My website is a blog site geared towards the Baby Boomer generation. Baby Boomers are the people born between 1946 and 1964 in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Technically, the term is limited to these countries because of the high spike in birth rates that occurred in these countries during this time frame. Other countries, however, have also picked up this term when referring to people born during this same period.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 79.6 million U.S. residents were born between 1946 and 1964. This figure included approximately 76 million U.S. births plus the number of deaths that had occurred, plus the immigration numbers. It is safe to say that today, there are approximately 79 to 80 million people who can define themselves as Baby Boomers living in the United States. That’s a very huge number.
As a generation, Baby Boomers have been called a number of names during the various phases of our societal impact: the “love” generation, “flower children,” the “now” generation, the “me” generation, “yuppies,” “groupies,” “hippies,” and “hipsters,” just to name a few. The marketing and media industries love categorizing people. They appear to be over-simplifying our identity once again, narrowing it to a generalized category of middle-class, white, affluent, self-indulgent spenders turned spendthrifts who are swarming the retirement communities in groves. If you watch much TV you will notice the increasing amount of ads that are targeted to the “Sally Field” generation - ads for designer drugs, age-reducing creams, investment companies, and reverse mortgage loans. Most of these ads are geared towards seniors with money, Baby Boomers who own property and can afford to pay $120 for a jar of La Prairie Cellular, or who have a home worth re-mortgaging.
Unfortunately, giving a unified identity to any generational or societal group is denying the very diversity that makes up the generation, particularly one that grew from a number of revolutionary movements including: civil rights, the feminist movement, Black Power, Gay and Lesbian rights, Veterans rights, and a whole milieu of other social movements that impacted our lives. The media tends to suggest that all of us have similar upbringings and are well-educated, affluent, and are married with children. In addition, it also portrays the Baby Boomer generation as one unit which will suddenly fall upon the available resources, facilities and the Social Security System in one massive surge.
The fact is that there is a 19 year span from the early Baby Boomers to those who were born in 1964. This means that while some of us are grandparents, there are others of us who are still enrolling our children in preschool. While some of us have managed to financially secure our senior years, many Baby Boomers appear to have a net worth insufficient to meet basic retirement needs. While some of us were born and raised in a middle-class, Caucasian American neighborhood, immigrants now make up 12 percent of early Boomers and 15 percent of those born between 1956 to 1964. In addition, 12 percent of the Boomer generation is Black, almost 10 percent are Hispanic, and according to surveys conducted by the Human Rights Campaign, at least 5 percent of the U.S. population over age 18 are gay and lesbian.
The Baby Boomer generation is a diverse population of people facing their own unique set of circumstances, as well as other cultural, political, social and personal issues. One shoe, one solution, one category will not meet the needs for an entire generation. Planning for retirement, escalating health care costs, housing and estate planning are obviously issues facing today’s Baby Boomers. But also many of us are concerned with just making ends meet, today’s politics, education, spiritual journeys, the environment, global warming, prejudice, abuse, crime, travel plans, our children, our friends, our parents, what we eat, and the list goes on and on . . .
So please, don’t lump us all into one marketing strategy. Don’t assume that we all have expendable money. Don’t assume that we are all married with children. Don’t assume that we all want to take care of our elderly parents in health care facilities and not at home. Don’t assume that Baby Boomers are all white, or all born in America, or all educated. Don’t assume . . . . Baby Boomers represent the largest generation today and it is imperative that government, the corporate communities and the media recognize and support our unique differences as well as our common goals and struggles.
If you liked this article you can read more on my website at OverTheBoom.com
