Changing Labels

 

Changing Labels
Pam Day

Recently the Baby Boomers have been getting an increasingly bad press with headlines such as ‘The Baby Boomers have stolen our jobs and our money!’ and the publication earlier this year of David Willets’ book ‘The Pinch; how the Baby Boomers Stole Their Children’s Future’.

I realised that I was uncertain of exactly who the Baby Boomers are and found that although there is a so-called first wave of Boomers, born between 1946 and 1954, the term is actually used to include all those who would currently be between 45 and 65 years old. (Any older and you are not a Boomer but a Pensioner – like it or not!) Looking round at the people I know who fall into this 45-65 age range, I see a full spectrum of economic, employment, relationship and health experiences and circumstances. So I find myself questioning how it can be possible to bring them under one collective label in this way.

The label Baby Boomer began as a positive description, applied to those born in a period when family life and societies were being re-built after a period of war and global turbulence. Now we are in the midst of another period of global turbulence and this time the label is being used mainly derogatively, representative of selfishness and the irresponsible, short-sighted squandering of resources. How things change!

Whatever one feels about the label ‘Baby Boomer’, I would suggest that those born in the later years of the period are likely to have a fundamentally different experience of ageing and ‘retirement’ in the UK than those born in the first years, and most certainly a different experience to that of their parents’ generation.

So perhaps it is time to abandon the label Baby Boomer and find a new way of viewing people. A survey carried out for Merrill Lynch in the US called ‘The New Retirement Survey’ found that when it came to retirement plans, dreams and preparedness the Baby Boomers five different groups emerged. They called these groups:

 Empowered Trailblazers
 Wealth-builders
 Leisure Lifers
 Anxious Idealists
 the Stretched and Stressed  !!

Food for thought … or just another label?

If you have a point of view on the above or wish to comment, we look forward to your response.

Pam joined Time and Experience as an individual member in 2009, becoming one of the founder members and also a member of the project Steering Group.