The COVID-19 pandemic foregrounded a numerical conception of age. Many of the targets of proposals to introduce age-specific restrictions are members of the ‘baby boomer’ generation, a generation that is widely recognised as having a youthful approach to ageing. Attending to arguments that baby boomers are a ‘bridging’ generation – i.e. they share cultural orientations with both preceding and succeeding generations – we argue that ‘bridging’ is a dynamic practice. Drawing on repeat interviews with 45 ‘war baby’ and baby boomer women conducted prior to the pandemic and shortly after the first national lockdown, the paper demonstrates how lockdown restrictions brought to light older women's relationships to, and investments in, spatial mobilities. We focus on how they experienced and understood (im)mobilities in three realms: home life, going places and social connection. Pre-pandemic, mobilities in each of these realms had been important to how the women established youthfulness and resisted being seen as ‘old’; mobilities helped older women ‘bridge’ with younger adult generations. This bridging was undermined practically, symbolically and discursively by their experiences of the lockdown, with profound consequences for perceptions of their ageing. Restrictions on spatial mobilities created conditions for older women to reassess and narrate the social world in generational terms. Their narratives provide an illuminating case study of the complex ways that generational cohort shapes experiences and self-understandings. We argue that the capacity of baby boomers to ‘bridge’ dynamically is a legacy of their youth.

COVID-19 大流行凸显了年龄的数字概念。引入特定年龄限制的提案的许多目标是“婴儿潮一代”的成员，这一代人被广泛认为对老龄化采取了年轻的态度。关注婴儿潮一代是“桥梁”一代的论点——即他们与前几代和后几代人有着共同的文化取向——我们认为“桥梁”是一种动态的实践。该论文通过对 45 名“战争婴儿”和婴儿潮一代妇女在疫情大流行前和首次全国封锁后不久进行的重复采访，展示了封锁限制如何揭示老年妇女与空间流动性的关系和投资。我们关注他们如何体验和理解三个领域的移动性：家庭生活、去往的地方和社交联系。在大流行之前，这些领域的流动性对于女性如何保持青春并抵制被视为“老”来说都很重要。流动性帮助老年妇女与年轻一代建立了“桥梁”。这个桥梁实际上被破坏了，他们的封锁经历具有象征意义和话语意义，对他们对衰老的看法产生了深远的影响。对空间流动性的限制为老年妇女从代际角度重新评估和叙述社会世界创造了条件。他们的叙述为这一代人塑造经历和自我理解的复杂方式提供了一个富有启发性的案例研究。我们认为，婴儿潮一代动态“沟通”的能力是他们年轻时的遗产。