Baby Boomers and the Death Café

Abstract

This chapter examines the key demographic that attends Death Cafés, the Baby Boomers, that is, those born between 1946 and 1964. The chapter notes how by participating in these monthly or bimonthly meetings, Café attendees are in the process of personalizing their own crucial narrative and expectations regarding end-of-life issues. They are preempting technical control by institutionalized medicine and distortions by the media and market, a process that takes place in a supportive community environment. In the chapter, emphasis is also placed on how the Boomers generation witnessed if not participated in the Civil Rights struggle, inculcating in many a rather dauntless orientation toward perceived systemic abuse. They are mindful of this as they are now—in the guise of Death Café attendees—contesting large systems that are attempting to monopolize a discourse that purportedly frames and articulate their curiosities and concerns about mortality. The chapter also discusses a landmark study by the Pew Research Center in 2002 titled “The Civic and Political Health of the Nation,” one which explores in greater detail how Boomers continue to show their civic and political engagement in greater degrees than members of Generation X and the Millennials. Finally, the implications of the research findings with Baby Boomers’ Death Café participation are considered.