Baby boomers have always been conspicuously at the center of attention. Their sheer dominance in numbers has always insured that a market-driven culture would slavishly indulge their every whim. The tastes of this demographic group have dictated popular music and fashions until recently when the children of the baby boomers (the boomlet) took over. The baby boomers have always found themselves at the center of the universe and that is where they have always wanted to be. The graph below shows the number of births in the United States as a function of time.
Unlike the so-called "Greatest Generation" that endured the Great Depression and defeated Fascism in World War II, the baby boomers have been singularly devoted to their personal needs and wants. One consequence of this self-centeredness is an unprecedented rapid increase in the divorce rate. Not all marriages are salvageable and not all divorces are unwise or a sign of moral failure. However, there are social consequences when marriages collapse.
The losers in divorce, of course, are generally children who are in many cases deprived of parental guidance and love. Unfortunately, payback may be looming.
A new study [1] led by Liliana Pezzin, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, documented what common sense would have predicted. Children learn from their parents. Sometimes these lessons are unintended ones. The children of divorced parents offer far less care for their aging parents than other children. The researchers found that:
- Divorced parents receive far less financial help from their children than widowed parents.
- Parents who were married several times receive less aid and care from adult children than parents who were only married once.
- Fathers, especially non-custodial fathers whose familial ties to offspring can be severely attenuated, fare the least well.
- Aged, but undivorced parents, are more likely to live with and be cared for by children than divorced parents.
- On average, stepchildren are far less devoted to the care of their parents than biological children.
Moreover, adult children appear anxious to rid themselves of familial obligations. Government aid to help aging parents tends to offset rather than supplement financial contributions from adult children. Anticipate what electrical engineers call a ``positive feedback loop.' As society as a whole is required to provide care for the aged, individual children of those elderly will relieve themselves of more and more moral responsibility to care for their parents. Family disintegration will have gone full circle.
A large number of baby boomers may find themselves in a lonely dotage cared for by institutions and uncomforted by familial ties, supported only by fading memories of past pleasures. The generation that thought mostly of themselves may find that is all they are left with.
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