Discussion 1

Family in Later Life and Baby Boomers

The baby boomers, with their unprecedented size, demographic characteristics, and unique generational character, are changing the landscape of aging as they move into the later stages of life. It is not only baby boomers that are changing aging but also longer life, health improvements, well-established welfare state policies for income security and health insurance for older adults, historical improvements in educational attainment, an ideological shift to the concepts of fruitful and productive aging, and widespread challenges to conventional negative stereotypes about growing older.

As a human service and public service leader, it is important to identify the impact of baby boomers on the family in later life. Using your course materials, personal experience, the family in later life interviews you conducted, and the Riverbend City family, address the following in your discussion:

1. How do the baby boomers challenge the stereotypes you may have had about aging? What are some examples of baby boomers’ families in later life that help dispel negative myths about aging?
2. What generation do you belong to? What are the characteristics that are typically ascribed to your generation? Do you think that these attributes fit you and your age peers well? Do you have any negative reactions to being classified as a member of a particular generation such as Gen X or the Millennials? How does this information impact your role as a human service and public service leader when helping families in later life and the baby boomers?

Support your discussion with references from current professional journals.

Discussion 2

Family in Later Life and baby Boomers

There are tens of thousands of Web sites about and for baby boomers that address issues of aging and the family in later life. Search one Web site about baby boom aging and family in later life and one Web site designed for baby boomers and family in later life. As a human service and public service leader, share the Web sites, and for each of the two Web sites discuss the following:

1. What is the major focus of the Web site (for example, health, employment, income, lifelong learning, encore careers, caregiving)?
2. What can you deduce about the purpose and the credibility of the organization that sponsors the Web site?
3. What did you learn from the Web site that reinforces, contradicts, or supplements the ideas you have read about in the textbook readings for this unit?
4. In your search, did you come across any Web sites that seemed to be focused only on selling a product or espousing political views? What was your reaction?