ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, December 23 2010

The baby boomer blues
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

When the world rings in a new year and a new decade next week, America's massive baby boom generation will mark a milestone of its own. Its eldest members will turn 65 — a number widely associated with the start of old age.

Not that boomers consider themselves old. The generation that once pledged never to trust anyone over 30 now says old age begins at 72, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center poll. Regardless of how boomers define elderhood, many are entering their golden years with pessimism. Another Pew survey, released this week, found that 80 percent of adults ages 46 to 64 are dissatisfied with the way things are going in America today and more than a third believe their children will not enjoy as good a standard of living as boomers enjoy now.

Many Americans harbor such fears in our tough economic times, but the Pew report notes that children of the baby boom have 'spent most of their adulthood trailing other age cohorts in overall life satisfaction." A 2008 Pew survey found that boomers were more critical of their quality of life and less hopeful about the future than both younger and older Americans — signs of a glum generational outlook that first began surfacing in surveys two decades ago.

Other reports have produced more proof of boomer blues. There was the 2007 National Bureau of Economic Research study that found today's 50-somethings complaining of worse health than their older counterparts had described at the same age. And there was the AP/LifeGoesStrong.com survey conducted in October that rated baby boomers America's unhappiest age group when it comes to their sex lives.

More alarming was a study published this fall in Public Health Reports that highlighted the rising suicide rate among middle-aged Americans, a demographic previously considered at low risk. Researchers said higher rates of substance abuse and the age-related onset of chronic diseases may explain the suicide spike among boomers, whose lifelong celebration of youth and good health may make their transition to old age tough. The study also noted that unmarried people in middle age are especially vulnerable to suicide, a troubling fact for boomers, who account for the majority of all divorced Americans.

The 79 million Americans born in the heady aftermath of World War II once were known to demographers for their unprecedented health and wealth, as well as their rule-flouting, pleasure-chasing, mold-breaking ways. Now they are known for their complaints: about shattered nest eggs, postponed retirements, declining physical prowess and staid sex lives. The generation that took as its motto The Who's famous lyric, "I hope I die before I get old," now must grow old in the youth-obsessed culture it helped create — a culture with little respect or appreciation for its elders.

Many individual boomers have faced that challenge with dignity and grace. But the collective picture of the Me Generation on Geritol has not been pretty. From the Botox addicts of Hollywood and Capitol Hill to the AARP articles on "How to Be a Cougar" to the Viagra peddlers that make even the act of catching a football game on television a cringe-inducing, family-unfriendly affair, the baby boomer quest to remain forever young often looks more pathetic than path-breaking.

We are told to applaud when we see 67-year-old Mick Jagger still moaning onstage about the sexual frustration he first voiced when Lyndon Johnson was president and 64-year-old Cher still strutting in the same see-through black body stocking she sported 20 years ago. Yet a depressing subtext runs through their stunts: the grim message that the best you can hope for in old age is to relive your youthful glory days. What could be sadder than spending the last decades of your life chasing the same superficial plaudits and pleasures you spent the first six chasing, with inevitably diminishing returns? No wonder boomers are bummed.

Happily, today's lens is not the only one through which to view the passing of the years. Even in our youth-obsessed nation, we used to consider the losses of aging a fair trade for its perks: greater wisdom and serenity, more opportunities to savor simple pleasures overlooked in busier times and the hard-won realization that after decades of proving yourself, you can rest in the knowledge that how you look or what you produce is not the true measure of who you are.

To seize and celebrate such perks would force many boomers to admit that their youthful vision of the world was wrong. Such an admission could be, itself, a sign of wisdom — and a lasting legacy to the children and grandchildren now looking to boomers to show them how to age well.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.