did the boomers have it all good?

Daisy, 65, had an interesting discussion with a young man aged about 20 working at a convenience store who moaned about his prospects and when she told him how harsh early life was for her generation, too, he agreed that growing up in post-war Britain must have been awful but maintained that at least we had progress to look forward to – his generation doesn't.

"I tried to explain to him that we had no idea, at the time, that the good times were coming – and that's why so many of us turned to nihilism, drugs, sex and rock n'roll to ease our pain," says Daisy, "but he wouldn't budge from his belief that we 'had it good' and that somehow it was our fault that his generation is suffering."

"Our personal circumstances differed, but my generation, the post-war boomers, were all programmed to live in fear of an atomic holocaust; reds were crawling under our beds; and those of us who could afford a TV were bombarded with daily horrors up until the Vietnam War ended in the 70s," says Daisy. "Still, like zombies, we started families, trudged to dreary jobs, listened to the Stones and never thought about tomorrow."

"As far as we were concerned, the world was stuffed," says Daisy. "Today was all that mattered, and when the good times did come, we were middle aged."

"We had no idea that Margaret Thatcher was coming and that council houses would be flogged off for a song, giving us a chance to get on the property ladder," says Daisy. "By then, our kids were grown up, our parents were retiring, marriages were breaking up left right and centre and there was lots of unemployment and social unrest going on; but I still remember the 80s as the best decade ever because I actually felt hopeful and prosperous for the first time in my life."

"I may be wrong, but I don't think that this young man is going to have to wait until he is in his forties, like most of my generation, to experience the good times," says Daisy. "In fact, when you think about it, he has already had the good times – being fortunate enough to have been growing up in the fantastic 90s with the tech revolution, all of the information we took a lifetime to find through old books available to him at the click of a mouse – and although he works at a convenience store, he owns a car. We were lucky if we could afford a scooter at his age.”

"Under the capitalist system, we really don't know what cyclical horror is going to hit us next - and maybe things are due to get worse this time around, just like they did for our parents," says Daisy. "But let's hope not, because I feel very sorry for the hell my parents went through – a great depression, a major war and everything we experienced as kids in the post-war period – and by the 80s, when the 'good times' came, they were too old to benefit, but at least they were cared for very well by the welfare state before it broke down."

redefining the boomers

Isobel is a retired early Boomer, born 1946, and she loathes being lumped in with mid and late Boomers believing that the difference between 1940s Boomers, 1950s Boomers and 1960s Boomers is so distinct that they should be given special categories over and above their demographic hump.

"We're more than a demographic hump," laughs Isobel. "I realize that the traditional notion of a generation covers 30 years, but now that Gen X (1965+) and Gen Y (1980+) are so much in the news, and in our faces, and have forced a fifteen year generation between themselves, it's ridiculous to call everyone born from 1946 to 1964 a Boomer."

"If we are to accept a fifteen year generation, then the generation before Gen X should start at 1950."

"At 62 I have absolutely nothing in common with a late Boomer of 44 -- and vice versa," says Isobel. "I believe that the Boomers, en masse, are so different -- for reasons I'll explain later -- that they should be split into three distinct waves."

"How about: Early Boomers for those born in the 1940s, Mid Boomers or Boom-Boomers for those born in the 1950s, and Late Boomers or Boom-Boom Boomers for those born in the 1960s?"

"Growing up in the 1950s the idea of distinct generations was alien to me -- and everyone else -- because back then families were huge (it was common to have as much as twenty years separating first and last children) and the age range of parents was massive."

"WW2 disrupted everybody's lives," explains Isobel. "After the war you not only had young parents starting a family but also older couples resuming their families as well as older couples marrying for the first time after their plans were disrupted by the war."

"At school, my friends had mothers born from 1900 to 1930 and fathers born much earlier," says Isobel. "That's a thirty year age range for parents -- you don't see that these days -- and everything in the early 1950s was still overshadowed by the previous war years."

"The early Boomers cannot be lumped into an homogenous blob with mid and late Boomers because those of us born in the 1940s were strongly influenced by the particularly diverse ages of our parents; the war years that preceded our birth; the miserable post-war period; and the music and culture that went with it."

"If the first seven years of our life determine our values for the rest of our lives, then by 1953 -- when I was seven -- I had a very different experience of life to that of a Boom-Boomer born in 1953 who turned seven in 1960, and a Boom-Boom-Boomer born in 1960 who turned seven in 1967."

"In terms of musical influence, that's Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and the Beatles respectively dominating the first seven years of our lives."

"Had it not been for the pill, introduced in the 1960s, the Baby Boom would have continued for decades," laughs Isobel. "And had it not been for the women's lib movement that went with it, women would still be second class citizens -- and we have the pre-Boomer generation, our courageous mothers, to thank for our freedoms."

"Yes, definitely, something did happen to define the post-ww2 generations," says Isobel. "It wasn't just the pill and women's lib -- it was also television."

"My generation, the early boomers, weren't parked in front of a television in childhood -- we read books, played board games and ran wild on the streets -- and I believe we are mentally richer and far more independent minded than mid and late Boomers because of this experience."

"In this respect, the early boomers are more like earlier generations," explains Isobel. “We weren't raised as infants to accept without question what a man in a box tells us."

"By the 1960s, with the pill, the large families and the huge age ranges of parents died out – and with this came affluence and the generational wars."

"If Gen X are the Pill babies and Gen Y are the Internet babies, then the mid and late Boomers are the TV babies."

"My generation, those born immediately after WWII, are postwar pre-TV babies and defy description really," sighs Isobel. "All I know is that we are nothing like mid and late Boomers and I resent the Boomer term being used to define us."