Dear Baby Boomers

Dear Baby Boomers who so readily offer parenting criticism and advice to Gen X and Millennial parents, I have a few questions for you:

1. Did you worry about mass shootings at your kids’ school on a daily basis?

2. Did you need to comfort your children when the latest lockdown drill felt like the real thing and they literally feared for their lives?

3. Did you agonize over the world’s inaction on climate change and what will be left for your children when they reach adulthood?

4. Were you concerned about the effects of a 24-hr news cycle on a child’s brain and feel like you had to constantly censor the POTUS because he’s a cruel bully who uses lies and misinformation to manipulate people?

5. Did you fathom that your children could be bullied or even targeted by sexual predators without even leaving the house and just accessing the internet from home?

6. Did you listen to the advice of your elders and get a degree with the promise of a good-paying job only to discover you’re still paying for said degree years later and barely scraping by while billionaires get richer as they grind the poor?

7. Did you struggle paying for childcare because you need two incomes to survive but childcare is so expensive that it took almost the entirety of the second paycheck?

8. Did you have to balance your own career and teaching school to your children from home in the middle of a global pandemic?

9. Did you fear losing your parents to a deadly virus taking lives all over the world while selfish science-deniers refused to wear masks and socially-distance because… freedom?

10. Did you agonize over protecting your parents’ and your children’s physical health AND mental health because said deadly virus was literally killing people but also leaving people isolated from human connection?

11. Did you have constant access to a plethora of information on the best way to parent and then get ridiculed for following such advice because there really are no right answers that fit every family or situation?

Look, I’m not saying parenting was easier for you. I’m just saying it’s different now. Despite what many in your generation say, most of us aren’t lazy. We aren’t entitled. We are trying to keep everyone alive and healthy. So the next time you criticize our kids for being too loud, speaking their mind, or not eating their vegetables, stop. We’re raising humans in a world that doesn’t have the resources to take care of them when they reach adulthood. We’re raising humans in an unapologetic capitalist society that only works for a select few, most of whom are rich white folks. We’re raising humans in the middle of a global pandemic as many of our government leaders race to the front of the line for the vaccine while they downplay the deaths of 1.7 million people worldwide.

We’re trying to fix messes we didn’t create while raising smart, healthy, and kind children. Please give us a break for crying out loud.