Boomers were born to be wild

[desdemona]

Boomers were born to be wild and won’t go quietly

ALAN MacDERMID July 12 2004

THEY are rebellious, spend their time listening to loud rock music, want to spend their money on flash clothes, risk their necks on motor bikes, and go swanning around the world in camper vans.

So much for grandparents. What are the rest of you going to do when they've spent your inheritance?

They certainly want watching. If the latest major survey of the baby boom generation is to be believed, old is fast becoming the new young.

Members of the post-war generation are nostalgic for their youth and trying to have their time again, according to Eternal Youths, a report based on research conducted for the think tank Demos.

It provides evidence that baby boomers see their wealth and leisure as an opportunity to do in style things they may not have been able to afford in their youth. As evidence they cite the average age of Harley Davidson motorbike owners, up from 38 to 46 in a decade.

Research participants also said they enjoyed advertising that used old pop music, in part because it was something their children did not understand. The revival of the Volkswagen camper van – with hippie styling and twenty-first century luxury car specification – is another example of the way brands are tapping into their desire to relive their youth.

But the need to have their time again emerges in other ways too, as they lavish time and money on their grandchildren in a way that suggests they may be making up for time missed when their own children were growing up.

The baby boomers – the bulge generation born just after the second world war and now in their fifties – said they saw retirement as more of a time for adventurous travel, even wanting to imitate the gap-year teenager by travelling to unusual places.

"Baby boomers seem to be intent on having their time again," said James Harkin and Julia Huber, the co-authors of Eternal Youths.

But their determination not to go gently into old age also has its disadvantages. The research concludes that their blind spot is the refusal to come to terms with the natural process of growing old. "It is a paradox of our ageing society that many of us seem increasingly obsessed with the idea of youth," the report concludes.

THEY are rebellious, spend their time listening to loud rock music, want to spend their money on flash clothes, risk their necks on motor bikes, and go swanning around the world in camper vans.

So much for grandparents. What are the rest of you going to do when they've spent your inheritance?

They certainly want watching. If the latest major survey of the baby boom generation is to be believed, old is fast becoming the new young.

Members of the post-war generation are nostalgic for their youth and trying to have their time again, according to Eternal Youths, a report based on research conducted for the think tank Demos.

It provides evidence that baby boomers see their wealth and leisure as an opportunity to do in style things they may not have been able to afford in their youth. As evidence they cite the average age of Harley Davidson motorbike owners, up from 38 to 46 in a decade.

Research participants also said they enjoyed advertising that used old pop music, in part because it was something their children did not understand. The revival of the Volkswagen camper van – with hippie styling and twenty-first century luxury car specification – is another example of the way brands are tapping into their desire to relive their youth.

But the need to have their time again emerges in other ways too, as they lavish time and money on their grandchildren in a way that suggests they may be making up for time missed when their own children were growing up.

The baby boomers – the bulge generation born just after the second world war and now in their fifties – said they saw retirement as more of a time for adventurous travel, even wanting to imitate the gap-year teenager by travelling to unusual places.

"Baby boomers seem to be intent on having their time again," said James Harkin and Julia Huber, the co-authors of Eternal Youths.

But their determination not to go gently into old age also has its disadvantages. The research concludes that their blind spot is the refusal to come to terms with the natural process of growing old. "It is a paradox of our ageing society that many of us seem increasingly obsessed with the idea of youth," the report concludes.

THEY are rebellious, spend their time listening to loud rock music, want to spend their money on flash clothes, risk their necks on motor bikes, and go swanning around the world in camper vans.

So much for grandparents. What are the rest of you going to do when they've spent your inheritance?

They certainly want watching. If the latest major survey of the baby boom generation is to be believed, old is fast becoming the new young.

Members of the post-war generation are nostalgic for their youth and trying to have their time again, according to Eternal Youths, a report based on research conducted for the think tank Demos.

It provides evidence that baby boomers see their wealth and leisure as an opportunity to do in style things they may not have been able to afford in their youth. As evidence they cite the average age of Harley Davidson motorbike owners, up from 38 to 46 in a decade.

Research participants also said they enjoyed advertising that used old pop music, in part because it was something their children did not understand. The revival of the Volkswagen camper van – with hippie styling and twenty-first century luxury car specification – is another example of the way brands are tapping into their desire to relive their youth.

But the need to have their time again emerges in other ways too, as they lavish time and money on their grandchildren in a way that suggests they may be making up for time missed when their own children were growing up.

The baby boomers – the bulge generation born just after the second world war and now in their fifties – said they saw retirement as more of a time for adventurous travel,

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