More Baby Boomers are living alone. One reason why: ‘gray divorce’
More Baby Boomers are living alone. One reason why: ‘gray divorce’
Rising divorce rates for people over 50 are one reason why an increasing number of older Americans are living alone.
The number of older Americans living alone is on the rise. Nearly 16 million people aged 65 and older in the US lived solo in 2022, three times as many who lived alone in that age group in the 1960s. And as Baby Boomers age, that number is expected to grow even more, raising big questions about the country’s future.
"Edith Heyck, 72, was thrilled to land an apartment in senior housing, where her rent is adjusted to match her income." I fucking lost my shit, boomers get fucking everything. Rent that is matched to income? Are you fucking serious they protect their own I swear to god
I have never seen a senior housing facility that wasn't a bleak, horrific nightmare. They may look nice on the outside, but they are usually the last place you want to live in your old age. Out of all of the things boomers get, this one isn't a great one.
Section 8
Income adjusted rent is a thing all over, not just for boomers. The problem is there isn't enough.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Every single time the word Boomer is in the title, people rush to comments to make these insults.
The article isn't describing a necessarily bad thing. It's just noting a trend.
There are many reasons behind this shift in our society, including the economic gains women made when they entered the workforce and changing attitudes toward marriage.
Like...this article has absolutely nothing to do with boomers getting their comeuppance. It's just about a shift in societal behavior. People are getting divorced later in life because it's more acceptable to do so now and women can support themselves better on their own than when these people got married.
To be fair, Baby Boomers are actually statistically the reason divorce rates are so high, and also why they've been going down recently.
Not trying to be insulting, just wanting to speak about the statistics I've read, so I'll try to use the full generation title to distinguish.
Speaking about the generation as a general group, Baby Boomers had many marriages and many divorces per capita. Your stereotypical "on my fifth wife" dudes were Baby Boomers and were a disproportionate percentage of marriages that ended in divorce - basically "Divorce Georg".
From a statistics perspective, a large part of the reason divorce rates are going down these days are because as people get older, they tend to settle down and have less energy for those kind of antics basically, and the rate of Baby Boomers marriages and divorces was slowing down in response - with other generations being pretty much stable.
So on that level I'm not particularly surprised that those attitudes towards divorce are still affecting them in old age. It does pose interesting questions for our elder care infrastructure (or lack thereof) though.
Well, the subheadline did say this “raising big questions about the country’s future” which is just bullshit.
The circlejerk of Lemmy is real. It's the same thing that was so visible on Reddit and the irony is that everyone on Lemmy, even the ones participating in the circlejerk are patting these on the back on how better they are than reddit.
Humans doing shitty groupthink things with other humans? I for one am shocked.
This is just what the Internet has become, it's not the specific protocol or hosted site. Years of people crying over how "reddit" behaves as an entity are already starting to complain here but they need to step back and realize it's the nature of the beast.
Acknowledge, adapt and move on.
I spent like an hour typing out a counterpoint to "SFH bad. Cars bad. Owning things bad." Then I just deleted it. Nothing good could possibly come from it. It doesn't give anyone anything to think about, it just labels me a bad guy. Fuck it. Their opinion doesn't hurt me - it'll take decades if not longer to make a shift like that. I don't care where y'all live after I die. So silence it is.
I agree, fellow lemming! Let us follow this path together in solidarity.
It's exhausting, and far worse than Reddit.
Boomers sure love their "I hate my wife" jokes but now that they finding out that treating people like shit is biting them in the ass.
"My kids don't talk to me"
What the fuck?
P.S. The jokes you are referring to were predominantly a greayest/silent generation thing.
The jokes they're referring to are very much a boomer thing as well. The ol' ball and chain, that sort of stuff is prevalent. Just take a look at any of the "boomer humour" communities and you'll see what I mean.
Not many of the silent generation posting shit memes to Facebook.
Lemme whip out my tiniest violin to express my sympathies for the generation that completely fucked over our entire species with their selfish choices.
Sympathy for what? This is about women being able to divorce their husbands now and support themselves, so it's happening later in life for a generation that got married early and didn't really have this option to separate cleanly.
If anything this is a good thing. It means women aren't* trapped in marriages with shitty men forever. I don't care what you think about any specific generation, that's a good trend for everyone.
