Baby Boomers and Generational Conflict

217 Pages·2015·0.981 MB·English

by  Jennie Bristow (auth.)

Baby Boomers and Generational Conflict
Also by Jennie Bristow
PARENTING CULTURE STUDIES (with Ellie Lee, Charlotte Faircloth, and Jan Macvarish)
LICENSED TO HUG: HOW CHILD PROTECTION POLICIES ARE POISONING
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GENERATIONS AND DAMAGING THE
VOLUNTARY SECTOR (with Frank Furedi)
STANDING UP TO SUPERNANNY
Baby Boomers and
Generational Conflict
Jennie Bristow
Associate, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, University of Kent, UK
© Jennie Bristow 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-45472-0
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First published 2015 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-49799-7 ISBN 978-1-137-45473-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137454737
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Contents
List of Figures and Tables vi
Acknowledgements vii
Part I The Sociology of Generations
1 Introduction 3
2 Understanding Generations Historically 19
3 Mannheim’s ‘Problem of Generations’ Revisited 42
4 The Birth of the Sixties – Generations after the Second
World War 62
Part II The Construction of the Baby Boomers as a
Social Problem in Britain
5 The Cultural Script of the Baby Boomer Problem 85
6 The Boomers as an Economic Problem 115
7 The B oomers as a Cultural Problem 147
8 Conclusion – The Problem of Generations Today 183
Appendix: Study Design 191
Notes 193
Bibliography 195
Index 207
v
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
1.1 Total fertility rate, 1938–2004 9
1.2 Population pyramid for England and Wales, mid-2011 9
Table
5.1 What makes the Boomers happy also makes them bad 106
vi
Acknowledgements
My thanks go, above all, to Dr Ellie Lee and Professor Frank Furedi, who
personify the spirit of intellectual enquiry at its best. Their encourage-
ment and criticism has made conducting this research a thoroughly
rewarding experience, and I am fortunate to have two mentors who are
not only inspirational figures, but also great people. I am grateful to my
colleagues in Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR) at the
University of Kent for their help throughout my time as a postgraduate
student, and their commitment to providing an environment condu-
cive to, and passionate about, research.
I have benefited enormously from the work of the Centre for
Parenting Culture Studies (CPCS), and thanks to Charlotte Faircloth,
Jan Macvarish, and the many CPCS Associates who have shared their
own research and talked to me about mine. Thank you to the brilliant
Joanna Williams, for the thoughts, comments, and canteen lunches.
Outside of academia, many thanks go to Sally Millard, Beverley Marshall,
Jane Sandeman, and the other parents (and children) who have spent
their Easter holidays discussing parenting culture in very cold chalets.
Research is a lonely pursuit, and I am deeply grateful to my friends, old
and new, for encouraging me to do it while stopping me from disap-
pearing into it. They know who they are.
And then there is my family, without whom none of it would be
worthwhile. Thanks to Tony, for making sense of my ramblings and
being the love of my life. Thanks to my parents, and wider family, for
their continual love, interest, and support. Last but (of course) not least,
thanks to Emma and Annia, for being just who they are.
vii
Part I
The Sociology of G enerations
1
Introduction
In recent years, the Baby Boomer generation has become the subject
of numerous articles, books and policy debates. The Boomers of our
present-day imagination are personified, not by the earnest players of
Trivial Pursuit, who ‘grew up with the Beatles and television’ and ‘could
tell you how many series of Monty Python were made, which British folk
singer had a guitar labelled “This machine kills”, and Kookie Byrnes’s
trademark act of vanity on 77 Sunset Strip’ (Turner, 1986a, Times).
They are personified by the degenerate hedonists Patsy and Edina in
the cult BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous [Ab Fab]; the ‘stroppy, cocky,
randy epitome of rebellious Sixties youth’ Mick Jagger who, at 65, was
still staging sell-out tours (Morrison, 2008, Times); Tony Blair, the prime
minister who, when he was popular, brought us ‘Cool Britannia’ and
when he wasn’t, the Iraq war; and Bill Clinton, the US President sand-
wiched between two generations of George Bushes, who charmed and
scandalised in equal measure.
On an everyday level, the Boomers appear to be embodied in a ‘silver
tsunami’ (Bone, 2007, Times; Goldenberg, 2007, Guardian) of ‘young
olds’ who have just started retiring and threaten to live forever, alleg-
edly sending the country into never-ending debt as it struggles to pay
for spiralling costs of pensions, health and social care, and using their
considerable voting and purchasing power to skew markets and public
policy around their own interests. They are the ‘Sixties generation’
(Edmunds and Turner, 2002a, p. vii) who promised personal liberation,
cultural transformation, and eternal youth – until they hit retirement,
when everybody realised what a mess they had made of everything, and
what an enormous cohort they actually were.
So the story goes. But this story is a one-sided one, at best.
3