Saturday, February 25, 2012

Will the baby boomers stand up for their children or throw us under the bus?

With the recent announcement that changes to the OAS won't be implemented until 2020, the burden is being passed from the baby boomers (whose demographic weight is cited as the cause of this alleged crisis) to their children.

Apart from the question of advisability (if the problem is the proportion of the population receiving OAS, this proportion will have shrunk by or shortly after 2020), I wonder if the baby boomers will object to or embrace policy that makes life harder for their children.

In general, people want a better life for their children - or at least not a worse life. No one cradles their brand new baby, all bundled up in a blanket and wearing an itty bitty hat, gazes adoringly into that scrunched up and confused little face and says "Look at you! You're going to have to work multiple jobs at once in constant contract hell until you're 80 just to scrape by, yes you are!" On top of that, the baby boomers tend to be more protective of their children than previous generations - this is, after all, the generation that invented helicopter parenting. On that basis, they sound like people who might object to policy that will worsen their children's quality of life.

On the other hand, the baby boomers are the generation who, to quote a source that I've forgotten but is clearly from the US, got the drinking age lowered to 18 when they were in college and raised back to 21 when their kids were in college. As a generation, they engaged in (or at least developed a reputation for engaging in) a drug-fuelled sexual revolution, and then when their kids get old enough to become interested in such things there's a war on drugs and abstinence-only sex "education".

So will they stand up for us or throw us under the bus? And, in making this decision, will they remember that we'll be picking out their nursing homes?

1 comment:

laura k said...

Why do I think I know the answer to that? With all the usual disclaimers for generalizations, I think of baby boomers as Generation I Me Mine.