Baby boomers and generational conflict

The dominant cultural script is that Baby Boomers have 'had it all' – the benefits of a booming economy, the welfare state, and personal freedoms – thereby depriving younger generations of the opportunity to create a life for themselves. Bristow provides a critical account of this discourse by locating the problematisation of the Baby Boomer generation within a wider ambivalence about the legacy of the Sixties.

At the heart of generational conflict is the mediation between past, present and future: where society is preserved and made anew by the interaction between emerging adults and the existing cultural heritage. However, this process of cultural renewal is situated within people who also exist within intimate relationships. This book critiques 'Boomer Blaming', which has some troubling consequences for the construction of knowledge, the focus of social policy, and the experience of generational contact.