Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
Posts must ask a question.
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
in my honkey US experience...
I think for many, it is a reaction to their own children not respecting them/their views, and then having no concrete counter argument to why their views should be respected.
I also think they know they sacrificed a hell of a lot less, materially, than their own parents did for them.
also, lead poisoning.
Because most of them were pushed into having kids by their families/society at large, without definitively wanting them or having the faintest clue of the responsibility child-rearing entails
edit - also the lead poisoning as others have said
I've seen a lot of overlap between communities for adult children of narcissists and childfree communities, and I don't think it's a coincidence. If you grow up having your parents treat you horribly and having them tell you, implicitly or explicitly, that you made them that way, it's very easy to internalize that on some level and decide that the only way not to become the sort of person your parents were is to never have children yourself.
E: To give a personal example, even as a kid I always thought that spanking was fucked up and told my dad as much (he spanked me on occasion, but to be clear he didn't come anywhere close to the horror stories you hear from adult children of narcissists), his reply was always something to the effect of "If you were a parent, you'd understand why I do it." Decided I didn't want to someday become the sort of person who thinks it's okay to hit kids.
their parents all traumatized them.
people online act like boomers were singularly awful. their parents and grandparents were bullshit too.
"My parents hit me and I turned out fine" said for countless generations by people who did not in fact turn out fine.
Damn you made me laugh on the train. That was good.
my great-grandparents and grandparents (both not boomers) werent all that nice as well, mostly very miserable.
My boomer mother was beaten to the point of hospitalization regularly and had her bones broken and cigarettes put out on her by her hateful mother who wanted a son. Of the five children my grandmother birthed she only beat my mother (the eldest) this way. They lived on a military base in okinawa and my mother was made to do the cinderella work and raise the siblings her whole childhood. Bipolar Grandma took her own life when mom was 12.
My boomer father's autistic father didn't give a rats ass for him, just wanted to work on his radios. When pressed my father couldn't think of a single kind act his father ever performed. He could disassemble and reassemble a tube television or radio blindfolded though! My father's elder brother took out his own frustration over this situation on my father so he was constantly being physically abused by his larger stronger brother and the parents didn't try to stop it.
I inherited the bipolar disorder and the autism and some ADHD to boot. Not to mention being trans. My parents never forgave me for 'bucking the system' and not conforming. They had to suffer, it's all they were taught, so I had to suffer.
So that's why my boomer parents hated me. They were afraid i was going to fail at life because i couldn't fit into the patterns that they were forced into. They saw my neurodivergence as a moral failure, that i was choosing not to overcome.
I ran away at 16. i go to therapy. I did not pass this trauma on to my children the way it was gifted to me, through physical and psychological pain and torture.
My boomer mother was beaten to the point of hospitalization regularly and had her bones broken and cigarettes put out on her by her hateful mother who wanted a son.
My God, that's so tragic. I'm so sorry that happened to her.
That's a sad family story, Comrade. I hope you're doing better now, feel supported, and have love for yourself.
I consider myself fortunate, I do have support and love and plenty of food on the table! I used to really hate my parents but through therapy I have come to understand that they were victims themselves. I call it therapy privilege! I sure wish they would go so we could talk again but i'm happy to have broken the cycle of violence anyway.
I also want to add suburbs in addition. White fence cul-de-sac suburbs are a very uniquely socially isolating environment that harms people.
The primary answer to why boomers are the way they are is always lead poisoning
Most people (even Marxists) tend not to like deceptively simple answers to complex questions, but in this case it's true
Between the 1920s and 1970s hundreds of millions of people around the globe were permanently brained damaged by one of the most acute neurotoxins known to humankind, a toxin that after wrecking childhood havoc on the brain and nervous system accumulates within the bones of poisoned people as they age, as these people get older their bones get softer and more opaque which releases the accumulated toxin back into their system for a second time
This life-time medical condition is super-charged by the burdens of capitalism and the aftermath of WW2 leading to a genuinely stunted generation of human beings
Is there a source on this, especially globally?
I did a deep research dive into lead poisoning around 4 years ago so I don't remember all the sources I came across, but I still have this one
Thank you comrade!
Leaded gasoline probably plays a large role. There are still some types of planes that still use it today.
I drive past an small airport every day going to work 
At least jet fuel doesn't use lead and it's mostly jets.
I appreciate how the guy who invented leaded gasoline has gone down as having "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history"
Same reason so many of them hate their spouses. They didn't do it because they wanted to, they did it because it's what society told them to do. Somehow, life was supposed to work out for them between the job they hate, the spouse they hate, the house in a place they hate, and the children they planted the seeds of mutual resentment in. After all, it worked out alright for their parents (debatable) and their grandparents (that the early 1900's was practically alien never occurs to them)
They were probably the first generation where...
1: having children was more of an economic burden than a benefit.
2: easy means of avoiding having children existed and were generally available.
3: social pressure to have kids was still strong enough to override 1 and 2.
So you have a bunch of people peer pressure into making an easily avoidable choice to take on a massive burden.
I agree that they had kids they didn't actually want because of social pressure. My parents chose to have 3 of us, even though neither of them liked kids. They'd complain constantly about how horrible kids are, and how awful it is to be a parent. When we'd go to family gatherings, my mom and her sisters would stand around and talk right in front of us about how much they hated motherhood, and how "of course, no one really likes kids." Her closest sister always seemed angry that she had to be around a bunch of kids, but she chose to have those kids. It never made any sense to me. My mom's parents were physically abusive under the guise of "discipline," and I think it damaged her and her siblings psychologically. I'm not sure they know what love is, or that they're capable of feeling it.
At least in my experience, boomers view their children as property. Property-children shouldn't have beliefs or do things the parents don't want any more than one would expect a folding chair to suddenly become communist.
Idk boomers are probably old enough to have gone to school with Laius and saw what his kid Oedipus did
Because Boomers' parents were probably the greatest generation of human beings to ever live and they hated their Boomer offspring (for a good reason). Unfortunately, Boomers learned the wrong lessons from this and decided since they suffered, their kids should suffer, too.
Though I've noticed Gen X'ers have been harsher on their children than Boomers. That's probably just selection bias on my part.
they hated their Boomer offspring (for a good reason)
What reason was that? Boomers didn't come out of the womb fascist.
PTSD. Boomers grew up with emotionally stunted parents while raking in all the material benefits of the "gold ol' days".
Boomers got to benefit from the economic prosperity post-war and it lasted most of their lives. They got good jobs with only high school degrees, access to birth control when there wasn't HIV or hepatitis, drugs were illegal but the consequences for possession were minor due to the drug war not starting until the late '70s, they could afford large homes on single incomes, a summer job paid for an entire year of college, etc.
All this to say, Boomers had the options of living hedonistic lifestyles or working in a strong economy. Compare that to their parents, who grew up during the Depression and fought in WWII. Outside the US, you have people living through revolutions, civil wars, famines, and also the Depression. So when Boomers came along and only thinking of themselves with no responsibilities, their parents realized they spoiled their kids. And taking toys away from a spoiled child is going to be a headache.
Of course, this isn't all Boomers and generational categories are nonsensical anyways. There were Boomers who took bullets for civil rights. Some gave their lives, such as the white Freedom Riders who were lynched in Mississippi. The Black Panther Party was mostly Boomers. The Stonewall Riots were done by Boomers. And then you have people like the Vietnamese Boomers who fought against fascism in the post-war era.
they're jealous that they won't live to witness the end of complex life on earth
Because they were terrible parents and their kids don't speak to them anymore.