Conscious Choice: Boomer-Angst!

September 2001

Boomer-Angst!

Midlife and beyond for the largest generation

by Jonn Salovaara and Bobbye Middendorf

Demographers, sociologists, politicians, and marketers have spent more than fifty years exploring, anticipating, and shaping the needs of the most-studied generational group on the planet. The Baby Boomers, 76 million people born in the U.S. between 1946 and 1964, make up roughly one third of the population. A highly capitalized group even from babyhood, Boomers transform the institutions that have come to dominate the social landscape as they traverse their life cycles. Their sheer volume and their purchasing power leave an indelible mark.

Beginning in a time of unprecedented prosperity and technological change, when our economic competitors lay in the ruins of World War II, the baby boom phenomenon is inseparable from American cultural history of the last fifty years. According to Allan Schnaiberg, professor of sociology at Northwestern University, this historical moment is critical to understanding the boom. "The real boom was in the economy," he says. "The economy was shifting from labor-based to capital/technological." As they multiplied and grew, Boomers were a driving force in this new economy. They spurred the growth of suburbs and the highways that went with them; forced the construction and expansion of schools and colleges; redefined media, marketing, and corporations; and eventually altered religious practice.

Just as institutions have irrevocably changed in each decade since the boom began, the changes continue as early wave Boomers move into their fifties. The political and cultural structures of middle age to elderhood are being revised accordingly. What will happen to the stock market as Boomers retire, selling their stocks? What about health issues in an aging society? Will the retirement of Boomers create dramatic new opportunities for younger workers, or will the economy require elders to work at least part-time? Retirement communities and housing needs are being reshaped (see "Sustainable Retirement"). Religious, cultural, and social institutions can anticipate a Boomer imprimatur.

In trying to understand the tendencies of this group, there’s been some inclination to generalize. But homogeneous is one thing Boomers are not. According to a 1999 research study and report from AARP (the group formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons), conducted by Roper-Starch, "With its members spanning nearly twenty years of life, Baby Boomers are represented by a wide range of life stages, life experiences, and life values. The temptation to generalize is likely driven by a compelling need to understand how this huge segment of society will shape the future. Yet, one of the key characteristics of the Baby Boom cohort is its diversity."

Schnaiberg also reminds us that the boom affected all socio-economic levels of society, not just the more affluent, which tend to receive the attention of journalists. Even when focusing on the affluent, journalists tend to lump the early part of the boom with the later, although the experience of the two segments is very different, as in the case of the Vietnam War.

Indeed, Dominic Pacyga, who teaches history at Columbia College in Chicago, sees Vietnam as a very substantial dividing line. He comments that "If you were [born in 1955 and thus the draft age of] 18 in 1973, when Vietnam ended, you were really the last of the baby boom generation." But since post-World War II parents did not stop giving birth in 1955, the second wave of the boom, for whom Vietnam was a less transcendent issue, gets lumped with those for whom Vietnam was a focal point upon entering adulthood. Using Vietnam as a way to understand the earlier part of the generation is complicated: Pacyga reminds us further that "For 80 percent of us, Vietnam was just something we were trying to avoid; most people didn’t serve in the army and most didn’t go to the protests. They just wanted to stay clear of the whole thing." Schnaiberg agrees, saying that when Northwestern closed down to allow for a protest against the bombing of Cambodia, "We (the faculty) knew that most of the students took the day off to go to the beach."

Nonetheless, according to Pacyga, Vietnam along with Nixon’s Watergate scandal did have a lasting impact on the Boomer generation: "We became cynical." The earliest wave of Boomer kids, who had grown up in the late forties and the fifties with images of American heroism and success in World War II, were badly disillusioned by the war in Vietnam. It was not that the Vietnam conflict was any more horrendous than the world wars, as Pacyga points out. It was that the horrors of this war were front page and television screen news in a graphic way that the horrors of the fighting in Europe and Japan, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb were not. Even boys who dreamed of fighting in a "good" war as their dads had, soon learned that Vietnam was not exactly the liberation of France.

Disillusionment deepened into cynicism when the lies of leaders became public knowledge. Sociologist Wade Clark Roof’s research indicates that the distrust growing out of early-wave (1946-1955) Boomers’ disillusionment with government and leadership in the decade of the sixties and the crucible of the Vietnam War led to Boomers’ distrust of institutions generally. Numerous social commentators note cynicism run rampant. Paul Rogat Loeb’s Soul of a Citizen is subtitled Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time. He too traces the current of cynicism back to Boomers’ experience with Vietnam, though he also points to the exceptional individuals from the sixties who championed a non-cynical approach to our communal life and left a legacy for those who wish to claim it today. For the later half of the baby boom, the cynicism has a more second-hand quality: they were too young to understand what was really going on but they imbibed the notion that government and society generally were suspect if not evil.

