Kruse Kronicle

Generations Posts: Index

Here is an index to my series on generations:

 

Introduction to Generational Thinking

 

History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but it Rhymes

Introduction to Strauss and Howe

The Turnings

Generation Archetypes

 

The Living Generations

 

G.I. Generation (1901-1924)

Silent Generation (1925-1942)

Baby Boom Generation (1943-1960)

Generation X (1961-1981)

Millennial Generation (1982-200?)

 

Closing Observations

 

The Fourth Turning is Here

Generations: Some Concluding Observations

 

 

Here are some of the charts I used to explain some of the concepts:

 

Turnings in the Anglo-American Saeculum

Moods of the Four Turnings

Generational Archetypes

Performance of the 1961-1964 Age Cohort

 

William Strauss and Neil Howe are the principals of Life Course Associates. You can find a variety of resources there. I especially want to recommend:

 

 

Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069

 

 

The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy

 

 

Millinneals Rising: The Next Great Generation

Finally, to see articles that are appearing in popular media about generations, you can visit Generation Watch.

 

Generations: Concluding Observations

Understanding trends in human behavior has been one of my lifelong interests. As I have studied sociology and history, too many models I see are deterministic systems. I firmly believe in human free will (even though I am Presbyterian **grin**), and many of these "systems" are just a little too neat.

In popular culture, I often encounter the opposite problem. We Americans want to believe we are masters of our destinies, unrestrained by influences other than our will. I think that misses the mark. Inscribed on the main building for the National Archives is the phrase "The past is prologue." We come into the world and are presented with language, social institutions, stories, customs, and values we had no hand in creating. Past generations have set the table for us in the present. We decide what to do next with what we have been presented but do not come in with a blank slate.

Over the past two weeks, I have presented a generational analysis of recent American History. I don't know about you, but I find this a helpful lens for viewing the flow of history. It is not the only lens, and maybe not even the primary lens, but I do think it strikes a balance at giving some sense of the social forces that drive our age without being overly deterministic. It tells us that there are seasons and that winter days will likely be colder on average than fall days. It does not tell us the daily high and low temperatures for the next ninety days!

Any social theory depends on how well it answers two questions. First, how well does it explain what we have observed in the past? Second, how well does it predict what will happen in the future? The second question is always a bit trickier because human beings have free will. Imagine 100 people who decide they need gas while out driving. They come across two gas stations across the street from each other. One charges $1 per gallon, and the other charges $2. Most of these 100 people will choose the $ 1-a-gallon station because they will reflect on what is in their best interest. This does not mean that they were compelled to choose the $1 station, but it does mean that you will get a highly predictable pattern of collective behavior. I think the same holds for many of the resilient patterns of human behavior. The trick is in discerning those patterns.

How well have Strauss and Howe predicted behavior? I wrote several posts about social indicators a few weeks ago, and you can find an index of them at Social Indicators: Indexed and Rated. If you examine them and compare them to the general trends Strauss and Howe forecast in the chart I posted two weeks ago called Moods of the Four Turnings, I think you will find they did remarkably well. Remember that they were drafting the book in 1996, and the most current data would have been for 1993-1995, depending on the variables. Many variables had shown only slight or erratic changes by that date. Some were moving in the opposite direction Strauss and Howe forecasted they would ultimately go. Yet, with another decade of data, we can see they forecasted the right direction. Similarly, yesterday's post about what might trigger a fourth turning, The Fourth Turning is Here, is almost spooky in retrospect.

If you look at the Moods of the Four Turnings chart, you will notice many of Strauss and Howe's variables are about oscillations within polarities. Society is an ongoing Polarity Management enterprise.

Individual freedom vs. communal responsibility
Protected childhood vs. self-directed children
Inner-directed vs. outer directed
Similarity of genders vs. differences of genders
Institutional efficiency vs. human creativity
Simplifying core values vs. appreciating complexity

These are but a few examples. I think few would doubt that such tensions exist in culture. I think Strauss and Howe have demonstrated a cyclical balancing act as society changes linearly over time.

What, then, can we say about the days ahead based on what Strauss and Howe have learned from past cycles of change? Here is a generational breakdown looking forward from these early days of a fourth turning. (I am borrowing extensively from Fourth Turning (322-328) with my spin.)

G.I. Generation "Hero" (1901-1924)

The G.I.s are rapidly fading from the scene and have all but relinquished the positions of power to younger generations. More than 85% of all G.I.s who have lived have gone on to their reward, and by the end of the fourth turning, fewer than 1 in 250 will be living.

For those who are living, these will be troubling days. It will appear as if all they worked to build is coming apart at the hands of what they believe to be self-centered Baby Boom leaders. Yet, it was another Prophet Generation (Baby-Boom-like) leader named Franklin Delano Roosevelt that gave G.I.s the visionary leadership to survive the dark days of their young adulthood. G.I.s will need to end their antipathy toward the Boomer Generation and challenge them to offer the visionary leadership they are capable of.

Strauss and Howe suggest G.I.s, along with the Silent Generation, might even be able to contribute to a new civic era by way of example. Should something like a severe economic crisis emerge, can you imagine the impact it would have for a group like the AARP to stand up and offer concessions in entitlements to better care for children of an emerging generation? It would be one last demonstration of the selfless civic virtues G.I.s exhibited in youth.

Silent Generation "Artist" (1925-1942)

About 60% of the Silent Generation is alive today, but by the end of the fourth turning, it will likely be less than 20%. They will likely feel threatened by the rising pragmatic "Nomad" Generation X young adults, who they fear are oblivious to all the emphatic processes they have engineered to create inclusion and fair process. But the Millennials, who are children today, are already moving away from the inner-directed individualism of Boomers and Xers. Silents need to be aware that a new Artist generation is being born even now and that, oddly enough, it is Xer and Millennial parents who are nurturing traits in children today that Silents value.

