After marrying at 21 to a doctor who served in the Vietnam War, Casey-Kirschling worked part time and earned a master's degree in nutrition. It was, she admitted, the American dream of her mother's generation.
But as her 40th birthday approached, she found herself in the throes of a divorce, the mother of two teenage girls.
Now remarried, she looks forward to dividing her retirement between homes in Florida and Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.
The youth worship that once defined the boomer generation is giving way to a veneration of the twilight years. Most US media markets have radio stations that play music of the 1960s, and it is impossible to turn on the television in the US without being confronted by images of now wrinkled counter-culture icons fronting advertisements for retirement savings plans.
"It seems that at every age that the baby boomers tended to be is the age that is the age to be," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
"It was the case when they were out at Woodstock protesting. It was the case when they went off to college. It was the case when they started buying their first homes. It was the case when they started going into the stock market in a big way, and it is going to be the case now whether they are going to some new age commune retirement community or taking up new hobbies," he said. "They are certainly going to be at the center, just by virtue of their size."
RSS