Boomers

Abstract

Over their lifetimes, the age cohort called Boomers experienced a weirdly constructed narrative arc.In childhood, they were viewed as adorable.(Tom Wolfe said in 1990 that "myth is not too pompous a word for the aura that shone 'round about them.")But over their disparate and unequal lifetimes through the twenty-first century, the noun Boomers was applied to this group and intentionally politicized; the connotations markedly changed.Growing toward old age, they began to be treated as too numerous -a "tsunami" -and too expensive: unwanted and expendable.Originally, the term Baby Boomer denoted an unusually large group of children born after World War II in the US (1946)(1947)(1948)(1949)(1950)(1951)(1952)(1953)(1954)(1955)(1956)(1957)(1958)(1959)(1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964).Over nineteen years, seventy-six million were born; by 2012, nearly eleven million had died, leaving some 65.2 million survivors (Pollard and Scommegna).This demographic "bulge" became an influential social-scientific concept. 1 Of all the age-cohort names contrived since then (Gen X, Z, Millennials), Boomers alone had both a demographic anchor and an economic rationale.The name Boomers originally chimed with the rebounding postwar economy.Once the name existed, the media, commentators, marketeers, popular writers, and politicians came to treat a cohort that covers nineteen years of births as if it were homogeneous.This is nonsense empirically.Age cohorts include everyone, thus they are sociologically the most diverse.(Think only of the segmentation by gender, race, class, ethnicity, ableness, plus draft number, educational attainment, political attitudes.2 ) Events the members lived through "together" (Vietnam, elections, waning unionization, civil rights movements) were experienced very differently.The only thing they shared

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