As the first wave of baby boomers reaches age 80, a fierce generation debate started over what children owe their aging parents among boomers, millennials, Gen Z, and Gen X, holding starkly different views on caregiving obligations.
The debate erupted on a Reddit thread from r/BoomersBeingFools with many millennials declaring they will refuse to care for their Boomes parents.
One comment wrote: “Not an issue, we refuse to take care of you. Old folks home it will be.”
The post, written in 2023, comes back as around 4 million Boomers hit 80 years of age in 2023, demographer William Frey of Brookings Institution reveals.
Millennials blame their economic issues, which include student loans that cripple them, expensive houses, and the destroyed social welfare system, on not taking care of the old people. “Boomer greed broke the economy,” wrote a Reddit user. “Now they have to sell everything because they can’t take care of themselves anymore.”
But statistics say something else. Although Millennials refuse to do this on the Internet, they start taking care of their aging parents.
As per the Population Reference Bureau statistics, the number of family caregivers for older adults grew 32% between 2011 and 2022, and adult children now signify 40.7% of all family caregivers. In the meantime, multigenerational living has risen to 66 million Americans.
The Gen X, who are now in the middle of the task, do not look at it in a philosophical way but as the errand they are on anyway; dealing with calls, taking medicine, going to doctors, etc.
The Boomers themselves contain a contradiction, as they think that kids must take care of parents but do not want to burden their kids, thinking of independence as the last present.
The Gen Z presents the most open-minded answer, advocating for multigenerational homes and families as projects for the whole family, although there are those who say that they do not realize the costs of
2026-07-31 18:46:00
