History Summative: The Baby Boom

The Baby Boom was one of the most important events in Canadian history and continues to impact how we live our lives today. After World War 2 ended, between the years of 1945 and 1965, there was a huge increase in population known as the Baby Boom. The Baby Boom occurred because soldiers came home from war with a victory and were finally ready to start a family with their wives or girlfriends in a time when there was a good economy. In 1959, 20 percent of all women who were in their twenties had babies and the average family had three to four children (1). Around 1961, births per 1000 women aged 15-49 hit almost 4,000 (5).In total, more than 8. 2 babies had been born during the baby boom in Canada (2). These statistics give you an indication about how densely and quickly the population increased and how this bulge in the population could not be ignored through the years. Many events in history have helped shape Canada into the country it is today, but nothing has made such an impact on how we have lived, live now, and will continue to live as much as the baby boom has. The Baby Boom created an overwhelming demand for homes because of expanding families needing more room for their newborn children, this demand led to something called â€Å"Suburbia†.More than 1. 1 million housing units were built in the 1950’s (3) to adjust to all of the new families who needed homes – this began the first decade of â€Å"urban sprawl†. There would also be a big huge demand for nurses, school teachers, doctors and such to take care of the huge amount of new kids born as a result of the Baby Boom. Canada’s economy had gone from making Bren Machine Guns just a few years earlier for the war to making baby carriages, baby clothes, new cars, and bunk beds for all the new children that had just recently entered into the world.A few years later, during the 1950’s, when the â€Å"baby boomers† started to become teenagers, society had to a djust accordingly as well. Many communities began to build new arenas, recreational facilities, organizations, and â€Å"teenager hangouts† in order to make up for the huge amount of adolescents roaming their society. In the same time period the baby boomers also began to greatly influence music culture and such. Teenagers tended to listen to the big rock and roll stars at the time, including Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Ottawa’s very own Paul Anka (4).Marketers began to realize that the more they used these songs, the more money they would make. That being said, the baby boomers virtually catered to not only the music industry, but things such as film and books as well. The baby boomers were controlling the way the 50’s and 60’s would later be viewed and talked about in the future. The Baby Boomers are affecting today’s communities. The average baby boomer would be around 65 years old this year. Today, they don’t necessarily rule the medi a world, but they do have a huge impact on job openings for young people.The baby boomers are occupying all of the big jobs of today, making it harder for younger people to find jobs that pay well to support their families. Luckily for teenagers of today, soon the baby boomers will be retiring all at once, leaving a huge amount of job openings in their path. Once the baby boomers retire and become seniors, the taxes may be forced to increase in order to cater to the needs of the huge amount of elderly and their requirements, such as government pensions, and Medicare.There might also be smaller changes that the average person wouldn’t notice, such as the demand for soccer fields and hockey arenas may decrease and golf courses could become more popular. If the Baby Boom from 1945- 1965 didn’t happen, the world today, leading up to today, and even the future, would be very different from the way we live now. When the baby boomers were originally born, they required a huge amount of new housing and supplies, as well as causing a vast increase in population in a very short period of time.When the baby boomers grew up to be teenagers, they virtually controlled the media scene and also required a lot of new buildings and things to be built. Even now, when they are almost seniors in our society, they control a lot of things, one of the bigger things being employment. The Baby Boom happened around 55 years ago, and it still is showing impact on Canada’s development today. There are many other events in Canada’s history that contributed to Canada’s development but nothing continues to have as much of a significant impact as the Baby Boom does.