Hello My Fellow Boomers!

This is the Boomer Nation! official blog.  You’ll find our latest issues handled, ideas shared, and thoughts on Boomer greatness/not-so-greatness (what we can be doing better…) revealed!

Let’s start with one item in the news right now, and one thought on Boomer greatness.

Boomers in the News

The Republican VP candidate, Sarah Palin is being hailed or excoriated  depending on your personal beliefs, (and in our best Boomer mode – extremes) for allowing her teenage child to get a pass on getting pregnant.

Teen pregnancy is on the rise again, after a decade-long decline.  Why that is can be debated until the cows-with-child come home, but one thing is clear: we Boomers are in charge of pretty much everything right now, so we have influenced this. 

When we considered teen pregnancy to be a social problem in the 1980’s – with teens-as-parents numbers going way up, welfare hand-outs going off the charts, and infant mortality reaching third-world proportions – we did what we do best; we rose up and changed the landscape.  Thus throughout the 90’s we saw positive changes in all the right indicators.

In this millennium, we’ve clearly found other things more troubling to handle, and welfare reform we thought would continue to mitigate the problem of teen pregnancy (which directly correlates to infant mortality, by the way…), so we’ve become less vigilant on this issue.  Also, it is the Boomers on the youngest end of our generational scale who are struggling with this dilemma, and the rest of us (i.e. the majority of Boomers today), being beyond our child-rearing years, have moved onto worry about age appropriate things, like will we ever be able to fully retire, and will Medicare still be going strong when we need it?!

So, Sarah Palin, a younger Boomer, personifies a combination of our generational values (that our children get to “do their own thing” and then decide what’s best for them), a “wilderness” sensibility (kind of that “old west” thinking that young parents are needed to maintain the stock, that 17 is plenty old enough to get started, and that in the hinterlands, one must expect such things to happen), and a lack of attention to the issue from her older counterparts – the mid and upper realms of her Boomer generation.

Is her daughter’s pregnancy in itself a problem or indication of moral ineptitude?  I believe not.  However, as a symbol of a nation, the mightiest on the planet, once again sinking to infant mortality rates seen in the third world, it is clearly something of which we cannot be proud, nor allow to continue.

Boomers, we are needed again on this issue.  Not to influence a Presidential election – but to make sure infant mortality goes back where it belongs; on the decline and to eventual extinction.  This is something we as a society have the remedies to – it is one of those completely preventable problems.

So let’s get to it.

Boomer Greatness

As I pulled out of my parking space in a local eatery, slowly I might add and good thing because I was able to stop quickly as a large gas guzzler with a young driver whizzed by me in search of the perfect spot, I had an epiphany: the tables had turned.

Gas-guzzler aside, that would’ve been me in my earlier years…impatient, going way too fast, feeling really good about my great driving because I could zoom around and do it well!  And I suddenly knew that I had far fewer accidents and other unpleasant vehicular experiences back then thanks to folks who were the age I am now, and were looking out for young cowgirls (and c-boys) behind the wheel…like me then.

My parking lot encounter wasn’t a near miss or anything else auto-dramatic; in fact, it was by all standards completely uneventful…a car pulling out slowly and stopping for another going a tad too fast, allowing it to pass before continuing on its way. 

What makes it memorable is that it gave me the opportunity to send my thanks out to the ozone to all those elders throughout my youth, who no doubt did the same thing for me without my notice.  Just quietly paying close attention and making sure we were all safer as a result.

Feels great to be on the giving end.  As Mel Brooks would say, it’s good to be king.

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