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Intervals taken from Generations by Strauss and Howe |
Baby boomer is a term used to describe a person who was born during the Post-World War II baby boom between 1946 and 1964.[1][2] Following World War II, several English-speaking countries – the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – experienced an unusual spike in birth rates, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the baby boom.
Contents |
Characteristics
Size and economic impact
Seventy-six million American children were born between 1946 and 1964, representing a cohort that would be significant on account of its size alone. Their cohort characteristics also include higher education than previous generations and assumptions of lifelong prosperity and entitlement developed during their childhood in the 1950s.
Because the Baby Boomer generation has found that their parents are living longer, their children are seeking a better and longer college education, and they themselves are having children later in life, the boomers have become "sandwiched" between generations. The "sandwich generation", coined in the 1980s, refers to baby boomers who must care for both elderly parents and young children at the same time.
The age wave theory suggests an impending economic slowdown when the boomers start retiring during 2007-2009.[3]
Cultural identity
The boomers found that their music, most notably rock and roll, was another expression of their generational identity. Transistor radios were personal devices that allowed teenagers to listen to The Beatles and The Motown Sound.
In 1993, Time magazine reported on the religious affiliations of baby boomers. Citing Wade Clark Roof, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the articles stated that about 42% of baby boomers were dropouts from formal religion, a third had never strayed from church, and one-fourth of boomers were returning to religious practice. The boomers returning to religion were "usually less tied to tradition and less dependable as church members than the loyalists. They are also more liberal, which deepens rifts over issues like abortion and homosexuality."[4]
It is jokingly said that, whatever year they were born, boomers were coming of age at the same time across the world; so that Britain was undergoing Beatlemania (which in fact occurred before the peak of the British baby boom in 1966) while people in the United States were driving over to Woodstock, organizing against the Vietnam War, or fighting and dying in the same war; boomers in Italy were dressing in mod clothes and "buying the world a Coke"; boomers in India were seeking new philosophical discoveries; American boomers in Canada had just found a new home after escaping the draft south of the border; Canadian Boomers were organizing support for Pierre Trudeau;. It is precisely because of these experiences that many believe trailing boomers (those born in the 1960s) belong to another cohort, as events that defined their coming of age have nothing in common with leading or core boomers (which Daniel Yankelovich and other demographers made perfectly clear).
In the 1985 study of US generational cohorts by Schuman and Scott, a broad sample of adults was asked, "What world events over the past 50 years were especially important to them?"[5] For the baby boomers the results were:
- Baby Boomer cohort #1 (born from 1946 to 1954)
- Memorable events: assassinations of JFK, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., political unrest, walk on the moon, Vietnam War, anti-war protests, social experimentation, sexual freedom, civil rights movement, environmental movement, women's movement, protests and riots, experimentation with various intoxicating recreational substances
- Key characteristics: experimental, individualism, free spirited, social cause oriented
- Baby Boomer cohort #2 (born from 1955 to 1964)
- Memorable events: Watergate, Nixon resigns, the Cold War, the oil embargo, raging inflation, gasoline shortages
- Key characteristics: less optimistic, distrust of government, general cynicism - Dwayne Huntley
Aging and end of life issues
As of 1998, it was reported that as a generation boomers had tended to avoid discussions and planning for their demise and avoided much long term planning.[6] However, beginning at least as early as that year, there has been a growing dialogue on how to manage aging and end of life issues as the generation ages. [7] In particular, a number of commentators have argued that Baby Boomers are in a state of denial regarding their own aging and death and are leaving an undue economic burden on their children for their retirement and care. [8][9][10]
Journalist Jeff Chang wrote in his book Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, "Boomers seem to have had great difficulty imagining what could come after themselves."[11]
One book, written by Colorado doctor Terry Grossman, titled "The Baby Boomers' Guide to Living Forever", proposes how Baby Boomers might avoid death. On page 3 of the book, Grossman writes, unironically, "As an official member of the Baby Boomer Generation, I really and truly do not believe that it was intended for us to die. Death, if and when it occurs, clearly will represent a mistake of some kind."[12]
The humor publication The Onion published a satirical article celebrating the anticipated large-scale deaths of Baby Boomers in the upcoming years, quoting one fictional expert as saying the Boomers are "the most odious generation America has ever produced."[13]
Impact on history and culture
An indication of the importance put on the impact of the boomer was the selection by Time magazine of the Baby Boom Generation as its 1967 "Man of the Year". As Claire Raines points out in ‘Beyond Generation X’, “never before in history had youth been so idealized as they were at this moment.” When Generation X came along it had much to live up to and to some degree has always lived in the shadow of the Boomers, more often criticized (‘slackers’, ‘whiners’ and ‘the doom generation’) than not.[14]
See also
Notes
- ^ Statistics Canada - Canada's population by age and sex
- ^ US Census Bureau - Oldest Boomers Turn 60 (2006)
- ^ Economy faces bigger bust without Boomers, Reuters, Jan 31, 2008
- ^ Ostling, Richard N., "The Church Search", 5 April 1993 Time article retrieved 2007-01-27
- ^ Schuman, H. and Scott, J. (1989), Generations and collective memories, American Psychological Review, vol. 54, 1989, pp. 359-81.
- ^ Baby boomers lag in preparing funerals, estates, et al The Business Journal of Milwaukee - December 18, 1998 by Robert Mullins retrieved 2007-06-18
- ^ Article in the New York Times, March 30, 1998
- ^ Article from the Associated Press, March 5, 2004
- ^ Article in the San Diego Union-Tribune
- ^ Article by Robert Samuelson
- ^ Excerpt from the book Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
- ^ Link to search the text of Terry Grossman's book The Baby Boomers' Guide to Living Forever
- ^ Satirical article from The Onion
- ^ 1997, Beyond generation X, Crisp Publications, USA.
External links
- Edward Cheung, "Baby Boomers, Generation X and Social Cycles". Long Wave Press, 2007.
- Excerpts from Boomer Nation on Plymouth State University Website
- Baby Boomers at the Open Directory Project
| Preceded by Silent Generation (1925-1942) |
Baby Boom Generation (1942-1953) |
Succeeded by Generation Jones (1954-1965) |
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