Boomers are providing less child care to their grandkids than other generations

[thucythucy]

124. I'm very sorry to hear about your experience.

I'm also a rape survivor, and my experience was somewhat similar to yours, including abuse from the police who were supposed to investigate the case. In fact, though the man who raped me had had others identify him as their assailant, and thus was at the very least suspected of being a serial rapist, the cops decided my case wasn't worth pursuing.

"You boomers" -- quite a lot of hostility in those two words. More on that in a bit...

Let me explain one difference between my experience in the 1970s and then moving into the 1980s.

When I was raped there was no such thing as a rape crisis center, at least not in the city where I lived. I didn't even think of reaching out for help around what happened, not after how I was initially treated by the police and close friends, until six years later, when I moved to a larger city that had a newly founded RCC. Like you, I was met by disbelief and worse from people I opened up to originally, so much so that I decided never to mention it again, until the nightmares and flashbacks got to be too extreme.

Getting back to "you boomers"--substitute any other noun that identifies a demographic and see how it sounds:

"You Jews..,."

"You Black people..."

"You women..."

"You gays..."

Ageism, like sexism and racism and antiSemitism, is a real thing, and it's sad to see it so widespread, even on a progressive chat board.

BTW, in terms of my grading my own personal suffering, or that of the boomer generation on any kind of scale; my parents came to America after enduring incredible hardship, my mother in Nazi Germany and my father as a survivor of six years in Soviet slave labor camps. So I certainly don't think nobody "has ever suffered as much..." as me or my age cohort. But I hope you can understand then a little of why I see people who complain that lack of free child care keeps them from enjoying their hoped for European vacation doesn't much impress me as a major life problem.

Again, I'm very sorry to hear about your experience, and hope that you've been able to find the resources and support you need. My own recovery began the first time I shared my story with a sympathetic counselor, and I can honestly say that the women at my RCC--where I eventually would work as a volunteer--saved my life.

Best wishes to you and yours, and best of luck with your recovery.