 by Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author's program note. Right from the start we were different, special, the apple of everyone's eye. We were the Baby Boomers, by far the most important of people, examined, studied, displayed, coddled. Census takers wanted to count us. Researchers wanted to study us. Photographers wanted to take our pictures -- and did -- because the camera loved us, in every one of the (generally ground-breaking) positions in which we put ourselves, from the mud of Woodstock to the pomp and circumstance of the White House. There had never been such a phenomenon before... and we were confident there would never be one again, ever again. Some important facts. Every story about the Boomers focuses first and foremost on our shear numbers, for this is the basis for our celebrity and puissance. There are, pure and simple, more of us. How many more? The demographics are staggering... What are called the "Leading-Edge" Baby Boomers are individuals born between 1946 and 1955. The group represents slightly more than half of the generation, or roughly 38,002,000 people of all races. The other half of the generation was born between 1956 and 1964. Called "Late Boomers" or "Trailing-Edge Boomers," this second cohort includes about 37,818,000 individuals, according to "Live Births by Age and Mother and Race 1933-98" published by the Center for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics. They are omnipresent, omnipotent, and, they have always believed, omniscient. It is a stupendous, awe-inspiring and, for some, back-breaking, unnerving, oppressive burden to carry, not merely challenging but impossible for mere mortals. It is easy to see why... Item: Baby Boomers control over 80 percent of personal finance assets. Item: They account for more than half of all consumer spending. Item: They buy at least 77 percent of all prescription drugs and 61 percent of over-the-counter drugs. Item: They make 80 percent of all leisure travel. These are astonishing numbers, which clearly indicate the extent of Boomer power and influence. No wonder they are called the "shockwave" or "the pig in the python." They have since conception been treated as privileged beings... and they have gone through every stage of life expecting that privilege. One man more than any other is responsible for this situation. His name was Dr. Benjamin McLane Spock (1903-1998), and he literally wrote the book on how these massive numbers of Boomers should be treated. "Baby and Child Care" (published in 1946). What a man! What a book! And what an impact! Born as I was in early 1947, my mother, like virtually every mother in the Great Republic had Spock's epochal work at hand. For its first 52 years only the Holy Bible sold more copies. What's more, she didn't just have a copy, she used it; just how much was clear from its tattered and much thumbed pages. For her, as for good mothers everywhere Dr. Spock was not merely a pediatrician, he was the beloved and trusted Advisor-in-Chief to the nation and its largest and most important generation. Thus he experienced the greatest pleasure any writer can have: he was heeded and his every word and thought treated with the utmost regard and respect. "You know more than you think you do." At root, Yale-educated Spock trusted women to be mothers. His was a fully natural approach to the very serious business of raising the children needed to maintain America's number one post-war status. He advocated a flexible approach, treating each child as an individual, and always showing affection. So long as he approached his high business as a clinician, his detractors and critics (for of course there were some) were insignificant but when he came out against the Vietnam war, they struck, blaming him and his cockamamie ideas for everything from rock-and-roll, to acid, anti-American behavior, and the explosive sexuality for which Boomers discovered an ardent predilection. Spock had advocated "flexibility," but the word "permissiveness" stuck. It came to characterize a restless, selfish, irresponsible, godless generation... hoydens without manners, mores or even a crumb of civic spiritedness. Such sentiments characterize them right to this day. Boomers do what they want, when they want, how they want, who cares what the neighbors think or the fact that they wrack up bills and dirty dishes for others to deal with, apre's moi le de'luge being their first and most important principal, not the progressive, reformist, beneficial world-changing outlook for which they were once extolled, and rightly so. Now a significant portion of the Boomers are killing themselves. The shocking facts... To experts' surprise more people died of suicide than in car accidents in 2010, the latest reporting period covered in the May 3, 2013 "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report," 33,687 in motor vehicle accidents, 38,364 suicides. What's going on? >From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7. "Although suicide rates are growing among