A lot of baby boomers are entering their seventh decade and many find themselves retired in a world that is unrecognizable compared to the world they grew up in. Boomers no doubt had a lot to be thankful for when they entered school. Jonas Salk had developed a vaccine for the terrifying disease Polio and Alexander Fleming discovered the miracle drug penicillin. Salk and Fleming were saints of the scientific community delivering a generation from the dark ages of opportunistic diseases that plagued all the generations before them. This was a good start for boomers and the world looked promising. Boomers can remember a time when families were intact with biological parents and brothers and sisters all sharing the same last name. It was a time when people took responsibility for their human interactions by getting married. It was an era when fractured families were the exception not the rule and the casualties caught up in that unfortunate circumstance were often the delinquents in the community. Up until the end of the 1950s marriage had been a cornerstone of the American experience and one of the crucial foundations supporting the grand experiment we call American Exceptionalism. Beginning in the 1960s some unfortunate events conspired to weaken those foundations. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson launched the Great Society with the War on Poverty. The Great Society and the War on Poverty were seen as extensions or continuations of Franklin Roosevelts New Deal by the administrators who created them which included academics, sociologists and politicians. Even in the face of the Great Depression families remained intact and the basic structure of American families continued to stay strong. But the war on poverty, confronted with a nineteen percent poverty rate in urban minority communities, targeted the American family for elimination by paying women to produce children out of wedlock and rewarding men for abandoning the responsibilities of fatherhood-it essentially embraced what was already happening and provided money to pay for it. Almost immediately in 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynahan, Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, chimed in with the Moynahan Report, a stark warning that paying citizens to produce children out of wedlock was a bad idea. Moynahan, a trained sociologist, feared that such a program would metastasize into all racial demographics and eventually lead to the replacement of fatherhood with a government check. A major provision in the benefit was that the man had to be out of the house. History has validated Moynahan with the emergence of a large and persistent underclass of unmarried dependents, illegitimate offspring and a lack of paternal parental role modeling that lays siege to our largest cities. The Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC) and its brethren lead to a suicidal cultural blight and was a major progenitor of the Black Lives Movement, an aftereffect of indoctrinated government dependence producing an embedded disregard for community and a violent hatred of law enforcement. Then in 1969 Governor Ronald Reagan of California signed the first no-fault divorce law which essentially meant that anyone could divorce their spouse for any reason or no reason. The rest of the states quickly followed suit which opened up a Pandoras Box of broken marriages that shattered the lives of children from one end of the country to the other. Incredibly, few experts raised any objections to this ill wind that was blowing no good across the American cultural landscape. In fact many sociologists and psychologists were touting no-fault divorce as some kind of new freedom for citizens to pursue self-fulfillment and self-gratification by dumping a boring spouse. The fact that it threw the family into instant indigence was of no concern-the government would take care of that. We now know and are witnessing to this day that the effect on children is toxic. Reagan later admitted it was the biggest mistake of his political career. Anyone who is confused about why there are gangs, crime and an upswing in heroin addiction among the young may want to take a long, hard look at the War on Poverty and the poisonous, ill-advised social engineering that took root in the 1960s. In 2014 the fiftieth anniversary of the War on Poverty came and went with little fanfare. Thats because it has been a failure end everyone knows it.
Boomer here that was raised on the Border where there were many illegals that did not speak English. Now I live in Indiana and it is like the border. That is change.
Sorry - heroin abuse was more rampant in the 20's than it is today. Crime is actually LOWER today than it was during the Reagan administration. Gangs have been around for over a hundred years and were very prevalent during prohibition and the years after WWII. Dumping a boring spouse is different than dumping an abusive spouse. Basically, your essay is merely a stroll down a rose-colored land that never really was ... sorry to burst your bubble.
So you are essentially arguing that the War on Poverty, abandoning the family structure and stranding children are a success?
I was born in 1964. Depending on the source, I'm either a very early Generation X or a very late baby boomer. As my Dad was a WW2 veteran I identify as a boomer. Anyway I realize the Millennial generation thinks boomers are the root of all evil, and had it easier than them...well college tuition was certainly more affordable. I'm on their side with that Why are boomers blamed as the worst generation America ever produced? I'm a boomer. I served. I have no children out of wedlock I've always had a job and paid my taxes. I hold the door for someone behind me regardles of age, gender. sexual preference, race or creed. Yet we're viewed as the most contemptible generation America has ever produced. It's all about "us," aparently and we created this awful situation for subsequent generations. Horse Hockey I say.
I'm a boomer who is willing to accept blame for being part of a fairly contemptible generation. I think we (as a generation) left the cupboard pretty bare.
I disagree. I think we left the cupboard too full. There is a disconnect between the concept of earning a living and being owed a living. I was born in 1947. I remember when doctors made house calls arriving with a bottomless black bag full of exotic instruments and lots of pills. No one had any kind of health insurance, you just paid the doctor out of your own pocket if you had the money. If you didn't, you paid him what you could when you could. He just lived down the street. I remember playing basketball with my cousin's sneakers that were three sizes too big because my parents couldn't afford to buy me my own. I never let anything like that happen to my kids. I worked two jobs if I had to. That might have been part of the problem.
I'm just a couple years younger than you and I remember pretty much the same with the docs and sneakers and such. On the other hand, we've both had plenty of boomer contemporaries who went off the deep end with sex, cocaine, rock'n roll, divorce, child abandonment, and materialism up the bunghole. The average size of a new house in the late 50s was less than 1000 sf. It's now over 3000 sf. A family had one car. Now the norm is three. Despite the fact that couples (if there are still couples out there) are having smaller families. That is US. My sons are scaling way back and they can afford not to.
The only thing I used to do that in retrospect was probably inconsiderate to future generations...was go for a cruise. Get in a car or on a motorcycle and just go with no destination in mind. Play the radio with the windows down listening to Golden Earring's "Radar Love" cranked to 11 (Spinal Tap reference); essentially being an obnoxious teen driver. Do kids go cruising any more? I don't see it so much. it's a waste of gasoline of course, a finite resource, and the loud music was purposely there to raise a ruckus... The cost of gasoline has dropped over the past year or so, but I'm betting Millennials never made a habit of going for a cruise. So my apologies to the younger generations for wasting a finite resource and emitting lots of carbon for no other reason than getting my kicks on Route 66.
My boy's first job out of school was at $90,000 which is about where I topped out. He drives a freakin' Honda Fit. I drive a Ford truck with a Belchfire 12. Even at 35-40mpg, he won't cruise. I think Millennials are getting away from cars and are more into chillin'.
My first "car" was an International Harvester Scout. You take the top off and the doors off similar to a Jeep, and the engine compartment was big enough to do some serious wrenching if you were a gear head, which I wasn't but I did my own oil changes and simpler things like replacing an alternator. Today's cars are computer controlled and require a skilled technician to service them for the most part. Amateur wrenching is not what it used to be. I don't even know if folks wax their cars anymore. I used to wash and hand wax my Scout, pull the top and doors off and go for a cruise with a few high school buddies, mainly looking for girls. I do think wrenching on and cruising in a freshly washed and waxed car is a lost art. Maybe the low rider culture still holds on to a bygone era of wasting a Saturday night.
In my area, wrenching belongs to the Hispanics these days. There are also a lot of car shows with old street rods but I'd bet the average age of the owners is in the 70s. Same with the motorcycle clubs. You just don't see Millennials on Harleys. Maybe on Vespas. hehe