The travails of the Boomers — magnified by incessant media coverage — have changed society in profound ways. A useful way to think about the values of this group is in terms described by Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson in their recent book, The Cultural Creatives. The disillusionment occasioned by Vietnam and Watergate resulted in three distinct types of Boomers. Those who reacted to the disillusionment by clinging even more strongly to the WWII-era idealized America (My country, right or wrong) might fit into Ray and Anderson’s conservative "Traditionals" category. Those who gave in to cynicism and embraced materialism would be what Ray calls "Moderns" — their heyday was the Reagan period. Those who got over (or never gave in to) disillusionment and took up the legacy of working for peace, justice, and the environment — perhaps that’s you, dear readers — would be the "Cultural Creatives" of the book’s title. In fact, the values of Cultural Creatives, as explained by Ray and Anderson, dovetail with many of the social movements (civil rights, the environment, the women’s movement, among others) that were integral to the landscape of Boomers’ youth.

Culture and Spirit

Now, as Boomers move into the second half of life, such values may surface for more and more of them — values relating to spirit and wholeness, to giving back, to service. According to Mark Gerzon, author of Coming Into Our Own: Understanding the Adult Metamorphosis, "The phrase‘growing old’ suggests that the only thing that is happening is the passing of time and the deterioration of the body. I think something else is happening — a metamorphosis. Something happens in the human life cycle as we enter the second half; the spirit or soul in us asserts itself more powerfully, in a quest for wholeness."

"In the second half of life, you begin to rely increasingly on your internal counsel and less on the influences of the external world," agrees David Wolfe, author and consumer-behavior specialist in Reston, Virginia, in a recent Christian Science Monitor article. Whether the marketers will stand by as more Boomers pursue a quest for wholeness, or whether they commodify the process remains to be seen. If Boomers indeed do learn to maintain their own counsel, unswayed by the marketing machine that has dogged them for so long, they may create yet another first.

It’s far from impossible. Observes Mitch Anthony in The New Retirementality, "I have come to believe that the great and ultimate end of the New Retire Mentality is to emancipate our lives financially so that we can follow the lead of our working soul. This means doing work that gives our hands, our head, and our heart satisfaction. ...Freedom is the goal. Freedom to give is the ultimate goal."

The link between values, education, and technology isn’t always acknowledged. According to research by sociologist Roof, 85 percent of Boomers finished high school, 60 percent attended college (twice as many as in their parents’ generation) and 38 percent graduated from college. Schnaiberg reminds us that Boomers were responsible for a sea change in the kind of teaching that goes on at universities, with the introduction of multicultural awareness, beginning with Black and women’s studies. Roof points out another aspect of Boomers and education: "With the growth of science and technology, the Boomers — more so than any other generation — came to be deeply divided by level of education. Education is probably the best single predictor for a range of attitudes and values, such as racial tolerance,...egalitarian gender roles, alternative lifestyles, and tolerance of nonconformity of various kinds."

That same willingness to embrace what is unfamiliar continues to reshape education, with e-learning, distance learning, and continuing technical training a must-have for Boomers going forward. It may even be the link that connects the work world and retirement. According to Dan Pink, author of the recent book Free Agent Nation, interviewed in Fast Company magazine, "The U.S. labor force will stop growing in a dozen years or so. We’ll need workers, but we won’t be able to find them, even in Europe. Enter the e-tirees." That would be Boomers who can use electronic technology to continue working part-time even though "retired."

Generation E

In addition to valuing education, boomers — and those who have followed them — demonstrate an ongoing love affair with electronic media. Television did more than create the Elvis and Beatles phenomena, more than universalize the funeral of JFK, more than bring Vietnam or the first moon landing into the living room. Boomers grew up in front of the TV screen, constituting the audience that raised commercials to a peculiarly American art form. The whole world of Nielsen ratings, hours of viewing, short attention spans, sitcoms, million dollar minutes, and every TV fad from Dallas to reality TV was pioneered by Boomers. First their parents had the bucks, then they themselves, and then their kids: producers and advertisers follow the money. From the Beverly Hillbillies, to Pong and the first video games, to VCRs and DVDs, Boomers are the first generation defined by media. The movie and recording industries even turned Woodstock into a huge marketable commodity.

