In published report, the Demos think-tank points out that we live in an ageing society, where the baby boomer generation is bringing new values and attitudes to the concept of what it means to be an older person in today’s world. The Demos report refers to this demographic as the new old.
What Being New Old Means
The generation born between 1945 and 1965 are usually defined as the baby boomers. This takes in people from their 50s to 70s who have grown up with the full support of a welfare state against a backdrop of big cultural changes and the emergence and full flowering of the consumer society.
This background makes the baby boomers significantly different from previous generations in terms of both experience and expectations. Whereas it’s difficult to pin down an overall set of common characteristics, the two things that jump out are individualism and liberalism.
Ultimately this translates into a greater sense of independence and an expectation that individual needs, and desires, can be met.
Great Expectations
Retirement is not an end, it’s a means. If the baby boomer generation is characterised by a search for self-fulfilment, then this is unlikely to dissipate with the onset of retirement and a change in the pace and quality of life.
The question the new old should ask is: why should we settle for any less? People lead active lives and wish to continue to do so. People want to participate in activities and engage with others and with the environment they find themselves in.
Ideas about work, retirement and leisure are shifting, as much from economic necessity as perceptions and lifestyles. For many reaching retirement, work as a concept doesn’t come to an end, but changes. This might be reflected in adopting part-time consultative roles or voluntary work in the third sector.
Elsewhere, leisure and lifestyles offer wider opportunities to meet greater demands, and the habits and likes accumulated over a lifetime are simply refined rather than abandoned. So we have a whole older generation engaging in extreme sports, going to concerts and fashionable restaurants and exploring new, challenging destinations abroad.
In fact, the new old may be not that old at all. Is this you?
