When I was young, the last thing I wanted to hear from my dad was “you don’t have much to complain about, back in my day....” Whatever it was, I was sure it had been embellished. Mom was much simpler, “Because I said so”. As I got older, I started to realize they were probably right, I was complaining about things their generation would have considered a joke.
What I learned later in life is that the “Greatest Generation” dealt with unimaginable issues that my and subsequent generations never considered possible. From the Great Depression to World Wars, in a time that the government had no safety nets, many suffered and learned to deal with it. Charity was from the church, not the government. Many were left to deal on their own, many died as a result.
My dad, part of the Greatest Generation, was in the 82nd Airborne in WWII. He was in the battle of Normandy, not on the beaches but behind enemy lines prior to D-Day as part of small units that harassed the enemy day and night before the invasion began. I have no doubt that my generation (think Vietnam) and the generations that followed (Iraq, Afghanistan, and others) had to go through similar horrors, but with more support and better resources than in WWII. My dad never told me about these things, including having a bayonet wound while he soldiered on for weeks. I had to learn them from uncles and family. His generation did not talk about their problems. No Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, or Messenger. While the term PTSD hadn’t been coined, shell shock was real, and many suffered as a result of battlefield trauma.
Today, there are many names for different ailments caused by battlefield injury, both mental and physical. The Department of Veterans Affairs is better equipped to manage these issues than back in the 1940s and 1950s. Still, we have too many homeless veterans, and veterans with untreated PTSD and mental illness. We have so many social programs for almost anything that can rate a Facebook page, but not enough attention is placed on veterans who served, bled, and were ravaged while doing their duty. We can do better.
Back home, the Greatest Generation had other challenges, like the Great Depression. Having lived on a farm, my mom told stories about how they always had gas, diesel, and tires for the equipment, as the family farm fed America’s war effort. They got rationing coupons for shoes and pretty much everything else. As one of 8 kids, everything was passed down, fixed, and passed down again until it wasn’t usable. Kids in the US and other developed countries only wear torn or worn clothes now if it’s fashionable to purchase them that way.
Raising a family was different back then. Most families had two or more kids, mom ran the home, dad provided the money. Hopefully, dad’s job came with retirement. Many women worked and had careers like nurses, but most hit a glass ceiling when it came to advancement. Society had not grown to accept women bosses, and most “women’s work” was in a support role. We do better now, but more progress would not hurt. As my generation aged and more women pursued a career, stay-at-home moms were ridiculed as lesser than those who had “real jobs.” As more moms started working outside of the home, more kids came home after school to empty houses. With more unsupervised kids, holes in the social safety net called parent supervision led to what many of my generation think is a coarser society. I’ve had it both ways. When I was young, my mom was a secretary to one of the VPs at an oil company. I went to a neighbor’s home after school until she got off work. The one year that I was a latch-key kid, I fell in with the wrong crowd and got into trouble. It was enough for my parents to decide that having mom at home was better than me making the wrong decisions. I count myself lucky that while my two kids grew, both parents were at home, as I have worked from home since 1992. The results were mixed, which teaches us that there is no perfect parent, perfect kid, or perfect solution. We parents just have to do our best, make sure our kids don’t have to fend for themselves, and hope it is enough.
When past generations growl about how current generations are not as smart, not as hard working, or as responsible, we have to remember that we built this world that they are trying their best to navigate. If we are unhappy that they spend all of their time on a computer, tablet, or phone, we should have given them better options for spending their time. Besides, to not be proficient with technology today would be a major disadvantage in life skills. The Greatest Generation invented Microwaves, but most of them can’t set the clock or program a mealtime. Baby Boomers invented the PC, even the earliest Smart Phones, but we look to younger generations every time we get stuck, locked out, or can’t find a setting. Millennial and Gen Z folks are battling over who is more responsible, who works harder, or who works smarter. What we can all celebrate is work. We all should learn from each other, build an US generation, and celebrate what each brings to the table.
How I suggest we can learn from younger generations comes down to two things. One, us old guys have to listen and avoid denigrating younger people. Like my grandma once said, young people are our future but there are some who’s corn bread ain’t done in the middle. Give them time and they will come around. Two, younger folks need to have patience. We don’t learn as fast when we get older, as they too will see, and we may resist something new until we understand it. As an example, I learned something new from my son, who is a Petty Officer in the Navy. He said that they find the younger generation responds to orders and carries them out better when he gives them the “Why.” Not that he can do that every time, but they have learned that it builds trust that they are not doing something just because someone yelled at them to do it. He said that it isn’t a battlefield solution, but it is a good tool to make his subordinates feel more comfortable with his orders so they will be more willing to instantly comply later. Is that something that would fly with the Greatest Generation or Boomers? Not a chance, but maybe we can all learn from the younger and all too soon-to-be-old generations.