March 20, 2020

"It’s a normal part of the life cycle for adult children to start parenting their parents. This generational role reversal may be a prelude to the demographic shift to come..."

"... as baby boomers age out of late-late 'middle age' and are forced to relinquish their invincibility, while their children take on the burdens of caring for elderly—yes, elderly—parents. But the pandemic has pressed the issue, putting many people in their thirties and forties in the tense new role of protectors and even scolds. It’s a twisted inverse of the generation gap of the sixties, when young boomers screamed across the table at their parents about Vietnam—except that now we’re telling ours not to leave their homes. The literary agent Lucy Carson pleaded on Twitter, 'Best advice for convincing a diabetic boomer parent to stop commuting into the city? Rage-sobbing into the phone isn’t helping my cause.' At Vogue, Molly Jong-Fast wrote about a similar dynamic with her 'fabulous feminist mother,' the generation-chronicling author Erica Jong. 'I know everyone is going to get mad at me, but this is not about your conflicted feelings about growing older,' Jong-Fast wrote.... A journalist couldn’t convince her parents to ditch their theatre tickets, until the theatre closed and they had no choice.... The writer Robin Wasserman reasoned, 'My theory is that coming of age at the height of the Cold War/nuclear panic inculcated a faith that no matter how scary things look, the Bad Thing never actually happens.'"

From "Convincing Boomer Parents to Take the Coronavirus Seriously" by Michael Schulman (in The New Yorker).

29 comments:

stevew said...

This is going on with my MIL. She's 88 yrs and we're in our early 60's. It's been the case for a while now, though not 25 years or so. Our kids, in their mid-30's, aren't doing this - yet. These days we pretty much agree on the things to do and not do. Mrs. stevew and I are healthy, without medical conditions. If that changes I'm confident we'll be getting advice, especially from our daughter.

Wilbur said...

"My theory is that coming of age at the height of the Cold War/nuclear panic inculcated a faith that no matter how scary things look, the Bad Thing never actually happens."

So says Robin Wasserman, born in 1978. When you theorize based upon things of which you know nothing, you sound like a fool.

rehajm said...

Malcom Gladwell talks about Londoners who survived the Blitz and how the bombings would come and after they were over immediately go on with their lives, shopping etc.

So why were Londoners unfazed by the Blitz? Because forty thousand deaths and forty six thousand injuries spread across a metropolitan area of more than eight million people means there are many more remote misses who were emboldened by the experience of being bombed than there were near misses who were traumatized by it...we are also prone to be afraid of being afraid and the conquering of fear produces exhilaration...

The Vault Dweller said...

So says Robin Wasserman, born in 1978. When you theorize based upon things of which you know nothing, you sound like a fool.

I'm not sure when the exact cutoff is, but every Baby-Boomer still alive, has lived at least 60+ years, where no matter what risk they too, what danger they were in, or what choice they made they are still alive to talk about it. That length of seemingly concurrent data can lead some people to, at least emotionally, be prone to come to the wrong conclusion on risks and personal health.

BarrySanders20 said...

Maybe these aging parents have developed wisdom along the way and do not fear death so much that they refuse to live. Maybe they have retained faith in God or Christ and are confident that there is everlasting life after this mortal existence. Or maybe they are just stubborn by nature and don’t believe the hype. To each his own. Not everyone thinks this is the end of the world, but if it is, even after taking reasonable precaution with some distancing and diligent hand washing, they might be ok with it since living in fear is for losers.

TerriW said...


There was a tweet being widely passed around a few days ago that said something like "in an unsettling reversal of my teenage years, I'm now yelling at my parents for going out."

Big Mike said...

... living in fear is for losers.

Damned right!

Lurker21 said...

The writer Robin Wasserman reasoned, 'My theory is that coming of age at the height of the Cold War/nuclear panic inculcated a faith that no matter how scary things look, the Bad Thing never actually happens.'

That is worth as much and as little as anybody else's theory.

Old people get stuck in their ways and don't want to change. It was like that with Americans who went through the Great Depression and the World Wars. It's like that with people in other countries who really have seen the worst. Those who have truly lived through horrors, may not take the current crisis as seriously as other people. Such reactions vary from person to person.

If complacency has anything to do with it, it's a national and not a generational characteristic. Considered over the course of their whole lives, I don't think that Boomers will be shown to be more complacent or overconfident than subsequent generations. Think of the now-famous post-millennial Brody Sluder in his backwards baseball cap, partying in Miami right now. But old people in China who have lived through the worst of times are as likely to be pig-headed and resistant to change as American boomers who were spared such experiences.

rhhardin said...

The old are indifferent to death but not their simple pleasures.

Jeff Brokaw said...

“Take it seriously” means take necessary precautions based on your risk group, and then go about your life.

I can’t be the only one noticing that much of this kind of “you need to take it more seriously” talk is better explained as “you need to live in fear and panic 24x7”.

