The "Woe Is Me" Boomers

Just to get this out of the way upfront, my wife and I “experience” (I think that’s the right term) infertility, and have done IVF twice, which means we’ve spent about $32,000 trying to have a kid, and nope. One of the things that happens when you deal with infertility is you start thinking about people you’ve “let down,” and usually chief on that list is your own parents and in-laws, because, sure, they wanted the experience of being a grandparent. It’s a great joy for many. Now, I do think the quiet part out loud on being grandparents is that people want a redo of raising kids without having to deal with them all the time, but hey, at least we can be honest about it.

So, the New York Times ran that article a few days ago. You can Google it and find it. There was some Internet explosion about it, usually in two camps:

• Camp 1, which is “pro-family” and usually people smarting from Trump wrecking Kamala, said “This is so true” and “Why are we selfishly robbing these Boomers of their joy?”
• Camp 2, which is more Gen Z-y, said, “Hey, I can’t afford a house” and/or “Kids are incredibly expensive and only getting moreso,” with a little bit of “The Boomers pulled the success ladder up behind them.”

As for the house thing, which is largely true (I did not own a home until I was 39.9 years of age), look at this:

The housing market is basically for people in their 60s — and I know some people in their 60s who are actually terrified to sell, because they don’t think they can afford back into the neighborhoods they want. Anyway.

The actual reality of this “grandparents issue” is more nuanced. Let me lay out a couple of things quickly, if I may:

1. You absolutely cannot ignore the cost of having kids: At this moment, two incomes almost feels like a necessity. I actually know 3–4 “trad-wife” families where the woman went back to work because the costs were getting up there. Now, some of that is “Joneses,” I.e. living above your means, but costs are high. And most day-care centers these days are getting bought up by private equity, so look for “higher costs, less staff” in the future too.
2. Infertility plays into this: This part people don’t like to discuss, but for a variety of reasons, infertility is reducing the “grandkids number.” That’s a combo of later marriages, poor diets, plastic in the testicles, and more. Having been on this part of the deal for a few years now, I can tell you that virtually everyone lies about whether they went through this. Most people who have a kid 3–4 years after marriage? They went through it. They just usually claim they didn’t. It’s still a sore spot, especially for men. Love or hate my bullshit writing, at least I’m honest about it.
3. It varies by grandparents: Theoretically, wouldn’t you want your kids to lead a happy and successful life? And if that means one kid is the most logical outcome, then wouldn’t you be happy for that one grandkid? You’d hope. But for some people, the me me me Joneses mentality — “But Sally at the country club has six grandkids!” — never goes away.

The real reality of this discussion is somewhere between “Look at these fucking Boomers in their vacation homes demanding we reproduce but not helping us!” and “Woe is the Boomers and the beauty of the grandparent experience.” This discussion actually lies at the intersection of many things that have become sociopolitically-charged in the last decade, including the role of a woman, the role of a man, how genders support each other, how bad dating has gotten, stark economic realities, etc, etc.

I have a neighborhood friend whose brother died recently. Sad situation. Well, said neighbor had a miscarriage or two before that happened, but then after her brother died, she is now pregnant and it seems fine (“cosmic”). Obviously her mom was pretty sad about her son dying, so getting the news about a baby was a big deal. That’s a nice, beautiful little familial arc and moment, even if tinged with tragedy on the front end. In that way, I’d like to see more people be grandparents — and I definitely have guilt about my own inabilities therein. (Should also be noted that woman almost immediately launched into performative pregnancy, so I felt kinda less good about it after the initial warm fuzzies.)

But the economic realities of it all are very stark, and we’re not confronting that. So while highlighting the emotional decay of the Boomers because they don’t have large swaths of grandkids is one approach, we probably need to be having different discussions.