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Prevention and wellness, such mantras among middle-class baby boomers, are not lifestyle markers for poor people born between I946 and I964. References to generational identity are based on a belief that historical events exert a formative influence on world view and behavior. Images of Depressionera babies,the lost generation,the beat and x are indexed to world events and domestic conditions that presumably incubate caution, naivete, resistance, or cynicism among sizable demographic groups. Those born in the cold-war era, while perhaps most visibly marked by the doomsday dock and other conditions of their formative years, were also shaped by an internal factor that lurks below the level of conscious awareness. The label says it all: Baby boomers weren't just influenced by the news, we were the news. I grew up in the I95os in a multiethnic industrial town. Playmates weren't arranged by anxious parental conference on the telephone; anyone in search of friends just went outdoors and began to call out names. Soon doors up and down the block flew open; backyard games involving ten or more children were common. Playgrounds and swimming holes were always crowded. Kindergarten classes were so big that some were held in the high school basement. By the time I entered first grade, our town was making plans for the first major school-building project since the nineteenth century. When the polio vaccine came along, normal business was suspended as the school population lined up outside for inoculations, military-style. There were crowds at the movie theater, the soda shop, the corner on Friday nights. Gradually, we began to take command of ourselves as a collective physical presence. We didn't have to do anything; our sheer numbers caused adults to worry and scramble to keep ahead. The heady sense of power enjoyed by boomers during the I96os was partly a product of this visceral experience. At demonstrations and outdoor concerts, it was always evident that some participants were only marginally committed to the event at hand. Yet, while motives varied, everyone shared a subtle conviction that temperatures would rise and something would eventually happen as the result of our presence en masse. For a while, it truly seemed that the barriers of race and class that so constrained previous generations would simply be trampled underfoot. Had baby boomers harnessed this power instead of naively exploiting it, we might have moved much closer to the goals of social and economic justice that seemed tantalizingly within reach. Instead, those of us who were fortunate enough to receive good educations and the jobs that followed seemed to take this as our due, conflating generational power with personal entitlement. It is not at all surprising that younger people are worried and bitter about the economic, social, and environmental legacy we seem to be stockpiling for them. As a collective role model, middle-class baby boomers are most notable as avid consumers, stingy with tax dollars, and preoccupied with hoarding symbols of our success for one big bonfire of the vanities. We may work in diversified environments, but by and large we have voluntarily resegregated by race and class. Sadly, our generation had the best opportunity to live otherwise. There is a particular irony here for those of us who study aging. …
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