The number of older Americans living alone is on the rise. Nearly 16 million people aged 65 and older in the US lived solo in 2022, three times as many who lived alone in that age group in the 1960s. And as Baby Boomers age, that number is expected to grow even more, raising big questions about the country’s future.
“Edith Heyck, 72, was thrilled to land an apartment in senior housing, where her rent is adjusted to match her income.” I fucking lost my shit, boomers get fucking everything. Rent that is matched to income? Are you fucking serious they protect their own I swear to god
I have never seen a senior housing facility that wasn’t a bleak, horrific nightmare. They may look nice on the outside, but they are usually the last place you want to live in your old age. Out of all of the things boomers get, this one isn’t a great one.
I remember senior housing when my grandparents were alive and moving to them. They all looked and felt like waiting rooms for the dead. Except for the rich people ones.
True, but depending how far back you’re talking about, that could mean people that came of age before things like cable/satellite TV, internet, etc… Now I feel like as long as I’ve got the capacity to play video games, watch TV shows/movies, and access the web things can’t be too bad.
Socialism is what other people get.
That sounds glib, but I mean it. People forget the help they get is socialism.
My mom and sister live together. Mom gets social security, sister is a teacher. They are supported by government money.
They are deep red voters. I pointed out the home is a socialism home and it confused my mom until I explained. Still not sure she agrees. I was not being rude in pointing it out.
Every single time the word Boomer is in the title, people rush to comments to make these insults.
The article isn’t describing a necessarily bad thing. It’s just noting a trend.
There are many reasons behind this shift in our society, including the economic gains women made when they entered the workforce and changing attitudes toward marriage.
Like…this article has absolutely nothing to do with boomers getting their comeuppance. It’s just about a shift in societal behavior. People are getting divorced later in life because it’s more acceptable to do so now and women can support themselves better on their own than when these people got married.
To be fair, Baby Boomers are actually statistically the reason divorce rates are so high, and also why they’ve been going down recently.
Not trying to be insulting, just wanting to speak about the statistics I’ve read, so I’ll try to use the full generation title to distinguish.
Speaking about the generation as a general group, Baby Boomers had many marriages and many divorces per capita. Your stereotypical “on my fifth wife” dudes were Baby Boomers and were a disproportionate percentage of marriages that ended in divorce - basically “Divorce Georg”.
From a statistics perspective, a large part of the reason divorce rates are going down these days are because as people get older, they tend to settle down and have less energy for those kind of antics basically, and the rate of Baby Boomers marriages and divorces was slowing down in response - with other generations being pretty much stable.
So on that level I’m not particularly surprised that those attitudes towards divorce are still affecting them in old age. It does pose interesting questions for our elder care infrastructure (or lack thereof) though.
This reminded me.
As a kid, I was so used to meeting adults who were on their 2nd or 3rd marriage. It felt super common.
But now im hitting 40 and only a small fraction of my friends are divorced.
Fewer people getting married. A lot of my friends are long-term common-law partners, but never do the actual marriage.
The circlejerk of Lemmy is real. It’s the same thing that was so visible on Reddit and the irony is that everyone on Lemmy, even the ones participating in the circlejerk are patting these on the back on how better they are than reddit.
This is just what the Internet has become, it’s not the specific protocol or hosted site. Years of people crying over how “reddit” behaves as an entity are already starting to complain here but they need to step back and realize it’s the nature of the beast.
Acknowledge, adapt and move on.
I spent like an hour typing out a counterpoint to “SFH bad. Cars bad. Owning things bad.” Then I just deleted it. Nothing good could possibly come from it. It doesn’t give anyone anything to think about, it just labels me a bad guy. Fuck it. Their opinion doesn’t hurt me - it’ll take decades if not longer to make a shift like that. I don’t care where y’all live after I die. So silence it is.
Boomers sure love their “I hate my wife” jokes but now that they finding out that treating people like shit is biting them in the ass.
What the fuck?
P.S. The jokes you are referring to were predominantly a greayest/silent generation thing.
The jokes they’re referring to are very much a boomer thing as well. The ol’ ball and chain, that sort of stuff is prevalent. Just take a look at any of the “boomer humour” communities and you’ll see what I mean.
Not many of the silent generation posting shit memes to Facebook.
Lemme whip out my tiniest violin to express my sympathies for the generation that completely fucked over our entire species with their selfish choices.
Sympathy for what? This is about women being able to divorce their husbands now and support themselves, so it’s happening later in life for a generation that got married early and didn’t really have this option to separate cleanly.
If anything this is a good thing. It means women aren’t* trapped in marriages with shitty men forever. I don’t care what you think about any specific generation, that’s a good trend for everyone.
Edit: typo
Didn’t have this option? If you are in your 50s you were born in the 70s and you were married in the 90s. Did everyone forget time was a thing?
If you’re in your 50s you’re Gen X, not Baby Boomer. Millennials are 30s and early 40s now.
The stigma on divorce is significantly reduced now from what it was even like 20-30 years ago. It’s also easier for women to support themselves in general on top of being more normalized.
Also, boomers are more like 59-77 now. Did YOU forget time was a thing?
Man I’m on my magical journey to become the most cynical person who ever lived myself but c’mon. There are better reasons to hate someone than their age like for example their weight, fashion choice, how they sound or how much they’re into mechanical keyboards.
It’s fun to trash the whole post-war generation, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that they were just as victimized by class warfare as we are. They benefited from the economic boom and were then lulled by their own masters into believing it was sustainable and things would be just as good for their own kids and grandkids. They were lied to too.
Never forget that the real enemy isn’t any one group except for the oligarchs and leeches at the top of the economic ladder. We shouldn’t focus our ire on those people in between us and the top. They’re not the ones controlling the taps on the river of shit flowing down.
Those goddamned keyboards. All I hear in this house is the constant clacking and tapping drowning out every goddamned thought I ever hoped to have. I can’t get through a single episode of Bonanza without the incessant claxon of feckless tip-tappery. Fuck those goddamned things!
Maybe I should get a different keyboard.
You ever notice how easy it is to take a brush and cover an entire population segment with a certain view? Ever consider how racism and stereotypes become prevalent?
I’m not a part of that generation, but if you think it was any different than today, you’re wrong. Power was weilded by rich corporations and government officials who were doing their bidding. It just wasn’t as blatant.
Besides writing a snarky post, what will you tell the future generation you did to stop the current situation? Exactly…
Pray tell, what can be done now? That ship sailed, we never had a chance…that luxury was only granted to those who came before.
All we can do is live with their choice, and make sure to take every opportunity to shame them for it.
I will NOT accept apologists like yourself, painting a grand excuse to hand-wave their complicity.
Poor you.
Maybe you’d feel more comfortable heading back to X-Twatter then.
You can’t paint such huge populations with a single paint brush, and even saying “generally” doesn’t cover your complete lack of empathy. Many or even most of those 16 million made choices that they thought were right at the time and tried to live good lives. You think these are the people that emptied pensions and raised prices and drilled the oil despite scientific warnings?
Sure, statically some of them did. But most of them did not. Most of them worked hard, harder than our generation, and provided for their families.
Having that much hostility for an entire population is no way to live your life.
This is honestly a good question - I’d be more interested to see it as a percentage of their age group than a count.
In the Census link in the article it is represented as a percentage.
