It seems like every where you turn these days there is a new expert explaining how to advertise or sell most effectively to Baby Boomers...all 76 million of them. To me, Boomer relates to a mass people born over an 18 year time frame. In spite of conventional wisdom, they are not one cohort nor do they share values unique to boomers.
We move through life's stages as individuals not as a cohort. We were all adolescents and teenagers. We then became middle aged adults with family responsibilities as individuals not cohorts. And yes we will all get old...we hope.
My primary frustration however is the focus on boomers to the exclusion of older adults. In fact, this exclusion is becoming a subtle form of ageism. As Boomers, we have a lot to offer, but not if we consider ourselves to be aging differently than older adults have been aging during the past 200 years that we have been studying human behavior.
This is at the core of David B. Wolfe's life work. He has been my mentor for over 20 years; and while his expertise is not fully appreciated, his predictions have come true and his hypothesis validated as our nation ages. Sure Boomers had unique life experiences, but so did their fathers and their father's fathers.
Studying Boomers is of critical importance, but it should be done through the lens of developmental psychology and life stages. As we near the tipping point of an aging society, we will not find answers in the rear view mirror because there is no experience with a population that is more senior than junior. As a society, we must recognize what an early mentor in his 80's bluntly pointed out to me, "Old people know more about being young than young people know about being old."
The plethora of boomer experts that have surfaced in the past decade is due to a growing recognition that we are no longer a youth market. The sudden interest in Boomers is of course basic economics as explained by bank robber Willie Sutton. When asked why he robbed banks, he responded, "Because that is where the money is!" Boomer theories, typologies, and marketing theories is currently where the money is. I simply question whether Boomer 'experts' have a unique grasp of their future any more than the generations that proceeded them. No one has paid attention to older consumers; and like it or not Boomers will become older people.
Today, a friend who is highly respected as an expert in the field of aging shared a story of the group of aging professionals that did not want to include older adults in a forth coming conference because it was for 'professionals.' This is an attitude I been battling for over 30 years...and have heard the same retort from "professionals" since the mid 70's. After all, what could the opinions of elders possibly have to do with "professional" discussions about aging? Is this not ageism in its purest form?
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