As a millennial, I know what it feels like to be blamed for, well, everything—from ruining the color pink to destroying the global economy. But now that a big chunk of our cohort is deep into parenthood, we’re turning the tables (and turning on the front-facing camera), boomeranging the blame right back—via viral TikToks—to the generation that always had so many opinions about us: boomers.
You thought millennials were the downfall of civilization? Think again. It’s boomers, boomer.
One of the most common threads in these TikTok takedowns centers on their parenting—and now, their grandparenting. Scroll through #takedownboomerstok (TM), and you’ll find them painted as emotionally stunted, selfish and thoroughly untherapized. They're absentee parents turned absentee grandparents who refuse to help with childcare and bristle at any request that implies sacrifice.
Having lived through our own generational takedown, I get the impulse. It’s cathartic to place blame. But lest we forget, my millennial brethren, that wrath will come for us some day no matter how much gentle parenting you impart, how many “big feelings” you validate, or how many micro plastics you avoid.
Because here’s the other truth: a lot of boomer parents weren’t checked out—they were all in. And naysayers opined about that too—for 20 years, helicopter parents couldn’t catch a break. They were equally ridiculed for micromanaging their kids’ lives. As the child of heli-parents, I can confirm: we were raised to assume that if we weren’t writing book reports or dancing through tech rehearsals, we were probably being kidnapped. Why wouldn’t my mom take us to Blockbuster to record an “If I Go Missing” tape? That was normal. Boomers? They hid under their desks during nuclear bomb drills. Their parents lived through the Great Depression and world wars. Generational fear doesn’t go away; it changes shape. But that hindsight often skips a generation.
Blaming boomers might feel like justice, but what is it really? We’re tired, we’re overwhelmed, and the system is broken. So we lash out at what’s in front of us, instead of reckoning with what’s around us. The endorphin hit is a lot stronger after posting a video than the slow burn of change—showing up week after week to school board meetings, researching childcare policy, or building the kind of community support our parents never had.
If we take a page from millennial parenting icon Dr. Becky and her book Good Inside, we can assume that our boomer parents were (and still are) good inside. That doesn’t excuse everything, but reducing a generation to one collective “unhealed wound” isn’t productive. As a millennial, I thought I knew what it felt like to be blamed for everything. But as parent? Now I really know what it feels like to try so hard and still get it wrong.
