sex – it was all handed to Boomers on a plate. They were richer, freer and more secure than their parents or any generation before them. And it lasted so long that they began to take all this for granted as a way of life.
BOOMING SENSE OF SELF
Amidst all the opportunities of the Sixties, Boomer children were brought up with a new sense of self, and it was largely down to one book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock.
Before Spock, most parents brought up their children with tough love; babies were fed and put to sleep on a rigid schedule, and parents avoided picking up, kissing or hugging them whenever they cried. Giving in to a crying baby, it was thought, would only teach them to cry more. On the whole, the logic ran, it was better not to spoil, because this would prevent babies from becoming strong and morally minded citizens in a harsh world. But the Common Sense Book changed all that.
According to the Dr Spock model, scolding and condescending were out, and flexibility and affection were in. Children were individuals, argued Spock, and needed to be ‘smiled at, talked to, played with, fondled gently and lovingly’. Affection, as opposed to discipline, so he said, would make for happier and more productive lives.
Spock’s ideas resonated with parents of the Fifties and Sixties, who wanted to protect their children from the fear and deprivation that they suffered during the Second World War. The book sold over 50 million copies, outselling every other book except the Bible. Parents ditched the ‘one size fits all’ philosophy of child rearing and brought up their children less like citizens and more like individuals. Caught up in this new outpouring of affection, many parents took to pampering their baby’s every need, although Spock himself advised against it. ‘Parents who aren’t afraid to be firm when it is necessary,’ he said, ‘can get good results with either moderate strictness or moderate permissiveness.’
Citizens are loyal to authority. Individuals tend to rebel against it. And so the Boomer teens – confident, affluent and healthy – began to rebel against the system that had treated them so well, rallying in the streets for peace and love. The Right Wing was duly up in arms, labelling Spock as ‘The Father of Permissiveness’. Norman Vincent Peale, a powerful religious leader of the time, warned prophetically that the world was ‘paying the price of two generations that followed the Dr Spock baby plan of instant gratification of needs’.
