In another timeline where boomers didn't destroy the housing market, didn't ignore climate change, and didn't continue to vote for regressive policies, maybe they'd have grandchildren.
At some point, us millennials need to also start taking that responsibility. Our oldest cohort is definitely at an age where we are starting to take over power. We won't be able to blame boomers for shit for long.
I'm sorry but the collapse of the housing market and lack of action against climate change has way more to do with the commodification/privitization of housing and energy (as well as labor exploitation in the case of fossil fuels) than some arbitrary generational definition.
Don't let yourself be convinced to blame fellow workers for the consequences of corporate and state action.
My point was that they've continually voted against their own interests (and against the interests of the rest of their class, which is why they now don't have grandchildren). I will continue to blame them for that at the very least, as they've continually proven that they enjoy the corporate and state inaction (because they've always voted to keep it up).
It should also be noted that this is a post about boomers, so of course people are going to bring them up in the comments.
You’re being charitable. You need to remind yourself though that pretty much all of them voted for Reagan because Carter had the audacity to say that we can fix a lot of problems by consuming less. This was a generation that fully believed that they could do a consumerism without end.
Young folks have been priced out of housing & healthcare, you can be fired from your job on a whim, food is astronomically expensive, the political climate is tense, your basic human rights could be rescinded at any time, the future of the planet is being murdered by shitty capitalists with 0 regard for human life....
I mean, who wouldn't want to bring a child into this world right now?
I'm hunting for a new job for the second time in less than a year, and I'm honestly a skilled professional with over 10 years of experience, with a lot of proof that I do great work. The labor market is stupid right now, just down right stupid. Full of executives searching for short term profits rather than anyone wanting to actually run a company well. That's alone is a huge reason, on top of everything else. I don't even know if I'll have stable employment, and that means I don't know if I'll have stable health insurance - so genuinely what are any actual incentives to my generation to have kids? Literally are there any beyond just "you have a kid now"
It's shit, right? I'm so sorry. I hope that stability comes to you very soon.
Reject tradition. You have no obligation to sacrifice your well-being because some old, out-of-touch fuckwads want something life-changing from you. Can't even afford groceries.
They can foster a child if they want one around so badly. Or go sit at a park. Or volunteer at the church nursery or something, ffs.
The parts of the world with the most population growth are generally also the poorest. Richer countries have fewer children, and within those countries richer people have fewer children.
I'm not saying that your concerns about your quality of life are invalid or that they aren't the reason you personally don't want children, but they don't explain this general phenomenon.
Once again Gen-X is ignored. It's Gen-X hitting grandparenting age.
My two kids probably won't be parents, and I'm ok with that. I want them to be happy more than I want to enjoy grandkids. Whatever they choose, I'll be happy with.
I felt pressure from Boomer parents to have kids, and I didn't want to do the same to my kids. That's a hard nope.
People are having kids later in life, and the youngest millennials are only ~29.
Millennials are predominantly the children of Boomers, so that’s why these two generations are basing singled out.
Gen-X were called the a Baby Bust generation for a reason; there aren’t enough of them around in order to swap population metrics compared to what came directly before and after.
Democrats have won the popular vote in the last seven of eight elections. If everyone struck this deal, I would expect to see significantly more grandkids than we're getting.
But also, states like California and New York and Massachusetts are seeing grandkid-gaps bigger than anything you'll find in Utah or Ohio or South Carolina. If conservatives are causing the problem, you would expect to see more Gen Alphas in the bluer states, wouldn't you?
The wealthier Boomers left behind millions of tiny little ladders specifically for their kids to climb.
The poorer Boomers died before hitting retirement age, or died in debt, or bankrupted themselves paying for end-of-life health care, or got scammed or otherwise denuded of their accumulated wealth.
Incidentally, its the wealthier Boomers who continue to set national policy from the board rooms and lobbying offices established by their own parents and grandparents. Meanwhile the poorer and more isolated Boomers are left to drown in their own poverty, ineffectually raging at the collapse of neighborhoods and the destitution of their pension funds and the deterioration of their suburban homes, unless their children and grandchildren are able to help them out at the end of their days.
Folks like to pretend this is one generation pitted against another. But its selection bias. The only members of the Boomer generation you hear from are the ones that came out on top. The rest have been killed in the wars or poisoned by industrial waste and lead pollution or foreclosed into homelessness to die on the streets or confined to digital communities like Facebook where they're drowned out by waves of misinformation accounts. Legions of dead Boomers never got to decide how the current generations live. They were burned up and thrown out, just like the current generation of bourgeois GenXers and Millennials and Zoomers plan to do with the rest of us.
They all came out on top. Even the poorest boomer right now today living in the street had a better shot at the American dream than all but the most lucky of youth right now.
Yes some fucked up or got screwed over but as a vast majority even these people supported and continue to support the same people who have put them there in the first place.
You're not wrong, but this is more of a class issue than a generational issue, although in this case they certainly intersect. My boomer parents don't have any money; they got screwed over by the 1% just like the rest of us.
Aww. Maybe if they didn’t spend their days treating their kids like their bank accounts and actually voted to help them afford things like housing and health care they’d have grandkids.
