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Generational differences

B

This is a long article but I found the bits I have read so far by cherry picking really interesting 

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2026/mar/08/did-baby-boomers-eat-all-pies-john-lanchester-truth-generation-gap

especially this

'For one thing, generational divisions aren’t what they were. People my age and people my parents’ age wore different clothes, listened to different music, ate different food, lived differently and had totally different attitudes to questions of gender and sexuality. The defining experience of their youth was the second world war. The defining experience of ours was the fall of the Berlin Wall. They had different expectations about material comfort. Neither of my parents were brought up in houses with running water or electricity. The equivalent divides between generations we’re experiencing now are much smaller. We like the same clothes, music and food, and have a similar sense of what to expect from the basic material amenities of life. The one area where there is a particular division is around gender identity – and that, I think, is one reason that debate is particularly heated. It’s not that the two generations don’t agree about anything. It’s that we agree about pretty much everything else'

Parents

  • Thank you all for your replies which I have read with interest.

    As a member of the oldest generation present on this forum I have inevitably seen many major changes in society. 

    I wonder if any other generation present here has seen such drastic change. 

    I grew up without mobile phones, personal computers, Internet which have each transformed our daily lives.

    On a more mundane level supermarkets weren't very present when I was very young and my mother shopped in butchers, greengrocers and bakeries.

    Children played much more too outside in the street.

    We had a toilet at the end of the garden, coal fires and a bath in the kitchen with a geyser over.

    We didn't have a TV (or telephone) until the 1970s and black and white for a long time.

    I find the changes we have lived through quite astonishing especially how women's lives have thankfully been transformed.

  • in reply to B

    I read that article too and agree that we've lived through many changes, some good some bad. I also remember things like the huge fears of nuclear war and all the protest against cruise missiles, I was part of many protests.

    I'm 64 and class as a boomer, I don't feel like one though, by the time I grew up those 10 years or so older than me had gobbled up all the council houses and jobs, when I left school there was a lot of unemployment, then Thatcher decimated our industries and a whole class of people suddenly became a problematic underclass.

    I remember my granddad saying things like all pop music should be banned, my parents who'd missed out on the fifties cultural revolution were far more like my grand parents in atitudes than many of my friends parents who were 10 years or so younger.

    I remember things like the National Anthem being played when tv ended for the night and when films at the cinema ended, there was always someone who would try and stop anyone leaving during it.

    Now I'm the older generation, there are things I don't understand, like all the tech and social media stuff, but I wouldn't go as far as wanting them all banned as my grand parents did. In many things I have a very young attitude.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    I thibk there is a massive difference between early boomers and late boomers.

    In tge mid 70's the oil crisis had already put an end to the long boom period of before. By tbe late 70's the nihilism of punk had elbowed tbe hipies out if the way, tbough in the early 80's thefe will srill hippies, the oeace conviy and so on. 

    And in 1979 the Thatcher years came into being. 

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  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    I thibk there is a massive difference between early boomers and late boomers.

    In tge mid 70's the oil crisis had already put an end to the long boom period of before. By tbe late 70's the nihilism of punk had elbowed tbe hipies out if the way, tbough in the early 80's thefe will srill hippies, the oeace conviy and so on. 

    And in 1979 the Thatcher years came into being. 

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