A MILLENNIAL’S VIEW OF BABY BOOMERS

Arch-nemeses in the battle for top of the pecking order?

By Kimberly Elliot

Kimberly Elliot, a millennial, is a marketing associate with a Toronto-based marketing agency.

Division is in vogue. And the wheels of generational war between baby boomers and millennials keep turning (yawn). Society would cast us as archnemeses in a battle for top of the pecking order, exploiting us for our supposed differences. But we’re not that different – let’s unpack why.

You’ve heard the stereotypes. Boomers: out of touch and old-school; unsympathetic enablers of the suite of existential issues younger generations face. Millennials: entitled, sheltered, lazy and directionless “snowfl akes”…Moving on.

Generalizations are harmful. They perpetuate bias and keep those wheels of division turning. If boomers are so awful then millennials must have been born innately as I know them to be – innovative, entrepreneurial and passionate activists. On the other hand, if the millennial stereotypes hold true then we are a sort of Frankenstein’s monster. And none of that makes sense.

A GENERATIONAL VACUUM

Boomers and millennials aren’t so different for the simple fact that no generation exists in a vacuum. The moral run-off of boomers assault on the statusquo in the 60s and 70s made their children into “everyday change makers”. And if we’re discussing pillars of identity – distrust of institutions, fi ghting for those both like and unlike ourselves – you couldn’t necessarily discern between our two generations.

In fact, boomers and millennials have had similar crosses to bear, just decades apart. Nuclear war

the existential threat to the former, climate change the latter – each generation’s answer: protest. The women’s and civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s are echoed in millennial contributions to “Me Too” and “Black Lives Matter”. If today’s gay pride parades are a form of protest and celebration of gay rights, let’s not forget that the first pride was not a parade, but a riot. And the modern environmental movement was started when Earth Day began in 1970 – after 20 million Americans demonstrated across their country.

RISING TO THE OCCASION

If you ask me, boomers rose to the occasions that called upon them. And then they grew up, got jobs, bought houses and had families. ‘Adulting’ as millennials call it. But if you look at how millennials approach activism and causes important to them today, boomers have effectively passed the torch – because the work is never truly done.

Generalizations are harmful. They perpetuate bias and keep those wheels of division turning.

Our succeeding generational movements have been propped up by the foundation laid, the values taught and the lessons handed down. But for the work of our parents and grandparents in their fight against the status quo, millennials would have insurmountable change to enact in a much different society. Or maybe not; because nothing would be as we now know it today.

Our succeeding generational movements have been propped up by the foundation laid, the values taught and the lessons handed down.

The only thing that should separate baby boomers and millennials are the 20 to 50 some-odd years between us. We’re more alike than we’re led to believe – because our values can’t be acutely defined by our birth year; and neither can our differences.

TAKE NOTE:

MILLENNIALS ARE EVERYDAY CHANGE MAKERS

https://casefoundation.org/blog/millennials-the-riseof-the-everyday-changemaker/

“FIRST PRIDE WAS A RIOT”

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/ pride-started-revolutionary-riots-advocates-pointmovement-s-radical-roots-n1221416

FIRST EARTH DAY IN 1970;

https://www.earthday.org/history/