26 February 2025

I’ve nothing against boomers

It’s decades of policies prioritising wealth protection that are the source of resentment.

The House of Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee wants young people to stop considering their elders as “wealth-hoarding ‘boomers’” who enjoy “comfortable lives in homes they own while younger generations struggle on low incomes, unable to afford to enter the housing market and struggling with high rents”. A report on ageism released this week calls this an unhelpful “stereotype” that ignores inequality within generations.

Of course, this is broadly true. Not every person over the age of 60 bought a house in Russell Square for 20p in the Eighties and now, through no effort of their own, spends the half of the year they’re not on a cruise living in an asset worth as much as a moderate Lotto win. Also, not all 20- or 30-somethings are lazy, entitled snowflakes who regularly waste whole house-deposit-sized piles of cash on avocado toast. Nor do we truly wish our parents ill for the luck of being born in an age of affordable housing and work that paid (although we might wish they’d downsize already and help a gal out).

Yes, OK, I want to scream, but also: it is an economic fact that my generation graduated with burdensome levels of student debt into a post-crash labour market and a lost decade for wages. That 73 per cent of the UK’s total net wealth is held by those born between 1956 and 1975. That just one in three people aged between 25 and 34 owns their home, compared to half in 1989. It is economic fact that I recently turned 33 and am only now spending less than half my income on rent and bills.

Maybe the popular narrative that my elders are selfish wealth-hoarders (rather than ageing people quite sensibly thinking of the care costs that might be ahead) does amount to ageism. But so do policies that mean it costs a 21-year-old several thousands pounds a year to commute in London while those aged over 61 travel free, or that the incomes of pensioners are protected with the triple lock while benefits for working people are cut. Perhaps if politicians concentrated their efforts on improving the prospects of young people, the young wouldn’t be so ready to spit “boomer” as an insult.

I spent some time this week lying on a treatment bed and staring at a spotlight in a leak-stained ceiling until my eyes went funny, while a physiotherapist stuck needles in my leg. I don’t wish to be completely insufferable but I’m training for a half marathon (*flicks hair over shoulder*) and my left knee has been giving me some trouble. The problem, the physio tells me, is that I have an exceptionally tight iliotibial band. Not content with pummelling me while I grimaced and, a consummate Brit, said “I’m fine” every time she asked if I was OK, she reached for the acupuncture needles.

While she stuck me with them, the physio asked me to list my average week’s exercise. Three cycle commutes, 25km each; three strength sessions in the gym; and two runs, totalling 20-25km. Next she asked the physio equivalent of a dental hygienist enquiring about your flossing routine: how often do you stretch? Ermmmm, I stalled guiltily: before I run. And after? No. When you cycle? No. At the gym? No… “Mmmmm,” she grumbled, and I could have sworn the next needle hurt more than the others. “Your legs are carrying a lot.” I wasn’t quite sure if it was a comment about my weight, or a loftier ponderance about my spiritual state. It didn’t seem entirely insane that there might be some link between the physical strains in my body and the emotional strains of life. “You need to take recovery much more seriously.”

It was one of those comments that, while on one level speaks only to a specific set of circumstances, seems somehow to relate deeply to the whole. Foam-rolling five times a week, plyometrics, sports massages, sauna – I nodded diligently as the physio reeled off my (expensive-sounding) list of homework, all the while wondering what it might look like to take recovery more seriously in a broader sense. Then, I shuddered: this is all getting a bit too close to self-care. “Are you OK?” the physio asks, the next needle in hand. I’m fine!