So, what to do?

I suppose we could all pressure governments to tighten tenancy laws and ensure renters are protected, to follow the lead of countries such as Germany where tenants actually have rights and leases extend for years and not months. Or we could stop negative gearing except in cases where the investors had immaculate reviews from tenants. It's OK to have fantasies.

Or, more realistically, we could sell our Baby Boomer house and distribute the proceeds among the children (who have tactfully not mentioned this option to either of their doting parents).

How is that process of intergenerational transfer of wealth going for Boomers?

The Bank of Mum and Dad (BoMAD) is a time-honoured financial institution for the middle class. Never has it been in more demand than since the reputational demise of the banks. The usual generous practice of BoMAD has been to hand over huge amounts of cash and expect nothing but grandchildren in return.

No repayments necessary and you can normally trust your parents, because of the natural order of things, not to charge you after you're dead.

In 2010, just a handful of first home buyers used BoMAD to fund the deposit for their homes. In January this year, it was close to 55 per cent, says Martin North, principal of Digital Finance Analytics. He says the amount borrowed from BoMAD on average is rising month on month, even as house prices cool. What's more terrifying is that parents have to fund that money from equity in their own homes. They don't want to sell the one asset that has held them in good stead, so they borrow against it, which is fine while the market's good.

The credit squeeze for first home buyers has had a remarkable impact in just a couple of years, as government policy has clamped down on foreign investors and banks had to rethink irresponsible lending practice (oh, I bet they long for those days, when lending people too much money was the worst of their problems. At least the people to whom they lent the money were alive).

Now parents who hand over huge sums of money are also being asked to become guarantors for the loans of their children. And some of those parents fear they won't have enough money to see out their life expectancy, now stretching into the unforeseeable future. Those parents are asking for their money back, says Otto Dargan of Home Loan Experts. I asked him what was happening to first home buyers, the poor buggers in their 20s and 30s for whom record low interest rates mean little. Dargan tells me six years ago, 75 per cent of applicants for a first home loan had saved their own deposit. At the end of 2016, that number had nearly halved because it's just not possible to stash away the cash when rents in metropolitan areas are so high.

But he also looked at the other way parents help their kids get into the housing market – and that's to become a guarantor. In just one year, says Dargan, the percentage of loans requiring a guarantor has soared 20 per cent – and that's on top of 30 per cent the year before. Even at TM Bank, the amount has risen 5 per cent in just 12 months.

So this generation of first home buyers needs the cash and the guarantee. That's a big pressure on Boomers. I'm grateful to Dallas Rogers, an academic at the University of Sydney in Architecture, Design and Planning, who researches the relationship between housing poverty and wealth and is not a Boomer. His own mum had a copy of How to Make Money from Real Estate on her bookshelf and he says blaming Boomers for the housing catastrophe is pointless.

"They did what history told them to do, exactly what policy and the public narrative were telling them what to do."

Which will never stop Generation Rent's righteous fury. To appropriate Uncle Dickie's advice to Phillip in season two of The Crown:

"You will fall short [of money] as all parents do, and be hated, and you will know what it is to pray for the forgiveness of your own son."

Or at least the forgiveness of the loans.

And history tells us to give them the money.