For Baby Boomers, the answer may be “never.” Better: try something like “seasoned adults,” “third agers” or “lifelong Boomers”

By Nancy Haus

So, when do Baby Boomers technically become “senior citizens?” If you use the Boom’s peak years as a guideline, 63 year olds are officially senior citizens. Yuk!

Traditionally, we’ve called “old people” seniors or the elderly or aged. For years, we’ve judged them as fragile and more prone to disease, syndromes, and sickness than other adults, primarily because they had to live—and die—with the lack of medical advances.

They even created a name for the medical study of the aging process—gerontology, and the study of diseases that afflict the elderly—geriatrics. For many, these terms are profoundly demeaning and stigmatizing.

Baby Boomers who are beginning to enter the world of “senior citizen-hood” don’t all feel good about being typecast as “old” simply because they aren’t.

Nowadays, “70 is the new 50.” Try to identify actual “senior citizens” versus “boomers” from a group of people of mixed ages. It’s challenging.

Still, ageism exists—the age-related prejudice resulting from stereotyping and discriminating against individuals or groups. It is a set of beliefs, attitudes, norms, and values—casual or organized—used to justify age-based disparity and intolerance. Those who embrace it seem to forget that they too will be senior citizens one day.

Thanks to major advances in public health and medicine, today’s average 60-year-old can expect to live to the age of 83, and millions will continue well into their 90s. This longevity revolution has spawned a new, largely unrecognized stage of life, nestled between middle age and old age, spanning the period from 60 to 80.

So what do we call that age group? As Boomers enter their 60s, they are confronting questions like “What’s next?” and “What do I want to do with the rest of my life?”

Even now, you can still hear them saying, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

And there are some indisputable advantages to aging (should you consider them benefits):

• At 60, you can get a senior citizen identification card, free membership in a lawyer referral program, stay in an elderhostel, and get free income tax preparation.

• At 62, the ante goes up as you can obtain early retirement Social Security, reduced-fare transportation programs, free clam and oyster digging licenses, free passes to state parks and historic sites, and, for $10, you can get a “Golden Age” lifetime pass to national parks and historic sites.

• Age 65 gets you free annual flu shots, Medicare, a pharmaceutical assistance program (PAAD), and a veteran’s pension (where applicable).

• By the time you hit 70, you hit the jackpot with no paybacks to Social Security for earned income, and a free fishing license.

Who knew?

Baby Boomers have become comfortable about who they are as a group. Most have survived the “I care what other people think” stage of their lives, focusing now on doing what they think is right for them. They are more honest about themselves and expect the same from others.

The realization that they are a fusion of their life experiences is what makes the new senior citizens so inspiring. They continue to apply their vast knowledge daily and don’t let retirement mean surrendering their mind. They remain active and share their time with others, which keeps them young.

The Corporation for National and Community Services believes that “Baby Boomers represent a highly talented and motivated segment of the population we can draw from to help solve some of our most challenging social problems.” The CNCS’ objective is to capture their talents, skills, energy, and experience to resolve local and national needs.

So Baby Boomers, anything is possible with your life. Just because you are over 50 and facing retirement doesn’t mean that your adventures are over. For some, they may just be starting. Think about it, maybe it’s time to re-invent yourself.

They used to say “Life begins at 40.” What age does it begin at now?

Some background—Today’s senior citizens were born between the 1930s and 1945, during the Great Depression and World War II.

Their families plummeted from the wealth and good times of the ‘20s to enduring the loss of jobs, homes and farms, unemployment lines, soup lines, and shattered dreams with family funds wiped out, and no real prospects in life. The ‘40s found them answering President Roosevelt’s call to defend democracy.

Women replaced men in factories, manufacturing goods for the war effort. Consequently, they discovered independence while becoming family breadwinners. When the soldiers came home, women returned to homemaking and imparted their newly found individualism onto their children—the future Baby Boomers. But life as they’d known it changed drastically.

When couples reunited in 1946—the official beginning of the Baby Boomer era—the G.I. Bill gave money to soldiers to further their education, purchase housing, and start families. And start families they did, with an astounding population increase of 7,573,000. With women’s biological time clocks ticking away, those who had worked in the war effort began having babies, with the Boom’s peak years occurring between 1952 and 1957.

Present-day senior citizens again answered the call to fight for their country in the Korean War of the early ‘50s—this time during President Truman’s administration. Still, there was a surge in buying homes, cars, furniture, and appliances that lasted until the 1958 recession. With two wars and a recession under their belts, they became known as “The Greatest Generation.”

Today’s senior citizens clung to each other then and to organizations like the USO as they danced away their cares to big bands like the Dorseys and Glen Miller and listened on the radio to Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and the war news.

Those were their days despite the ravages of war. They helped each other through and survived.

But they lived at a time when medical advances had not yet emerged, so they accepted growing old with their peers, faced with numerous unfamiliar diseases, and watched many of the friends they had endured so much with pass away before them.

Their children, Baby Boomers, were born between 1946 and 1964. 2008 estimates indicate that there are 75 million Boomers in the United States and another 6 million in Canada, and 39 million senior citizens. Both groups comprise the largest age demographic in the United States.

Boomers are now approaching retirement, or maybe not. They experienced the Korean War, the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King as well as the Vietnam War.

Boomers ushered in rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis, and Buddy Holly. They wore poodle skirts and watched kids dance on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.”

They welcomed the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the States, screaming as they sang their first songs on The Ed Sullivan Show. Is it possible that the same Beatles and Stones are already “senior citizens” too?
Some of the marks left by the Baby Boomer generation were regrettable like illegal drug use, free sex flaunted especially by the hippie generation, and protesting the Vietnam War with guns, killings, flag and draft card burnings, and a mass exodus to Canada to avoid the draft. Well-meaning parents had raised a generation so focused on “independent” consciousness, they became unmanageable.

Eventually, this independent nature generated some tremendous breakthroughs for society, like the invention and consequent boom of computers. Women became a force to be reckoned with in the marketplace. Baby Boomers still lead our economy in our largest corporations. They now have (or had) more money to retire with, so their choices likely differ from that of their predecessors. They will probably retire wealthier and almost certainly in better health. This broadens their choices of retirement locations and housing considerably, not something they thought they’d have to contemplate so soon.

Big question—The one problem that remains is what to call them.

There’s no name to accurately describe this group. But if you have one that you think fits, or that you would be comfortable living with, e-mail me at newstartnan@gmail.com, and we’ll post the results next time.