Edit: typo
Man I'm on my magical journey to become the most cynical person who ever lived myself but c'mon. There are better reasons to hate someone than their age like for example their weight, fashion choice, how they sound or how much they're into mechanical keyboards.
It's fun to trash the whole post-war generation, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that they were just as victimized by class warfare as we are. They benefited from the economic boom and were then lulled by their own masters into believing it was sustainable and things would be just as good for their own kids and grandkids. They were lied to too.
Never forget that the real enemy isn't any one group except for the oligarchs and leeches at the top of the economic ladder. We shouldn't focus our ire on those people in between us and the top. They're not the ones controlling the taps on the river of shit flowing down.
Those goddamned keyboards. All I hear in this house is the constant clacking and tapping drowning out every goddamned thought I ever hoped to have. I can't get through a single episode of Bonanza without the incessant claxon of feckless tip-tappery. Fuck those goddamned things!
Maybe I should get a different keyboard.
I'm getting so tired of the boomer bashing. It's lazy and just helps to divide us even more. Isn't that what the people with power want?
Dude! You're a keyboard denyist! For shame! He who clicketies, shall clack for us all!
You ever notice how easy it is to take a brush and cover an entire population segment with a certain view? Ever consider how racism and stereotypes become prevalent?
I'm not a part of that generation, but if you think it was any different than today, you're wrong. Power was weilded by rich corporations and government officials who were doing their bidding. It just wasn't as blatant.
Besides writing a snarky post, what will you tell the future generation you did to stop the current situation? Exactly...
Pray tell, what can be done now? That ship sailed, we never had a chance…that luxury was only granted to those who came before.
All we can do is live with their choice, and make sure to take every opportunity to shame them for it.
I will NOT accept apologists like yourself, painting a grand excuse to hand-wave their complicity.
You can’t paint such huge populations with a single paint brush, and even saying “generally” doesn’t cover your complete lack of empathy. Many or even most of those 16 million made choices that they thought were right at the time and tried to live good lives. You think these are the people that emptied pensions and raised prices and drilled the oil despite scientific warnings?
Sure, statically some of them did. But most of them did not. Most of them worked hard, harder than our generation, and provided for their families.
Having that much hostility for an entire population is no way to live your life.
It's also a distraction from the real real villains who hollowed out the middle class and funneled every drop of wealth into their own pockets. They're laughing from their superyachts whenever the middle classes bicker.
Congrats! Your generation is now fucking it over too!!!
Permanently Deleted
This is honestly a good question - I'd be more interested to see it as a percentage of their age group than a count.
In the Census link in the article it is represented as a percentage.
I can understand why they're getting divorced. Would you want to live with a Boomer?
Just to add some fuel to the fire, did you know most universities offer extremely low-cost, and often free, tuition to senior citizens?
That's only for auditing classes. Retirees tend to only take classes for the love of learning. They are good to have in classrooms and don't whine and complain to professors during office hours.
Some older people initiating divorces feel they’ve simply drifted too far apart from their spouses, while some have suffered abuse or discovered shocking transgressions, Myres says. All of them – including some clients in their 80s – feel like any years of life they have left are too precious to spend with the wrong person.
My completely baseless take: they were fine making the "I hate by husband/wife" jokes while working full time; but once retired and spending time together, they realize they actually really do not like each other.
No, it's that in the 2020s divorce is far more acceptable and because women are more capable of supporting themselves now, so they're not trapped in their marriages.
What you're describing has always been happening. For every generation. It's just that nowadays retired boomer women aren't shackled to their husband for the rest of their life.
Yet another case of the old and conservative reaping the benefits of the progress others have been making.
Imagine that, assholes used to treating others like shit get what's coming for them when they do it to their spouses
Get what's coming to them?
Get...what?
The article isn't describing a bad thing happening to a generation. It's describing a shift in culture
Ah, feels like good ol' reddit in here, doesn't it? Nobody reading the article and just posting their stupid take based on the headline alone.
No, everybody loves them!
It's awesome how their "Strong Christian Heterosexual Marriages" they were do paranoid to defend fell apart as soon as their wives had to put up with them in person. Having had to deal with them in the workforce my whole life, I actually feel bad for their wives.
