I think that there are some meaningful generalisations that the whole generation thing captures -you know: genX, boomers, millennials etc. However it's certainly not to be be taken as definitive but more as indicative or a starting point. My wife and I fall either side of the boomer/genX divide in terms of the dates. However, our attitudes tend to be reversed on the generational characteristics front. I'm the boomer but have a great many genX attitudes, she's vice versa. I put it down, in my case to being brought up in a poorer family where the boomer optimism didn't run too well and to living in a place that was a forerunner in the kind of housing developments and social experimentation that was to characterise the life experience of many Xers ... and well, hoorah! someone else has put it helpfully because we're in fact busters.
As a late model Boomer, ... I'm too conflicted by my membership in an even iffier generation, the Baby Bust. We were born between 1958 and 1964, missed out on the idealism of the '60s, and went straight to the disillusionment of the '70s.
That's right, dead right. Too young to be a hippy but nostalgic for what we never had, yet disillisioned by it all too because we also saw the early downsides, and in my case was never economically in a position to buy my way out of the downsides.
Not a Boom, But a Whimper - Was the Baby Boom a Hoax? By Bruce Reed:
Filed in:
generation characterisation,
genX,
USA,
trends,
culture
1 comment:
The bell curve image is helpful. Any cultural moment will contain seeds of the future, the living fossils of the past and a dollop of what's 'hot'. Individuals tend towards any of these on various issues, I guess. I seem to be an early adopter by temperament if not by income! However, it probably makes me disposed to futuring!
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