‘You’ve Got to Move With the Times’: 14 Baby Boomers on Their Generation and America Today

“I don’t think it’s what my parents went through,” one participant in Times Opinion’s latest focus group said of being in her 70s.

Last month, Times Opinion spoke with 14 baby boomers about their generation, younger generations and what has changed in their lifetimes economically, socially and politically.

In recent years, there has been a sharp discourse about how baby boomers have held on, as a generation, to power and money. (“The younger people think we’re going to deplete everything,” one participant said.)

But the biggest worry, as has been the case in many of our focus groups across different groups, was about long-term financial security.

For the people working, there was a feeling that employers don’t want to hire people in their 60s and a concern that the math just wouldn’t work out for them to retire anytime soon. And for the people who had retired, one worry reigned: not having saved enough to deal with the costs of living, illness and potential full-time long-term care. As one participant put it, “You don’t know how much time you have left, and you know what you have to spend.”

Some felt a few things had changed for the worse among younger people — that those generations expect things faster. But across the group, there was sympathy for how difficult the economy has become for those younger generations: how hard it is to buy a home, how insecure or temporary jobs are compared with those of previous generations, when some spent decades with a single company, and, above all, how much social media and phones have changed interpersonal connection in their lifetimes.

What does it mean to you to be a part of the baby boomer generation?

It means being self-reliant, independent, proud of my generation, can-do. And I’m still here.

It was a booming generation. That era was just simple times. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time to those days. People were kinder. I’m grateful to be a boomer.

Soldiers had come back from war, they started their families, and the country was doing well. You could have one person working, owning a house and supporting a family.

Do you think there are things that are unique about your generation, those who were born in that decade and a half after World War II, that make you different from the generations that came before or after?

It was just a simpler time. You went to the store, they wrote things down, and you paid them at the end of the week. You were able to walk home from school without your parents worrying that someone was going to snatch you off the street. There was no social media, nobody following you around with a camera all the time. We used to joke around that my neighborhood was like Camelot. We found out later a lot of things went on that we didn’t know about. But for the most part, I just think it was a simpler time.

I think you valued your friendships more. You had different relationships back then. Everybody knew everybody. That was great because it helped foster a lot of better communication and actionable things that we would do as groups of friends and people. So, yes, it was simpler, but we also grew up in a time of change. Think about the ’60s. We had a lot of change in our country. I think we’ve lost a lot of that in a way because we need the physical connection. We need to be able to see people face to face.

It was the time of the civil rights movement for us. Yes, there was camaraderie and an emphasis on the family, but there was also division. We had to fight quite a bit to have certain rights. Yes, it did bring us together as a community, but some people saw that negatively.

Everybody’s going to hate me for saying this, but I don’t feel like I am a baby boomer. Yes, I was a child during the ’50s and ’60s, but I might be different in the way that I embrace change. I embrace technology. I find that a lot of my friends who were born at the same exact time, they don’t see things like that. They think that all of this technology and the changes that have happened with it are not a good thing. They don’t want to be part of it. I do. I think I belong in the next generation because I really don’t subscribe to the things that I did as a kid. Yeah, it was a great life, but it doesn’t mean that I have to carry it with me for the rest of my life. You’ve got to move with the times. So I try to be more current, as best as I can. Sometimes the achy bones and the aches and pains stop me from doing a lot, but that’s how I feel.

What do you think younger generations understand or misunderstand about your generation? What do they get right and what do they get wrong?

Young people say, “Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about. That old stuff doesn’t apply now.” And it may be a different era, but it’s the same things. We’re experienced. We can help you so you don’t make the same mistakes that we made. Yes, you’re into technology, social media. Everything is fast-paced now, whereas slower-paced back then. But we can definitely assist you. But they just think we’re weird.

They aren’t necessarily getting us wrong. I just think they don’t appreciate us. They don’t feel that there’s any value. Basically, they think we’re old. Every time I have to ask for help doing something, I say, oh, God, they’re going to say, “Why don’t you know how to do this?” They want to do things at their own speed, in their own way. And let’s face it, the technology now has consumed their lives, so they don’t really have much recourse except to do things fast and in their own way, because those are the tools that they have now to live with.

The younger people think we’re going to deplete everything. We’re in the generation that everything is still there, like, if you worked hard, because we did work hard. We have some stuff in place. I think that they think they will have to work longer because of the baby boomers, because everything is going to be depleted. When we were young, we had fun. We had friends. We had relationships. Family was important. Family ate at home. I’m glad I’m part of that generation because younger people now don’t know that part, because everybody’s everywhere and nobody’s talking to anybody.

I feel proud to be a baby boomer. When I was younger and people my age were around, I looked at them with respect as an........

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