Baby boomers have so embraced social media that a third of them derive more self-confidence from the number of online “friends” they have than from anything they’ve achieved in the “real” world and over their careers. In a recent poll, 29% of 49 to 68-year-olds rated their number of friends on social media as their key indicator of self-confidence; among 18 to 33-year-olds the figure was just 25%. (The Week)
This is not at all unexpected. I am not a baby boomer, so can be honest. The baby boomers led the charge against what they considered a stuffy, old fashioned culture that respected older people, manners, consideration for others, staying within the law (no drug taking), and valued the idea of marriage and someone at home to look after the children. They set about trashing it, effectively, crying “no war” (Vietnam) then having several and losing them. Yes, they were right to work for gender equality, but it was under their watch that the Western world took to neo-liberalism and deconstructionism and the “anything goes – nothing’s right and nothing’s wrong” attitude to life. Not a happy legacy. No wonder they sit their counting their electronic friends. There is little else to be proud of.
How significant might it be that the parents of the Baby Boomer generation were of the Greatest Generation which served in WWII? I
I would speculate that many who served in the Second World War returned with an attitude to their children very different from those of their more Victorian parents. So delighted were they to have survived that they relaxed their vigilance and paternal authority (which takes a lot of energy), and took a more indulgent view of parenting.*
I say “paternal” because it has usually been the role of the father to be a bit stern and distant. Now fathers seek to be friends with their children. Bad mistake. Make sure that the children are disciplined, and self- disciplined before you relax and seek friendship. Friendship must be based on mutual respect.
* I concede that this doesn’t explain the effects of the much more horrifying and destructive First World War, although that might have modified the High Victorian distant relationship between fathers and offspring.
Yes, I agree with your view that the psychological price exacted by WWII was paid for during the years after the war. The cataclysm would naturally affect attitudes towards one’s children during post-war decades when economies were more buoyant and the world looked rid of the worst evils.
Heaven only knows the residual damage caused to the Russian veterans who survived the charnel house of the Eastern Front–infinitely more costly than the European experience. As for the the toll of WWI, I think it may be many more decades before we fully understand that unrelieved horror’s psychological consequences.