The problem of the 'Covid generation'

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore many features of the problem of generations that have exercised the sociological imagination for a century.

These include the potential for tensions and collaboration, the difficulties expressed by modern societies in educating and socialising young people, and the potential emergence of a distinct form of generational consciousness.

Yet predictions of dire outcomes for a global 'Covid generation', or the presentation of the pandemic response as something that was done to protect the old at the expense of the young, are simplistic and divisive.

Dr Jennie Bristow, author of Stop Mugging Grandma: The 'generation wars' and why Boomer blaming won't solve anything (2019) and co-author of The Corona Generation: Coming of age in a crisis (2020) discusses the unsettling questions raised by the transformation of the pandemic into a generational problem. Dr Bristow is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University, an Associate of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, and a writer and commentator on generational tensions and interaction. She is co-convenor of the interdisciplinary Generations Network, which seeks to engage academics and others working with the concept of generation in discussion about the meaning of this concept and how it can better be used in policy-making and media debates.

The session will be chaired by Professor Jane Falkingham OBE, Director of the ESRC Centre for Population Change and PI ESRC Connecting Generations. There will a panel discussion and the opportunity to ask questions in our live audience Q&A.