Boomers delusion is incredible, Florida is just going to turn into a living hell.
It's not surprising. I mean, there's a reason jokes about hating your spouse are called boomer jokes.
Those jokes predate boomers by at least 2 generations. In fact, they became much less acceptable to boomers. Their trend is continuing.
You know, sometimes I think if my mother hadn't passed away, things with my parents would've gone this route.
I had moved out, dad was spending more time at home, and she couldn't stand him anymore because he's an obnoxious racist.
Interesting that there was a significant increase during and following the pandemic due to irreconcilable differences over masking and vaccines. Probably wasn't helped to be locked down together at that point, either.
This is the another consequence of the 1950's version of the American dream. Single income family brought home by the husband where the wife stayed home to raise children. Husband needed someone to tend to the house and the wife needed someone to support her. Marriage was imperative for both sexes to participate within society even if you hated your spouse. Kids grow up and move out and then BOOM(er) divorce.
Now that a single income household for a family is almost unheard of people don't get married just for the money so later divorce is much less likely
Living longer (and in better shape) means choosing quality of life over tradition and expectations of others.
No one in their right mind would pick loneliness over relationships
Yeah you’re absolutely right. So consider how bad those relationships must be
Interesting that boomers are living alone and younger generations are being forced to stay together or at least cohabitate because they can't afford not to. The financial situation is effecting the social one.
Your financial situation drives your social situation. Socializing costs money.
Well old age is a bitch, I've seen this scenario happen twice in my life, so I'm guessing this situation may happen a lot... but who knows. Anyway I had a friend... well not really a friend anymore, but he was a cheater, he was ugly as fuck, but this motherfucker (term used completely correctly) tried to sleep with every woman he could, including everyones girlfriends, the shocking part is that it worked, that ugly piece of shit sleep with more women then anyone I've ever known. Our friendship ended when one day we were just chillin smoking a joint and he casually says to me, you know what my fantasy is??? aaaah... sure, tell me, one day I hope to get aids so I can give to all the woman I sleep with...... ........ ........ aahhhh.... shit.... I don't think I'm friends with you anymore. But to get back to the topic, later in life he went after his best friends girlfriend, she was vary naive and trusting, and he got her, they got married, started a successful business together, had kids, he became loyal, he really loved her. One day decades into his fantasy he had an emergency, he had to go to the hospital, they ran every test they could think of to find the cause, some of the causes could be from STDs, and it was. When the wife found out it was over, fantasy now turned nightmare. He deserved what he got, but I'll always be sad when I think of all that time that cheating narcissistic piece of shit took away from her.
Sorry if this is slightly off topic, but this reminded me of her and what she went through.
Sounds like my dad. 5 wives, and never had sex with the last one cause he was too scared to tell her he had herpes and Hep C that he gave to wife 4 ... all cause he couldn't keep it in his pants.
Heyck says she got divorced in her 50s after her son turned 18.
“It was really more of a working relationship than a full marriage,” she says, and Heyck was emotionally ready to be on her own.
But the financial transition, she says, wasn’t easy. For years, she struggled to make ends meet, living with roommates and couch-surfing as she waited for a spot to open in income-adjusted senior housing.
“I was an artist. I lived on the edge financially. I didn’t have a 401(k) … I always thought that I would be married. That was the big surprise,” she says.
How was it a "big surprise" when it's implied that she wanted the divorce to happen? You have an unstable job, divorce your spouse, and then go all surprised Pikachu when it occurs to you that your finances are unstable?
There are a lot of divorced people who like it play the victim when it was painfully obvious what they were giving up to everyone but them. Divorce is horrible.
There are of course many who have escaped abused through divorce, so I don't want to act like they are all the same, but man can people be selfish.
something something... I hate my wife
I always knew my father was an asshole to my mom. Nothing abusive, just an insensitive typical boomer man. But it wasn't until years after they divorced, in their late 50s, that I saw him change for the better, and realized her far more passive aggressive attacks towards him.
They made each other miserable, and while I don't think either of them is really happy still, they are definitely better off than before.
"Typical boomer man"? That's a pretty broad statement.
Oooooo, here comes the boomer hate!
Isn't it amazing, how from a single photo you can deduce that her stand-up is pure dogshit
