What a Long Strange Trip it's Been
The conservative liberal
Despite the Boomers'' rightward political trend, it''s premature to write a post-mortem on their liberalism, cautions Alwin.
"This is a case in which the Baby Boom cohorts may be distinctive," Alwin says. "When asked whether they believe in the value of such things as affirmative action programs, government helping minorities, they top the distributions. This is one measure of what I would call liberalism." On the other hand, he adds, "there''s an overall downward tilt to the graph—everyone''s liberalism is declining, but the Boomers are more liberal than so-called Generations X, Y and Z that followed them."
Another surprise: "They may have once said 'Don''t trust anyone over 30''," jokes Alwin, "but on questions measuring trust in government, the Boomer cohorts are actually a little more trusting than generations after them."
Stress: age matters
Photo by James Collins
Dave Almeida loves stress. Not his own, per se, but the field of study—how people process daily pressures as they age; the impact of family and work factors; and the physiology of our stress responses.
Almeida, associate professor of human development and family studies, has been researching the Boomers from this angle for the past twelve years.
"I''m a developmentalist," he explains, "so I''m most concerned with where people are in their life course." Boomers include people moving into their senior years as well as people just entering midlife—"and that''s a big difference," he asserts. "Some people are having grandkids and others are still having their own kids. The stage of life you''re in greatly impacts the types of stressors you''re going to experience."
One of Almeida''s current projects—a telephone diary study called the National Study of Daily Experiences or NSDE—involves collecting, coding and analyzing over 3000 telephone interviews with a cross-section of Americans, aged 25 to 74. "We ask people detailed questions about many aspects of their day," describes Almeida, "from how they slept, to how they spent their time, their moods, physical symptoms, and a lot of questions about their stressors."
"When we look at stress for Boomers, we have to know whether they''re part of the older 'leading edge'' or younger 'trailing edge,'" Almeida adds. "What I find in general is that the content of older adults'' stressors—the daily frustrations of their lives—is different than that of younger adults."
Older Boomers are more likely to have what he calls "network stressors," having to do with challenges facing their network of close friends and family members. "Sick friends or spouses, grown kids having financial difficulties, these are the things that really stress them out...In general, older adults are less focused on themselves and more on the people around them."
"Younger adults, on the other hand," says Almeida, "are more focused on work, family, and juggling responsibilities. Their daily frustrations come from interpersonal tensions—not getting along with other people. And they report far more stressors than older adults do."
It turns out experience makes a difference in managing life''s curve balls. "In some cases, it doesn''t take much to tick off a younger person, whereas older adults have had a lifetime of experience in dealing with daily frustrations and have learned to avoid arguments and tolerate stressors better."
Not sweating the small stuff may have an impact on one''s health, Almeida notes. "There are real, measurable consequences to stress adaptation," he points out. "We''re built to cope with stress but if your blood pressure and cortisol rates are spiking frequently, it''s going to take its toll on your body over a lifetime."
Next page: "The double-edged sword of education"