Len and Prue Fenton in 1947.
Growing up as baby boomers after World War II, before the war, during the war and after the war were phrases we would sometimes hear from our elders as they put their lives into historical perspective.
Each period had its defining characteristics. Before the war may give an impression of peace. In fact, millions of people struggled to survive the dehumanising hand-to-mouth existence of the global depression. The horrific events during the war are well documented and never to be forgotten.
But what we were living through was after the war, and our parents frequently reminded us of how fortunate we were. Of course, a better life was precisely what they wanted for us – what the world had fought a war for!
Along with our parents, there’s a tendency for the generations that have followed us to see the baby boomers as the privileged ones who’ve been blessed to live through the golden years in New Zealand’s history. In reality they weren’t all golden years.
It’s worth revisiting the time immediately after World War II, when the returned servicemen and women, and in quite substantial numbers, the war brides who’d married Kiwis, arrived by the shipload. Employment and housing were the most pressing challenges. Sons found themselves having to live with their parents, war brides were forced to take up residence with unknown, and often unwelcoming in-laws.
Those who’d kept the home fires burning, filled the gaps in the workforce, and endured years of anxiety about loved ones overseas were far from impressed by the foreign brides their men brought home. How could they show such contempt for the girls they’d left behind?
My late mother-in-law was a war bride. Nothing had prepared her for the culture shock she encountered in the rural Bay of Plenty.
From London to the cowshed was quite a transition, yet she accepted it and got on with the job, milking cows morning and afternoon, even when children came along.
By the 1950s, the struggle and sacrifice began to pay off. The economy had picked up, particularly in the rural sector, thanks largely to strong export earnings from wool, meat and dairy products. This post-war growth and prosperity ushered in what really were the Golden Years.
Farmers were referred to as the backbone of the country and the government supported them with subsidies to encourage them to clear more land and to enable innovations such as aerial topdressing.
Although I didn’t come from a farming family, the dairy industry also provided our living and our home. My father was a dairy factory manager and we lived in the house provided with the job. It was several years later that my parents scraped up the deposit to buy a home of our own. We were poor as church mice for the first few years of home ownership.
For my parents-in-law, the prosperity of the golden years didn’t last. In the ’60s, the usual boom and bust cycle all too familiar for farmers led to them selling the family farm, moving to the city, and taking whatever jobs they could find to earn a living.
The global oil shocks of the ‘70s were another challenge. By then the first of the baby boomers were in the workforce. With the rest of the population, we did what was needed to survive. If the younger generation sometimes question our make-do-and-mend mentality, they have only to study the impact of the oil shocks.
In the ’80s, once more we experienced global recession and unemployment after what was known as the Wall Street Crash. Then came the Global Financial Crisis in the 2000s.
What more can I say? Yes, many of the baby boomers own nice homes that are now worth a pretty penny, but most of us achieved home ownership through the same struggle and sacrifice our parents modelled.
Eighty years on from the end of World War II, few of our role models are still around. I believe that we, the baby boomers, have a responsibility to tell the stories of our growing up years and the determination of our parents’ generation to work hard and make a better world for us. None of it came easily.
Patricia Fenton is the author of War Bride, and the sequel, After the War. Both books are works of fiction inspired by the real-life story of her late parents-in-law, Len and Prue Fenton.
The books are available from Heritage Press heritagepress.nz
And from bookshops throughout New Zealand.