Instead they supported ghouls like trump and clinton instead of the guy who wanted to give everybody health care!
as someone who's parents' retirement plan was that - I absolutely agree. There's no way anyone should subject their kids to that level of guilt and stress.
even if I had kids my dad would be excluded from grandparenting due to the trump worship. don't need that kind of influence on the adult family members let alone kids.
That is, the kids they fucked over with their bullshit ideas and absolute misunderstanding of the world they created.
I'd love to be able to speak with my parents again, but (and I never thought I would ever say this, if you had asked me 10 years ago) I need to see some heads popping out of asses.
Boomers are 1946-1964. Definitely the older in the generation are in the great grandparent years, especially if they and their kids had kids young, but the younger boomers, especially if they and their kids had their first kids later, will be grandparents.
Correct. Boomers are 60 to 80 now. Them getting grandparents is pretty much over. X is 45 to 60, this is about them, they are in prime grandparents age.
I think the point is that boomers are now 60 to 80, and some of their their children are reaching their 40s without yet having kids, and the boomers are finally realizing it isn't gonna happen.
The "prime grandparenting age" part is just headline fluff.
I made a nextdoor account recently for my small business and one of the first posts I see is boomers decrying the closure of a small prop leaded plane toy airport closing to make way for apartments.
We have a new multi-block set of apartments going up in the suburb near me that they're doing the same about. It's going to ruin the town! It's going to lower property values! Won't someone think of the children?!
It was parking lots. It was just parking lots before. It was a place for commuters to drop their car and go into the city. I can't even with these people. The best part is that those apartments will probably bring in more tax revenue than their entire single-family subdivision!
This is kind of whatever... basically white boomer doomism as a result of later childbirth. White people, especially privileged white people, are definitely having less kids, but that's not true for everyone. My theory is that it's because if you grew up with white privilege, you expect to be able to give your child that same level of privilege. If you can't, it seems "impossible." If you grew up poor, you know that you just make it work (if you want to). Like, I grew up poor and am not white. The idea that I "need" to own a house to consider having children is hilarious to me. My parents still rent.
People are having kids. Most people who are younger than 30 are astounded to realize just how many women do have children -- according to Pew, 85% of Gen X women have children. Trends for millennial women are slightly lower but not much. The idea that this is some emergency is just dumb alarmism.
When they polled people aged 18-30 in the 90s and 2010s, and 2020s, the amount of people who said they would never have children is lower than now, but not by much. Some people change their mind and a significant majority of people do have children, especially if you're not white or Asian. There is a very real racial difference though, so I'm not just bringing that up for no reason.
Regardless, it's people's choice. Whenever I see articles like this, it always seems kinda "Great Replacement Theory" adjacent. In my head I always put (white) in the title. I.e., a smaller percentage of (white) baby boomers have grandchildren, and (white) boomers are (scared they're going to be replaced).
If you want more kids make a world where raising kids is easier, safer, and more affordable. Just stating "That's not open for debate" is such an idiotic non-answer to the problem of people not wanting to have kids. There are reason people feel this way. Fix those reasons and people might feel differently. Not me, but other people would.
I'll debate it. The world would be way better off with about 6 billion less people in the world.
Edit: My apologies. I am NOT advocating for eugenics, mass murder, or anything else. My thought of having fewer people is wishful thinking of what a better world would be like if we simply never got to 7 billion people in the first place.
No one needs to have kids ever, the world will be fine. That's not open for debate. Also, I deserve all the money, chocolate, and sex in the world, that's not open for debate. I like this game!
I mean, it clearly is. That's a big reason we're seeing conservative leap on the "No Abortions!" bandwagon. They're genuinely convinced of White Replacement Theory and have bought into this argument compelling women to have more children.
The orthodox pro-lifers are winning this fight by leveraging the military power of the state to compel pregnancy.
We need to learn to take care of the ones who are already here before we start making more. That's not open for debate.
Personally, I think the solution of "not enough kids" mirrors that of a law proposed decades ago: if a citizen votes in favor of going to war, they're automatically drafted should war be declared.
Republicans/Conservatives the world over want abortion banned, right? Cool, you vote to ban it, you're automatically added to a list to adopt children who cannot be aborted. The individual gets no say in when the adoption happens, they have no say in gender/ethnicity/etc, the government shows up, hands them a baby, and that's now their child. Government can do weekly/regular checks to ensure the child is being raised well enough and that the parent is home enough to watch them. And no limit on how many kids end up in your lap, either.
Oh, that doesn't work with your work schedule/life schedule/etc? Too bad, you wanted to save the unborn babies, now save them. You can't afford 13 newborns all at once? Sure sounds like a you problem, since you didn't support any of the things to make the lives of children better, like abortion/contraception/sex ed, childcare subsidies, school lunch programs, etc.
Problem solved: Conservative Christians get to save all the babies, people can still keep making them without fear of it hindering their lives, and the population continues to grow so the capitalist machine can be fed.
Seems like a personal choice. I can name plenty of people who are trying to have kids and can't. And more than a few who didn't try to have kids but got them anyway. I also see a lot of kids showing up in foster programs, homeless shelters, and prisons.
Perhaps the problem isn't that we don't have enough kids. Perhaps we're just doing a shit job of caring for the kids who already exist.