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When my mother texted recently to say she was finding booking her trip to Lake Como difficult because the baby elephants wandering outside her Zambian safari camp were too distracting, I found it hard to sympathise. My toddler had unilaterally decided to move his bedtime to 9pm, the air-conditioning in our 11-year-old car had broken for the third time and my husband’s head was in his hands about our local primary school’s terrible results.
When previous generations found hearing from their parents trying, it was usually because their lives sounded hard – the heating was broken, Barbara from next door had keeled over and the arthritis was back. But for millennials like me, chatting to your mother and father is frequently painful because they’re having far too good a time. Nobody wants to hear about pre-breakfast swims in the Indian Ocean while navigating the Northern Line at rush hour.
“I feel like my parents go on holiday professionally,” says Emma, 39. “In the last year, they have been all over south-east Asia, on a cruise down the Nile, to the theatre in New York and on multiple trips to Europe. It means I can’t ever rely on them to do regular childcare because half the time, they’re out of the country.”
This summer, Emma booked two weeks in a mid-range hotel in Portugal for her young family, but when she asked her parents if they wanted to join (in the hopes that she and her husband could go out for dinner a few times), her mother said no. “She basically implied she’d never stay somewhere like that, and promptly went and found somewhere far nicer in Greece for her and my dad,” says Emma.
A number of factors have led to this generational discord. Life expectancy in the UK is now a little over 80, and for many, that means a second act that spans decades. For those with the savings, the lounge at Heathrow looms far larger than bake sales with Janet from down the road.
“We had the stereotype of a grandma knitting because we have associated ageing with frailty and ill-health,” says Jennifer Ailshire, a professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California. “Boomers are the first people in the history of the world to have really benefited from new medical advice and interventions, and as a result, a great number feel younger and seem younger than those who came before.”
Indeed, where older generations were happy to see out their retirement pottering at home and helping with the grandchildren, those born in the two decades after the Second World War see this time as the reward for 40 years of hard work – and the moment to enjoy the freedom they postponed while raising children of their own.
The second factor – wealth – is as important. Many of these retirees have far more disposable income than any others in history, having benefited from rising house prices, golden economic conditions, generous pensions and free higher education. Millennials, meanwhile, are contending with salaries that haven’t kept pace with housing costs or school fees, while working through one of the most highly taxed eras in modern British history.
“Younger adults today have far less time for leisure, and the idea of a single-earner household has almost completely gone out the window,” says Ailshire. “They have to pay childcare bills and mortgages, and often don’t have the money to do nice things.”
The consequence is that the children of boomers – many of whom are now in their 30s and early 40s – are looking at their parents with uninhibited jealousy. While they drown in the drudgery of everyday life, their elders are accumulating stamps in their passports with the fervour of a gap-year student who has just been given access to their trust fund.
Some of this resentment stems from the belief that parents should be spending their cash in more worthy ways. In an article published in The Cut, younger adults were aghast that “mom and dad” were installing swimming pools in their gardens and buying boats for weekend trips rather than helping their offspring pay the bills. A few sounded positively horrified at the thought of their inheritance being squandered.
“I’m happy that my parents are doing so well,” says Chloe, a young mother. “They’ve worked hard, and they’ve built a great life for themselves. But also, what the hell? Why did you buy a yacht instead of helping your kids pay off their student loans?”
Even the adult children who don’t expect mummy and daddy to be giving them an allowance at 40 do still believe that the two weeks they spend together in Tuscany should be heavily subsidised.
Sophie, 37, had been hoping that her parents would foot the bill for the entire family to go on a deluxe trip to celebrate their upcoming 70th birthdays, both of which fall in December. “My sister and I have really young kids and not much disposable income after mortgages and nursery fees, and had been suggesting Christmas in Austria or in Spain – we were genuinely excited,” she says.
So when her parents announced they were planning to celebrate with a big party in London – which all the family were invited to – and then jet off to Colombia and Peru alone for six weeks, Sophie was bitterly disappointed. “I understand that it’s the kind of trip you just can’t take babies and toddlers on, and they claim that they’ve always wanted to see South America, but it felt a bit selfish. We work really hard, and it would have been nice to do something together.”
For Clementine, 42, the jealousy is less about trips abroad – although her parents do take plenty of those – and more about their rollicking social life. “When I meet my mother for coffee, she is always telling me about the summer parties she is going to, or the book launches where she spent 40 minutes talking to a famous author, or even just dinners filled with fascinating new couples. I can’t relate to any of it. Babysitting is so expensive that my husband and I never go out together, and the extent of my social life is having pizza around the corner with a few other school mums.”
Clementine is far from alone. A quick spot check among my millennial friends and colleagues reveals that nearly all of our parents have been riding triumphantly through the British summer season like socialites from Tatler’s Little Black Book, making their way from Ascot to Glyndebourne to Henley via scenic literary festivals and sun-drenched tennis tournaments. Few of us, meanwhile, have managed anything much more exciting than drinks at the local pub garden or picnics with hordes of fractious toddlers fighting over cheese straws.
For many millennials, part of the problem is a lack of self-awareness from parents who will happily send through hundreds of photographs of azure seas and prides of lions without a second thought. Or, indeed, berate their children for not having enough fun.
“My mum called the other day to ask if she could borrow a black-tie ball gown as she’d worn all of hers too frequently over the last few months, and I had to break to her that I don’t own one because I never go to formal events,” says one married mother-of-two. “She had the gall to sound disappointed in me, and later said I shouldn’t waste my life watching television.”
Culturally, boomers are winning the generational war hands down. “Whenever my parents go to a play or exhibition – which they seem to do multiple times a week – they call me up to ask if I’ve seen it,” says another 30-something mother in London. “Every time, I explain that I have a busy job and two small children, and I can’t do that stuff anymore. What I don’t say is that if they did a bit more babysitting, my husband and I would be able to have a more interesting cultural life.”
Equally, millennials are well aware that with falling birth rates and an increasingly impoverished state, there is little chance we will be retiring in our early 60s. It’s even less likely we will have the funds to cross the globe multiple times a year once we do. “Boomers are the aberrant generation,” agrees Ailshire, “and I’m not confident that the concept of a fabulous retirement will endure much beyond them.”
Despite all this, most of us are delighted our parents have reached pension age with the energy to explore both the West Indies and the West Village, and then hold a dinner party for 20 once they’re home. What rankles is the growing sense that the generations have swapped roles.
Today’s retirees have become the glamorous, carefree adventurers, while we, their children, are stuck at home complaining about the weather and the neighbours – and no doubt depressing our parents in the process.
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