Until the early 1960s, young people acted older than their actual age. Now, older adults pretend to be younger than their actual age, which is perhaps one of the reasons why boomers are so easy to mock. In a recent article, Abigail Shrier quoted a physician and psychologist who had told her that “Fifty years ago, boys wanted to be men. But today, many American men want to be boys.”
An article in the Wall Street Journal reports:
Aging baby boomers are … struggling with a bunch of issues … One of the most vexing issues they face is deciding what they want to be called by their grandchildren, lest it make them sound—and feel—old … Ms. Wilkofsky has decided to be called Glamma, as in glamorous grandmother, a name suggested by one of her girlfriends. Her husband, Steven, a 58-year-old doctor, said he didn’t want a typical grandfatherly name, either, because “I still feel like I am 25.” So he chose to go by “Papa Doc.”
And this is from an article on the same topic from the New York Times:
However mightily my peers may pine for grandchildren and adore them when they arrive, some don’t want to acknowledge being old enough to be dubbed Grandpop or Granny. Such names conjure up gray hair and orthopedic shoes, along with a status our society may honor in the abstract but few boomers actually welcome.
A few months after the student eruptions at Yale in 2015, I met with a professor for coffee.