THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 1, 1996 TAG: 9601010037
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Baby Boomers Turn 50
An occasional series
SOURCE: By DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 189 lines
If you can anticipate the movement of the baby boom generation's life-span migration, you can see the future.
- ``Age Wave,'' by Ken Dychtwald
Sandy Fair of Norfolk is leading her generation, the Baby Boom, into old age. Or at least into late-middle age.
She, and the Boom, turned 50 today. Grudgingly.
``It doesn't sink in,'' she said last week of the big five-O. ``I don't feel 50.''
Remember ``Don't trust anyone over 30''? ``Hope I die before I get old''? For 76 million boomers, those sentiments are becoming ever-more-distant anachronisms.
During the next 10 years, a baby boomer will hit the midcentury mark every 7 1/2 seconds on average. Aging boomers will swell the ranks of the elderly so that by the year 2030, the Census Bureau reports, about 70 million people will be 65 and older - twice the current number. People 65 and older will represent 20 percent of the population - compared to 12 percent today.
And, as has been the case throughout their lifetimes, the boomers' segue into an older demographic group will bring with it enormous political, economic and cultural changes.
``The new challenge will be, can and will we survive the retirement of the baby boomers?'' Robert Friedland, director of the National Academy on Aging in Washington, asks half-jokingly.
For the first time in recent memory, he predicts, ``Old will be in.''
Demographers define baby boomers as those born between Jan. 1, 1946, and Dec. 31, 1964. As the men and women of America returned from World War II, they celebrated peace and economic prosperity in an age-old fashion: They made babies.
One-third of today's Americans were born during those years. As they have grown up, their effect upon society has been as visible as a pig moving through a python.
``In their infancy, the diaper industry prospered,'' Ken Dychtwald, a researcher in social gerontology and the head of a consulting firm specializing in aging issues, says in his book ``Age Wave.''
``When they took their first steps, the shoe and photo industries skyrocketed. As the boomers suffered scraped knees and runny noses, a massive pediatric medical establishment arose, and Dr. Spock became a national figure.''
The boomers spurred a school-building boom, with more elementary schools erected in this country in 1957 than in any year before or since. High schools followed the same pattern in 1967.
They created their own cultural and musical revolutions in the '60s and '70s, changed the face of the work force with more women and minorities in the '70s and '80s, and began their own baby boomlet in the '80s and '90s.
Now, with their hair graying, a few extra pounds packed around the middle and knees that ache when it rains, the boomers are about to enter the next phase of life - aging.
What does 50 feel like?
Fair, a mother of two who lives in the Bayview section of Norfolk, doesn't know. ``I don't feel any different than turning 40. I imagine I'm supposed to feel old, but I don't.''
John Hornbeck, president of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, turns 50 in May. The motorcycle-riding, rock 'n' roll-listening executive says his impression of 50 or older has always been of someone moving into old age. Until now.
``I don't think of myself that way. I still enjoy the same things I did as a kid,'' said Hornbeck. He doesn't like to be called ``sir'' and cringes when someone calls him ``Mr. Hornbeck.''
``I guess I have not made the mental transition into whatever 50 represents.''
His attitude is typical of the boomers, says Ross Goldstein, president of Generation Insights, a San Francisco consulting firm that specializes in tracking the baby boom generation.
``I use the term `age irrelevance,' '' he says. ``The numbers don't mean what they used to.''
Better nutrition, increased emphasis on self-care and exercise, and an acceptance that a 50-year-old person still can be physically active have changed perceptions of the age, he says.
``People at 50 are much more vital, there's more experimenting, they're more iconoclastic and less willing to settle into the middle-age lifestyle the way their parents were,'' Goldstein says.
They'll probably also retire much later than their parents, for two reasons: Many haven't been able to save the way their parents did, and there just aren't the numbers of well-educated younger people needed to replace them in the work force.
Still, boomers will retire someday, and they'll be just as interested in government support as today's older adults are. As boomers move inexorably toward 65, Friedland expects a debate in Washington over federal entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security that will make this year's budget-crisis gridlock seem like a birthday party.
That's because, as designed, neither Social Security nor Medicare will be able to keep up with the enormous increase in the number of beneficiaries, Friedland says. The two programs have remained solvent, he says, by relying on the productivity of the baby boomers to fund benefits for current beneficiaries.