Nope. That’s no way to live your life. So many Americans are acting as if they are convinced we are better off being ordered around by our various levels of government on the pretext that it’s for the greater good.

Lucien said...

I realize that many people may feel powerless in the current COVID19 unpleasantness; but trying to boss other people around “for their own good” is not the best way to deal with that feeling.

Try just worrying about yourself, and leave the rest of us alone.

Roger Sweeny said...

A journalist couldn’t convince her parents to ditch their theatre tickets, until the theatre closed and they had no choice.... The writer Robin Wasserman reasoned, 'My theory is that coming of age at the height of the Cold War/nuclear panic inculcated a faith that no matter how scary things look, the Bad Thing never actually happens.'"

I think it goes much deeper, and earlier, than that. We (the Boomers) grew up indulged (not the same as spoiled!) by our parents, who did not want us to go through what they had: the Depression and World War II. We were given to expect constant progress and increasing prosperity. And we saw it every day. Television! Davy Crockett lunch boxes! It was easy to think--if only subconsciously--that the world was made for us, not us for the world.

Howard said...

you people who are constantly talking about fear and panic are the ones that are trying to spread fear and panic about the fake news fear and panic. If it wasn't for your extreme impotence that might actually be damaging other than just humorous

narciso said...

molly jong fast, who doesn't understand federalism, yes i'd take her advice,

Eleanor said...

The school has convinced my 8 year old granddaughter if she comes near me right now, she's going to kill me. I'd rather die from coronavirus because I had the joy of having her a close part of my life than have her scared all of the time. She Facetimes me every morning to make sure I made it through the night. This isn't living. It's not that I don't take this thing seriously. I just don't think living locked up all day is worth it.

David-2 said...

Some of us old fart boomers grew up differently than the current younger generations. We walked to elementary school by ourselves. We played ball in the street. We stayed out on our own until dinner time. We traded food at lunch time. We rode our bikes all over the damn place. We left home after high school as soon as we possibly could, and didn't go back.

Neither we, nor our parents, were not afraid of our getting kidnapped by strangers off the street, even though it happened more often back then. Neither we, nor our parents, thought the parents should call up our college professor or high-school teacher to complain that he was grading too harshly.

It might be the case that some of us have a certain resilience, a way to independently evaluate competing claims of impending disaster, have a ruler of lived life experiences against which to measure the current events and claimed impending doom against what we've seen before.

Or, I don't know, maybe we haven't done as well as we thought. I for one think we screwed up the raising and education of subsequent generations pretty much completely, leading to this current panic among other disasters ... all with the best of intentions, of course ....

Yancey Ward said...

Old people have far fewer years left on the planet than the young. Kris Kristofferson had it right: freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

bagoh20 said...

"'My theory is that coming of age at the height of the Cold War/nuclear panic inculcated a faith that no matter how scary things look, the Bad Thing never actually happens.'"

Not just the cold war. None of the predicted disasters of our lifetime actually happened, except maybe the explosion of abortion and broken families. So if you have a lifetime of people crying "wolf", and no wolf ever shows up, the rational thing to do is be very skeptical of people crying wolf. This pandemic in the U.S. is gong to be another data point in the same column. Mind your elders. They know what you do not yet know.

Lurker21 said...

Roger Sweeny said...

I think it goes much deeper, and earlier, than that. We (the Boomers) grew up indulged (not the same as spoiled!) by our parents, who did not want us to go through what they had: the Depression and World War II.


Maybe, but are today's kids less protected and indulged than the Boomers were in their youth? It seems to me that such coddling is a national, not a generational characteristic. The Boomers grew up in a less competitive age, but not really in a softer, more indulgent one.

I notice that Jong-Fast and Wasserman are both x-ers, part of a generation that we are told grew up disillusioned and cynical, perhaps because of their parents' divorces and economic conditions (though since they were both born in 1978 they don't have any memories of the bleak Seventies).

Still, isn't it a mistake to take Erica Jong as typical of a generation or of anything? Is the article really about more than a few metropolitan madcap eccentrics who don't want to give up an evening at the theater?

Big Mike said...

The writer Robin Wasserman reasoned, 'My theory is that coming of age at the height of the Cold War/nuclear panic inculcated a faith that no matter how scary things look, the Bad Thing never actually happens.'

There.’s a bit of truth in that. We were told, endlessly, that someday the Cold War was bound to turn hot and, to quote Tom Lehrer, “We shall all go together when we go!”

We were going to run out of food and famine was going to stalk the world ! Hasn’t happened. Apparently isn’t going to, either.

We were past peak oil. Or are we? “We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.” Turns out we can. Just takes vision and technology.

Polio was going to leave my whole generation in iron lungs. Except it didn’t.

Avian flu, SARS, MERS, etc., etc., etc.

There’s been a FIERCE URGENCY over CO2 emissions for over thirty years. It’s always just ten years away (okay, sometimes it’s twelve years away, but disaster is always at least a decade out.

