Boomers: The last generation of family men?

This fall, when our senior softball season ended, a league-wide email went out, announcing the beginning of winter bowling league.

It seems the softball guys like to have these extracurricular activities available year-round.

Last summer, on my softball team, I heard a guy tell the coach he would miss the next week’s game because 'I gotta drive my missus to her cancer treatments.'

The reason seems to be: They have families. And they’re committed to their families. They are good family men.

Which means they also get bored with their families. They get tired of their wives, and their kids, and their relatives. They can’t putter around in their tool sheds forever; they need to spend some time with their boys.

So they form sports leagues: softball, bowling, whatever. Or they join fraternal organizations: the Knights of Columbus, the Elks Lodge.

In short, they need to get out of the house. And they need to do it regularly, for the health and sanity of themselves and their loved ones.

The last of the old guard

The guys in my softball league range in age from 60 to 85. They are Boomers. These men might be the last generation that consciously organize their lives in this way.

The generations that followed have a different solution to getting bored with your wife and needing some space. They call it “divorce.” Or “conscious uncoupling.” After which, they “co-parent.” Or they never get married in the first place.

Society and popular culture have discouraged Gen X and Millennials from taking their wedding vows too seriously. Being married today is almost considered a temporary arrangement. Hence the idea of “starter marriages.”

Everyone likes to criticize the Boomers, for their self-centeredness and lack of sympathy for the hardships of the generations that came after.

But one thing Boomers got right is they know how to create families and maintain them.

Serious business

The Boomer generation took marriage seriously. They entered into it early, while still young and malleable — and when being part of a family was still fresh in their experience.

They married people who shared their basic values, who lived where they lived, who went to the same schools and churches.

When they had children, their parents, friends, and relatives helped raise them.

And they went all in. Your wife wasn’t just your sexual partner for a few years. She was your flesh and blood. She was the cornerstone of your life.

Acts of love

Last summer, on my softball team, I heard a guy tell the coach he would miss the next week’s game because “I gotta drive my missus to her cancer treatments.”

Probably someone else could drive her. A friend. An adult child. But he would do it himself — of course he would — because he was the husband and she was the wife.

I’m guessing this is how they have lived their whole lives. It wasn’t a question of loyalty. That was decided decades ago. This was a matter of who is the person who is closest to you. Who has been with you through everything else and will stay with you to the end.

Trendy condos

Nowadays, a typical excuse to escape such commitment is: “We grew apart.” But there’s no such thing in a real family.

Sure, people change. Sometimes they change a lot. But fundamental relationships don’t change. Do you grow apart from your parents? From your siblings? From your dog?

How much do you have to change so that your cousin is no longer your cousin?

It sounds reasonable that you could grow apart from your third wife if she wants to study Thai massage in New Mexico.

But you don’t “grow apart” from real family. You’re stuck with them. Your wife is your wife. She’s not your girlfriend.

RELATED: My parents ‘arranged my marriage’ at 16; maybe I should have taken them up on it

Harold M. Lambert/Getty Images

Gen X and beyond

I feel like my age group was the beginning of the end of this way of thinking.

Ours was the first generation of no-fault divorce. Of older guys dumping their wives for women 20 years younger. Of women getting sick of picking up their husband’s socks and opting for a trendy condo, a corporate job, and the chance to meet someone new. Like they see women do on TV.

Where’s the sign-up sheet?

I’m not a big bowling guy. But I might sign up for winter bowling league. Because I like being around these Boomer guys. I look up to them. I admire their concepts of commitment and duty.

How many younger men ever think about their “duty”? The word barely exists in their vocabulary.

And I include myself in this group. I’m a Gen Xer, and society told me that marriage was a trap, a hindrance, a burden I would be foolish to take on. A family would prevent me from following my dreams. And I believed it.

I’m not proud of that. But I can at least spend some time in the company of men who took the more selfless path and eventually reaped the rewards.

When it’s my turn for my late-life medical treatments, I’ll probably be taking an Uber. And I won’t be the only one.

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