Stephenie skriver:

I am an X’er that had the privilege of being raised by parents a couple of generations older than the Boomers. My father was 20 years old when he went into WWII with his brothers and my mom was a generation younger than him. They got married and started a family in ‘61. The only trace of Boomer influence to be found in our house was the music. Other than that, we were a regular working class family. We didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of but we were happy. We kids never felt like we were lacking anything, and we truly weren’t. We didn’t measure our lives by our possessions and we sure as hell didn’t keep up with the Joneses. We were a family of 7 and both of my parents worked. Nobody complained, nobody cried self-entitlement, we just lived. Did my parents struggle? Fuck yes. My dad went to an early grave because of it. Did they feel bad for themselves because they had a big family and had to work? Absolutely not. Unlike a lot of people, my parents didn’t expect others to give them handouts. They just wanted the chance to make a living like everyone else. My husband and I maintain those life values to this day and hope to pass on those values to our son. Most of my friends were raised by Boomers and the unfortunate truth was that their parents acted more like teenagers than they did. I realize this is not true for all Boomers, but a surprising number were still free-loving it while their kids were growing up and looking for their guidance. I don’t want to polarize an entire generation and the boomer generation did contribute some positives to the lives we have now, but I am glad that I was raised by the parents that were not of the Boomer generation. We kids got the best of both worlds: I had hard-working parents that taught me the value of making my own way while allowing me to be myself and not domesticating the free spirit out of me.|