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The 76 million Baby Boomers have hit older age and beyond

May 20, 2025

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Linda, Jane and Ben, all Baby Boomers, are experiencing something new. Never before has in American history has this particular group of people - 76 million to be precise, had to face their aging issues with the dynamics of this age. By definition, it never has been 2025 before, with the medical advances, technology, social media, and all the aspects of current modern society in place.

Boomers are different

Baby Boomers think and live differently than their parents and grandparents, as most generations do. But for the Boomers it is a little bit different, because our generation made a much larger societal shift than the previous ones. Sure, our parents, many first generation Americans, were different from their immigrant parents, who still spoke their native language, and may have worked in working class jobs to make a better life for their families. Boomer parents were the parents of the 1950’s, having living through World War Two, and the prosperity of the 1950’s, with Father Knows Best, stay-at-home wives making nice suburban homes for their husbands who would come home from work on the train or factory or office building, and would being there with milk and cookies as we Boomer kids came home from school.

The 60’s - all hell breaks loose.

Then the 1960’s hit, and all hell broke loose. The Boomers rebelled against the materialism of their parents, and they didn’t understand the point of the Vietnam war, seeing so many of their classmates getting killed for an obscure idea which seemed to have nothing to do with their lives. They embraced the growing civil rights movement - seeing and feeling the hundreds of years of inequity of abominable slavery and Jim Crow for African Americans; and women wanted to be equal to men in all ways, economically, politically, and sexually. Rock and Roll music created the fuel for a movement and the sixties’ hippie revolution began. This was a huge, societal change from their parents, far exceeding any rebellious activity their parents may be engaged in from their parents. A term was even invented for it - “the generation gap.” Our parents and grandparents had the same values, with maybe different clothes, accents and taste. For the boomers in the 1960’s, in our teens and twenties, our parents were like aliens. We still loved the aliens, but they seemed like a different species.

And now, here we are.

And now, we are the older people. While many of us do feel “old” - especially if you’ve got some physical or cognitive issues - many of us don’t. To some degree, we feel different than our parents and grandparents did. We feel younger. Hell, we’ve all heard that 60 is the new 40, and 75 is the new 60. Studies show that a generation ago, when people were asked, “what is being old,” they would answer, ‘people in their 60’s.” If you asked that question now, people would say, 80 or even 85 is now old.

Boomers think differently and want different things than their parents and grandparents. Starting in the 1960’s, Boomers have wanted meaning in their lives. They saw through the materialism of the 1950’s, and while having a washing machine and dishwasher in the house made our mothers ecstatic – it didn’t quite do it for the Boomers. Many (not all) middle-class Boomers grew up in a safe, if modest, home, that had most of what they needed – a roof over their heads, plenty of food and clothes, a back yard, in a warm and nurturing two-parent family with one or two sisters and brothers. As Maslov has told us, when you have those basic elements of human life you then want more – you want meaning. That’s what the 60’s were all about.

So now, in our twilight years, we will want more again, as we have throughout our lives. Boomers have changed society in every generation they have been. We changed what it was like to be a teenager. We changed what raising children was like. We changed what being an empty nester was like. And we will change what being older and being a senior means.

In some ways, the history of senior care in the United States perfectly matches with the last three generations. Boomer’s grandparents were happy with just surviving – which was what I believe the nursing home industry in the 1960’s was all about and I call Senior Living 1.0. It gave people the care they needed, but not a quality of life. Boomer’s parents got to experience what I call Senior Living 2.0 - the assisted living revolution of the 1990’s and 2000’s. It has been better, usually studio rooms (like their family homes in the 1950’s), in a cozy and friendly environment, with better food, and better activities. But many times still with institutional programming while in a residential environment. There still isn’t much individuation.

And now, in what I call Senior Living 3.0, the Boomers will come with different needs, wants and expectations. They will not be satisfied with their grandparent’s nursing homes, which they hate, or their parents assisted living communities, which they are not crazy about. They will want something new, something different, something with more meaning, more individuation, something better.

As a boomer myself, and a thirty- year veteran of the senior living business, having spent my life working in nursing homes and assisted living communities, despite providing the best personal care and quality of life we could, I always had a feeling that something was somewhat off in these models. But I think now I have some idea of what the Baby Boomers will want.

And what does that look like? It will have many looks to it. I know what Baby Boomers don’t want - they don’t want a “facility” that looks and “feels” like an old-age home. They don’t want to live with just 80 and 90 year old people. They will want better food and dietary options, and don’t want to have to go to a dining room three times a day. They will want purpose in their lives, and won’t just settle for Bingo.

They will want to do what the hell they want to do, just as if they were living at home. They don’t want the tightly programmed atmosphere of many senior communities.

In fact, many of us will want to stay home, and receive any care or personal support we want there. And we will. Technology now allows us more personal care, more supervision and more activities now available at home.

There will be many options and models. But I hope to get you thinking. I hope to get the Baby Boomers or their children who are reading this thinking about how you are going to live the final years and decades of your life.

You can make a difference.

You can have an impact on the direction of senior living. The changes are happening NOW. If you speak up, through this newsletter and other forums, we can make the changes we all want and need. Just like the politicians tell us that we all need to speak up about what we want for this country, I am telling you we all need to speak up about how we want to live as older folks in America, and what that is going to look like.

The people who work in senior living

I also want the people who work in senior living to think about how they can change their buildings, systems, and campuses into something the Baby Boomers can thrive in. I know it is hard to think about the near future when you are swamped with the the present issues. But it is important.

My hope is that we can all re-imagine senior living as the seventy-six million Baby Boomers meld into older age and as we enter this second quarter of the twenty-first century.

As one of my favorite characters, Vinny, in the movie, My Cousin Vinny, said (in a New York accent) “ we can doo it. I know we can.”

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