Connecting Across the Generations

Younger people have a lifetime of rapid and unrelenting social, environmental and technological and social change, with huge and sometimes frightening challenges to look forward to.

It is easy to forget that older people have themselves experienced such changes on a massive scale.

For many, the old links that once brought children and older people into regular contact have been disrupted by single parenthood, job mobility and the breakdown of communities and extended families. Communities and neighborhoods have changed from a social system found on the step and in the street to one of shut-indoors isolation. 

Children and older people can enjoy each other’s company and there is much they can exchange for mutual benefit, but this can only happen if they get together on a regular basis and have connected interaction. Increasingly we live in age silos, hardly coming into meaningful contact with other generations.

We need new ways to connect the generations, and this is the thinking behind Many Happy Returns.

The average age of a grandparent in this country is now 65. Many believe that their group invented youth - and they are having a hard time giving it up, very often, obsessed by age itself. Many are the regular carers of their grandchildren. These one-to-one linkages are rewarding to both age groups, yet they are only a first step.

Many Happy Returns CHATTERBOX cards have been developed to allow these coalitions between younger and older people, connecting through intergenerational learning and enjoyment.

And if you want to understand why connecting the generations is so important in our society, consider for a moment, some statistics:

Currently, about a third of the UK's total population of 60.2 million is aged over 50 years old.

Of these, 9.6 million are aged 65 or over – and of these, 4.6 million are aged 75 years and over.

The number of people aged 65 years and over is expected to rise by nearly 60% in the next 25 years.

Before 2020, it is expected that an additional one million pensioners will be added to the list of people living alone.

By 2023 – people aged 75 years and over will account for over 10% of the population.

The number of people over 85 years old will double in the next 25 years and will treble in the next 40 years.

In in 1951, 300 centenarians could look forward to their automatic telegram from the monarch. Currently there just under 12,000 of them living in England and Wales – and now you have to apply for a card from the Queen. 

However looking forwards, within 20 years, not only will there be some four million people over the age of 80; the number of centenarians will exceed 30,000, passing 100,000 by about 2045.

According to recent research by the charity Contact the Elderly, 68% of the population consider that today's society ignores older people and does not value them. This view is held particularly strongly by 45-54 year olds and those aged 25-34 years. Research studying Contact the Elderly's current elderly members showed that, whilst older people do receive more practical help than in the past, the companionship they yearn for is not met by such service providers.

These demographic figures are probably the biggest issue for our society today - which we ignore at our peril.