both middle-aged men and women, far more men take their own lives. The suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000." Why did so many, particularly men, of the gilded generation take gun in hand (for it was usually by firearm) and end their lives prematurely? It is notoriously difficult to say with finality, but the best idea advanced is that these were Boomers who failed to achieve the success they expected and could not live with the ignominy and what they regarded as the disgrace of defeat... finally seeing only the grim facts of irrevocable failure from which they saw absolutely no escape but oblivion. An urgent knock at the door. It was early evening, and I was writing in my office when I heard the great knocker on the front door, an urgent, insistent knock. It proved to be a person I hardly knew. He was a teacher at a local school... bright, nice-looking, a Baby Boomer. "I need to talk to you," he said. He looked thin, harried, and there was more than a whiff of desperation in his voice. I had him sit down, drink some water and breathe deep. Then I put my total focus on this fellow traveler in distress and prepared to listen. "You remember, John?", he said, then burst into tears. "He killed himself." I got up, gave him a hug which was returned as if his life depended on it, as perhaps it did. His sobs were now deep, unstoppable, like a storm on the great Atlantic. Doug and John were, it turned out, a certified couple, part of the very first batch married in Cambridge just minutes after midnight when the enabling law went into effect. Marriage, it seems, had proven more difficult than courtship, and they became one of the first same-sex couples to divorce. But just as marriage had failed to bring happiness and peace, so divorce had failed, too, for they loved each other and thus were entangled. On this particular evening they had quarreled. Doug had fallen asleep, only to wake up hours later to find every light in the house ablaze and the love of his life hanging from the dining room's still circulating ceiling fan. He called 911 which promptly arrived, cutting down the body, going about what they needed to do with stern efficiency. While they worked, after they took the body down, after they had left, and forever after he asked himself one sharp question, "Why?" And so in due course he came to me, a near stranger, because he sensed that here he could do what he needed to do without burden of explanation or judgement. And so for two days I simply let it be, listening when listening was called for; otherwise silent and supportive, glad to hear or not as circumstances warranted. Thus without asking a single query I came to know the better part of "why?"; why one Baby Boomer took his life in the way guaranteeing maximum pain to his sometime partner.... In due course, my unexpected visitor got up, took a shower and went home to his memories. I followed up several times but he never returned a call. He was abashed, of course, that he had come at all and said anything; I was part of the single most searing incident of his life, an incident he wanted so desperately to forget, but could not. I wanted a better, different ending. But Baby Boomers who fail and flounder want no one to know, especially if they have sobbed in the arms of a near stranger. What would Dr. Spock have done; the "Bye Bye Birdie" cure. I am by nature and profession a problem-solver. And so I did not lament what occurred but sought to understand and explain the phenomenon of Boomer suicide better. This article and my own experience with the matter are the result. Now here are my (very personal) conclusions. 1) Living will always be more important than success, and we must never lose sight of this essential insight which even Conrad Birdie got right in the 1960 Tony Award-winning production of "Bye Bye Birdie", a show that just won't let you leave unhappy. "Oh, Life's a ball/if only you know it/And it's all just waiting for you/ You're alive/ So come on and show it/We've got a lot of livin'/Such a lot of livin'/Got a lot of livin' to do." 2) Constant, honest communication is the key. Somehow I must believe that had Doug and John communicated better, especially when the demons were most present and oppressive, John would be alive today. Thus this last "Bye Bye Birdie" insight from a beautiful tune called "Baby Talk to Me" "Talk to me, baby, won't you talk to me?/ I don't care what you say/ Baby, talk to me/ Must you be oh so far away from me/ It seems so wrong this way/Talk to me." Envoi It is now 7:20 a.m. on a beautiful spring morning. I am going to my favorite search engine to listen to both these two tunes by Charles Strouse (music) and Lee Adams (lyrics). Then I shall put on my best blazer and walk along Tory Row on Brattle Street where the lilacs are in full bloom. Their wondrous colors and intoxicating scent will, I know, make me glad to be alive... and thankful for every gift, not least the wisdom and care of Dr. Benjamin Spock. |
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