Over-hyping threats sells newspapers, gets eyeballs watching news broadcasts, and gets people to click on online opinion masquerading as facts. Pardon me, but it’s pretty easy to get cynical after a lifetime of this crap.

KellyM said...

As a 50 something Gen-Xer I really have a low tolerance for all this stuff. Every decade since I've been alive it's been one Chicken Little event after another: nuclear winter, ozone depletion, acid rain, global warming/climate change, etc. Always the same litany - ITEOTWAWKI.
We all knew it was bogus then and it's bogus now.

But, I'm working from home, minding my manners, and keeping myself busy. However, if the 40 year old anti-malaria drugs really show to be making inroads, the impulse to get on with things is going to be too strong to resist.

Bruce Hayden said...

Went through this last night. Kid and their fiancé are now calling me once a week to make sure that I am behaving, and avoiding the Wuhan Coronavirus. Duh. I was following it long before they were. Was stocked up with the essentials a month or better ago. Know more about it than either one, despite said fiancé having BS and MS in Bio. New house is right by the Mayo Clinic. They loved that. Don’t want us to move back to MT for the summer, since only hospital in the county is 20 miles away. They didn’t want to hear that the difference in population density is better than three orders of magnitude.

I get that they are concerned. I loved my parents too. But I remember walking across campus, when I was in college, looking over to Cheyenne Mountain, and where it’s north entrance would be, wondering what a nuclear attack would be like. It was either the #1 or #2 (I think that Begley has the other one) top military target in the world for the Soviets. Their only chance of taking out the target was massive overkill, but that very likely meant that a number of their warheads would be destroyed by their predecessors, in something called “fratricide”. Would I survive the first hit? It was line of sight to the probable impact site. Were we far enough away to survive the flash? How many flashes would we not see after the first (which would have blinded us, if looking that way) before the actual blast effects destroyed the campus, and all the buildings on it? Those were my thoughts daydreaming, while I walked to or from class. Unless my live-in GF was walking with me, and then my thoughts were elsewhere.

I have little doubt that many, if not most, Boomers have similar stories. But we knew we had it good, in comparison to our parents who had survived FDR’s Great Depression, his pushing us into WW II, and then the Korean War.

Meade said...

Point of fact: FDR was 5 years dead when the Korean War began.

gpm said...

>>Yancey Ward said...Kris Kristofferson had it right: freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

Didn't know that KK wrote the song, but Janis owned it. An apparent/supposed quote from KK:

“The first time I heard Janis Joplin’s version was right after she died. Paul Rothchild, her producer, asked me to stop by his office and listen to this thing she had cut. Afterwards, I walked all over L.A., just in tears. I couldn’t listen to the song without really breaking up."

--gpm

Nichevo said...


Howard said...
you people who are constantly talking about fear and panic are the ones that are trying to spread fear and panic about the fake news fear and panic. If it wasn't for your extreme impotence that might actually be damaging other than just humorous

3/20/20, 8:30 AM




I love you best when you're incoherent, Howie. Somehow, it fills a hole.



rhhardin said...
The old are indifferent to death but not their simple pleasures.

3/20/20, 6:46 AM


Don't know which dead white European male you're quoting this time but this is a lie. Look at all you geezers clinging to your ventilators. Get off my lifeboat! This is how you SHOULD be, but are not.

Bruce Hayden said...

@Meade - sorry. I can see how that would have been misleading. I intended to blame FDR for turning the recession he inherited into the Great Depression, as well as getting us into WW II, esp in Europe. I was born 3 months before your lovely wife, which was during the Truman Administration and the Korean War. The fault was in how I structured the sentence.

Rockport Conservative said...

I am way beyond Boomer age. My kids are the boomers. The daughter is getting this from her kids, the son with kids, not so much. His daughter is an MD so maybe she isn't as worried as some MD's in the family. One of them has totally freaked out. I feel for him.
Truth here, in the 80's you have lived your life and saving the life of a youngster is more important. At least to me. Not that I'm going to volunteer and fall on a sword, but that is my ethics call.

Meade said...

Bruce, not to worry. Surprised to find an inaccuracy in a post by a commenter I’ve come to rely on for generous and interesting information, I guess my inner pedant got triggered. Carry on, my friend.

Big Mike said...

@gpm, the story behind “Me and Bobby MaGee” is explained in Ken Burns’ recent homage to Country Music on PBS. Kristofferson was a young songwriter hanging around Nashville after abandoning a promising military career (he had served — as a helicopter pilot IIRC — in jVietam and a literature professor at West Point). A Nashville record producer named Fred Foster had a crush on a Music Row secretary/ receptionist named Barbara McKee but nicknamed “Bobbie” and he challenged the young songwriter to write a song about her. Kristofferson decided that he wanted to capture the feelings of Anthony Quinn’s character howling at the moon and stars at the end of “La Strada.” Kristofferson had misheard the name, so “McKee” became “McGee.” The song was originally recorded by Roger Miller but never got above #12 on the country charts. Then Janis Joplin’s version of the song came out.