Baby Boomers and Generational Conflict

The dominant cultural script for Baby Boomers is that they have 'had it all' – the benefits of a booming economy, the welfare state, and personal freedoms – thereby depriving younger generations of the opportunity to create a life for themselves. Bristow provides a critical account of this discourse by locating the problematisation of the Baby Boomers within a wider ambivalence about the legacy of the Sixties.

At the heart of generational conflict is the mediation between past, present and future: where society is preserved and made anew by the interaction between emerging adults and the existing cultural heritage. However, this process of cultural renewal is situated within people who also exist within intimate relationships. This book critiques 'Boomer Blaming', which has some troubling consequences for the construction of knowledge, the focus of social policy, and the experience of generational contact.

Jennie Bristow is an Associate of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent, UK, and a writer on intergenerational contact and conflict. She is co-author of Parenting Culture Studies (Palgrave, 2014) and Licensed to Hug (2010), and author of Standing Up To Supernanny (2009).

PART I: THE SOCIOLOGY OF GENERATIONS
1. Introduction
2. Understanding Generations Historically
3. Mannheim's 'Problem of Generations' Revisited
4. The Birth of the Sixties – Generations after the Second World War
PART II: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE BABY BOOMERS AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM IN BRITAIN
5. The Cultural Script of the Baby Boomer Problem
6. The Boomers as an Economic Problem
7. The Boomers as a Cultural Problem
8. Conclusion – The Problem of Generations Today