The answer? Friedland and other experts predict boomers will be more willing to see entitlement programs cut and restructured, rather than risk losing them altogether.
The American Association of Retired Persons is gearing up to invite new 50-year-old boomers to join. Those who accept will become part of the nation's most powerful senior-citizen lobby and will become subscribers to the group's flagship magazine, Modern Maturity.
But AARP doesn't expect many will accept the invitation, says spokesman Tom Otwell, since most new 50-year-olds are in age denial.
``They don't want Modern Maturity unless it comes in a plain brown wrapper,'' he says.
Phyllis Thomas of Virginia Beach, who turns 50 in November, says she'll probably join AARP then hide Modern Maturity and other literature from the group. ``I don't want anyone else to see it,'' she said.
And Clayton Reid of Virginia Beach, who turns 50 on Wednesday, says he'll just throw his invitation in the trash. ``I'm not ready yet,'' says the compact and physically fit boomer.
AARP has tried to prepare for the changing demographics by redesigning its magazine to appeal to a younger audience.
Yet for some midlifers, the impetus to join may not be their age, Otwell says, but the issues they face with aging parents. For in the next 20 years, the ``me generation'' will turn into the caregiving generation, as boomers cope with 70-, 80- and 90-year-old parents.
Kathleen Blanchard, assistant director for programs at the Southeastern Virginia Areawide Model Program, which works with the region's disabled and elderly, says SEVAMP is already providing more caregiving seminars to local employers and more caregiving information to children of the region's elderly.
People are not ``shrugging off'' these issues, she says. ``They're meeting it head on.''
Nor are they viewing their health with nonchalance. Blanchard sees people changing their lifestyle to live a healthier life.
It's a formula Fair has been following. In the past year, she's become more concerned with her health. She had her first mammogram. She walks every day with a friend who is in her 70s.
An increased emphasis on health and fitness falls right in line with what Goldstein tells clients of his consulting firm to expect. He offers another prediction: The boomers will start a trend in the next decade, a trend he calls ``self-acceptance.''
``When you turn 50, you start to get some wake-up calls. You recognize you're not going to be president of the United States, or even the president of your company. That you're not going to live forever. That your family isn't going to look like Ozzie and Harriet.
``These kinds of wake-up calls or recognitions are the beginning of the work that has to happen as you pass through a transition.''
For some, those recognitions will unleash an episode of despair and self-loathing, he says. But others will find it ``terrifically liberating to say, `This is what my life is. It's my life and I own it.' And to make peace with the things they can't change.''
Hornbeck has done that. ``You realize at 50 that the die is cast, your life, your career, all of that,'' he says. ``I'm doing what I want to do, I'm where I need to be and want to be.''
And he's beginning to peek over the horizon into retirement land, spending more time examining mutual funds, thinking about where he and his wife might retire.
But that doesn't mean he's ready for cardigan sweaters and bridge games.
``We will not function as we get older like our grandparents did as older citizens,'' he vows of himself and his generation. ``We're not going to go quietly.'' MEMO: PREDICTIONS ABOUT AGING BOOMERS
Boomers will make career shifts well into their middle years.
They won't retire as early as their parents did.
Boomers will pursue more fitness and health-related products.
We'll see more articles with headlines like: ``50 and Fabulous,''
``50 and Fit.''
Many age-related maladies will undergo close scrutiny, with more
funding for research on such things as male-pattern baldness,
osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease and menopause.
More people will return to school.
Human resources departments will have their hands full redefining
jobs and looking at such alternatives as telecommuting, flexible hours
and job sharing to keep their high-priced and talented worker pools in
place.
Source: Ross Goldstein, president of Generation Insight, a San
Francisco-based consulting firm that tracks the progress of the Baby
Boom generation for advertising and marketing clients.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by HUY NGUYEN, The Virginian-Pilot
Sandy Fair: She, like the Baby Boom, turns 50 today. ``I imagine
I'm supposed to feel old, but I don't,'' says Fair, of Norfolk. But
with an eye on the future, she's watching her health.
Clayton Reid: AARP? Modern Maturity magazine? WHAT?! says Reid, of
Virginia Beach. He'll turn 50 on Wednesday. If he gets any such
invitations from organizations for older folks, he'll pitch them
into the trash. ``I'm not ready yet,'' he says.
KEYWORDS: SENIOR CITIZEN BABY BOOMER AGING by CNB