Today the Internet sector hopes Boomers will get hooked into buying online. Of course, PCs have accelerated all kinds of activities in addition to shopping. Cell phones, e-mail devices, and other electronic toys are ubiquitous, common — even in the car. Cultural Creative types are also finding the Internet and e-mail to be of use in connecting with the like-minded. Third Age Media is a San Francisco-based Internet media and membership company whose focus is exclusively on building community for the first wave of the Boomers, helping them "find value in the World Wide Web, exchange wisdom, and connect with others who share their passions and interests."

The Pocketbook Issues: Investments, Housing, Work, and Health

More sobering tonic to such unbridled Boomer boosterism is provided in Thorton Parker’s recent book, What If Boomers Can’t Retire? Parker analyzes the stock market all the way down to the inflated prices of growth stocks. He provides probing questions for Boomers to ask elected officials, investment advisors, and workplace benefits departments. Retirement wealth based on the Ponzi scheme of growth stocks is a house of cards that will tumble as Boomers try to cash in what Parker characterizes as "phantom wealth." As all the Boomers try and sell, there won’t be enough people to buy at inflated prices. Share prices fall, and the value of retirement portfolios plummets. Putting Social Security onto this same slippery slope would accelerate its fall instead of solving any problems, advises Parker. He recommends productive investments, rather than those whose sole goal is inflating share price with short term thinking.

Parker’s solution of "productive" investments, deposits that go toward community redevelopment or green investing, connects with the Boomer values that are slowly getting incorporated into the fabric of corporate responsibility. In fact, according to the Capital Missions Web site, "Social investing is the fastest growing segment of the investment industry and one in ten dollars is now invested with a social screen."

Nor is real estate immune from this law of supply and demand. Many Boomers’ wealth is tied up in their homes, and many are counting on a hefty sales price to help fund their future when they sell. But Parker reminds us that someone must be on the other end to buy.

With a projected 88 million people age 60 or over by 2030, reports Lew Sichelman in a recent United Features Syndicate column, the aging Boomers provide "the hottest market segment to hit the housing sector in decades." These Boomers may be willing to downsize, according to reports Sichelman garnered from AARP, but they are not interested in tiny apartments in group centers nor a future in "old age holding pens." The National Center for Seniors’ Housing Research is working to address the living requirements of this population as they begin a process of design competitions to elicit ongoing interest from architecture and design schools.

Other seniors find living space integrally tied in to community service, as reported in the new book, Hope Meadows by former Chicago Tribune national correspondent Wes Smith. Hope Meadows founder Brenda Eheart is building an intentional community in central Illinois on a decommissioned military base. Sixty elders gain a new lease on life as "foster grandparents" in a community where children, formerly relegated to the foster care system for the long term, find a nurturing place to grow up.

Some pundits see a workforce shortage, meaning that Boomers may have an opportunity to continue to contribute, and that both society and Boomers will benefit. Just a few short decades ago, Mitch Anthony reminds us, mandatory retirement was instituted after WWII to open opportunities for returning servicemen. For those who are lost after decades of work, contribution, and service, "retirement" can mean early death.

Whether retired or not, however, Boomers must, at some point, face mortality. For now, the generation is focusing on health rather than illness. Arguably the high percentage of Americans who use alternative medical modalities intersects directly with the Boomer cohort. But will Boomers’ adulation of a culture that idolizes youth allow them the space to develop as the wisdom elders society so desperately needs? Will it be metamorphosis, or lifts and liposuction on into the twilight? Here the crystal gets a little murky. Complex social, community, planetary, and family issues, many not broached here, are multiplied 76 million times. We are left with no easy answers, and barely a hint of a pathway forward. As Ray and Anderson point out in The Cultural Creatives, "Society is at a great tipping point." Each of the 76 million Boomers, choosing one at a time, to express his or her values, will determine which way our culture tips.

Jonn Salovaara and Bobbye Middendorf are Boomers who are regular contributors to Conscious Choice.

Resources

Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers (Harper San Francisco)

Mitch Anthony, The New Retirementality (Dearborn)

Thornton Parker, What If the Boomers Can’t Retire? (Berrett-Koehler)

Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson, The Cultural Creatives (Harmony Books)

Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation (Warner Books)

Mark Gerzon, Coming into Our Own (Delacourt)

Paul Rogat Loeb, Soul of a Citizen; Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time (St. Martins Press)

Baby Boomers Envision Their Retirement: An AARP Segmentation Analysis

Third Age

Hope Meadows

Administration of Aging of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

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