Generation Jones, meet the latch-key kids

I’ve have long suspected that those of us at the tail end of the Boomer generation and just ahead of the Gen-X’ers were in sort of a category of our own. Those of us born from about 1956 to 1961, we weren’t quite Leave it to Beaver and we’re not quite Super Mario.

We were the first “Slackers,” the little brothers and sisters of a generation of Hippie activists who didn’t have what it takes to march on the campuses and “change the system.” We grew up never knowing life without TV, perhaps even color TV, and we were immersed in a drug culture whose harm was often debated. Cocaine was thought to be mostly benign.

Call them whatever, call them Generation Jones, or for our purposes, I will refer to this generation as “BoomGappers.” I’d like to hear about your experiences with these phenomena. If you’re a Boomgapper, or maybe the sibling of one, or maybe you’re a child of one, please share your thoughts with Boomgap’s Blog and thank you!

Here’s what Wikipedia.com says about Baby-Boomers:

Baby Boom Generation is a term that describes a generation of people born during the middle part of the 20th Century. The birth years of the Baby Boom Generation are the subject of controversy. Historically, everyone born during the post-World War II demographic boom in births was called part of the Baby Boom Generation. However, as numerous experts have pointed out, generations have always been based on the shared formative experiences of its members; this was the only time a generation had been defined by the fertility rates of its members’ parents. Many analysts now believe that two separate cultural generations were born during this demographic birth boom: The older generation is usually called the Baby Boom Generation, while the younger generation is usually called Generation Jones. This article deals with the Baby Boom Generation from a cultural perspective, while separate articles deal with Generation Jones, and with the Post-World War II baby boom.

The Baby Boom Generation is stereotypically associated with cultural touchstones like the Howdy Doody children’s TV show, Woodstock, and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement. In general, baby boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values; however, many commentators have disputed the extent of that rejection, noting the widespread continuity of values with older and younger generations. In Europe and North America boomers are widely associated with privilege, as many grew up in a time of affluence. As a group, they were the healthiest, and wealthiest generation to that time, and amongst the first to grow up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time.

One of the unique features of Boomers was that they tended to think of themselves as a special generation; very different from those that had come before. In the 1960s, as the relatively large numbers of young people became teenagers and young adults, they, and those around them, created a very specific rhetoric around their cohort, and the change they were bringing about. This rhetoric had an important impact in the self-perceptions of the boomers, as well as their tendency to define the world in terms of generations, which was a relatively new phenomenon.

The baby boom has been described variously as a “shockwave” and as “the pig in the python.”  By the sheer force of its numbers, the boomers were a demographic bulge which remodeled society as it passed through it.

Here’s what Wikipedia.com says of Gen Xers:

“Generation X has survived a hurried childhood of divorce, latchkeys, space shuttle explosions [notably the Challenger explosion of 1986], …inflation and recession, post-Vietnam national malaise, environmental disaster, the Islamic Revolution (in Iran) …Divorce became common place and affected families of all social and economic backgrounds. Naturally, Gen Xers were affected by the continual bombardment of images of the nuclear family and feelings of inadequacy and isolation from society resulted. …As young adults, maneuvering through a sexual barricade of AIDS and blighted courtship rituals, they date cautiously. Divorce rates grew, however significant alternatives to traditional marriage (from remaining single to same-sex couples to merely “living together”) also arose. Technology-wise the “creation” and spreading of the Internet rendered face-to-face communication secondary, books beside the point, near-infinite knowledge on hand at all times, and tech-related jobs a hot commodity. In jobs, they embrace risk and prefer free agency to loyal corporatism. Politically, they lean toward pragmatism and nonaffiliation…. Sometimes criticized as “slackers”, they nevertheless were widely credited with a new growth of entrepreneurship and the resulting dot-com boom.”