The Silent Generation will continue to fade from power in a fourth turning. Strauss and Howe claim that with each year, they will have less and less power to drive agendas but will still have significant abilities to veto and block actions of younger generations (primarily through remaining senior leadership and within the court system where they will be disproportionately represented.) The temptation will be to slow down and block reforms that may be urgent in a time of crisis because the change violates their sense of careful deliberation and rigorous fair play. There will be a growing need to defer to younger generations as they try to retool for their future. Failure to do so could exacerbate and prolong crises. Yet the Silent Generation brings something always in short supply: Empathy. Exhibiting this character and demonstrating how we can show concern for each other during a crisis are invaluable contributions in a fourth turning.

Baby Boom Generation "Prophet" (1943-1960)

For the Baby Boom Generation, it is time to grow up! I liken the Boomers to two incessantly squabbling siblings. Each blames the other for whatever problem emerges and imputes the vilest of motives to their sibling's thoughts and actions. Each threatens to clobber the other, all the time knowing that Mom and Dad will step in if things get too far out of hand.

"Mom and Dad" are the G.I. and Silent Generations. They are all but gone now. No one can step in against no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoner, win-at-all-costs tantrums. With their hands on the levers of power, including the launch keys of nuclear weapons, it is time for Baby Boomers to own up to their position in life and begin using their visionary gifts to benefit society and their children instead of self-aggrandizing political forays. It is time to ratchet down the hyperbole and demonizing, and ratchet up the inspiration and courage of younger Americans who will increasingly seek leadership. Without self-sacrificing leadership, the Xers and the Millennials will be paralyzed from making their needed generational contributions to a new order.

Should the Baby Boomers be unable to rein in their "dark side," they risk plunging their children's world into devastating destruction and misery. (i.e., economic collapse, civil war, nuclear devastation, etc.) Should they rise to the challenge, they could lead the nation into an unprecedented era of hope and prosperity. Unlike the G.I. and Silent Generations, many Boomers will live to the other side of the crisis era. As they pass into their twilight, what will they make of their role in the world they will have created?

Generation X "Nomad" (1961-1981)

In a time of crisis, innovative strategies and institutions must be created on the fly. It will require an unflinching realism that is not easily diverted by past ways of thinking or shibboleths from any quarter. This is a task Xers, as a generation, were born to. They will be called upon to recreate and reconfigure institutions based on the new realities of the emerging world.

This means Xers, often chided for their "bad seed" image, will be challenged to construct a world with all the things they were raised without: Strong families, effective government, and thriving civic institutions. They must shed cynical isolationist, anti-institution, "whatever" attitudes to do this. Will they? If the care and devotion already evidenced by this generation for their children is any indicator, I think they will.

But the Xers have another important role. It will be incumbent upon them to stand up to the idealistic excesses of their Baby Boomer elders, who will consider themselves wiser and superior to Xer leaders. A good metaphor is the firing of "Prophet" General Douglas MacArthur by "Nomad" President Truman, even though it was just after the last crisis era. Truman was known as "Give 'em hell Harry" because he bluntly said what he was thinking. Truman observed, "I don't give 'em hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell." That was a Nomad leader speaking! The Xers may be the only brakes on idealistic elders who may tend to accelerate out of control.

Millennial Generation "Hero" (1982-200?)

The Millennial Generation is just now moving into young adulthood, and they will all be adults by the end of the crisis era. They have a critical role to play as well. By rejecting the cynical and divisive behavior of their elders and honing skills at organizing and teamwork for the common good, the Millennials can earn respect and admiration of their elders while at the same time shaming them into becoming the leaders the era needs. When the crisis comes to a head, they will be the soldiers (figuratively or literally) upon whom the future of society rests.

Final Remarks

I hope this series on generations, and the preceding series on social indicators, has been useful for you. It is the first time I have tried to collate all this coherently. I hope I made some sense and, if nothing else, I got you curious about generational thinking. I will follow up this post with an index to the posts on this series. Thanks for hanging out with me at the Kruse Kronicle.

The Fourth Turning is Here

“Sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America will enter the Four Turning.”

This is the opening sentence to Chapter 10 of Strauss and Howe’s book The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, as they begin discussing their future expectations. The book was written in the mid-1990s. The authors go on to say,

“A spark will ignite a new mood. Today [c. 1996], the same spark would flame briefly but then extinguish, its last flicker merely confirming and deepening the Unraveling-era mind-set. This time though it will catalyze a Crisis. In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. It could be a rapid succession of small events in which the ominous, the ordinary, and the trivial are commingled.” (p. 272)

Based on what might trigger the fourth turning, Strauss and Howe list five scenarios simply to give some examples of the things that could happen. Their second scenario was,

“A global terrorist group blows up an aircraft and announces it possesses portable nuclear weapons. The United States and its allies launch a preemptive strike. The terrorists threaten to retaliate against an American city. Congress declares war and authorizes unlimited house-to-house searches. Opponents charge that the president concocted the emergency for political purposes. A nationwide strike is declared. Foreign capital flees the U.S.” (p. 273)

Terrorists attack using aircraft? A threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists? Preemptive strikes? War declared? President's opponents charge the president concocted the emergency? Is any of this sounding familiar?

The events of September were undoubtedly the initiation of the fourth turning. That doesn’t mean the war in Iraq will be the defining issue that will bring the fourth turning to its climax. The stock market crash of 1929 sparked the last fourth turning, but the climax wasn’t reached until near the end of World War II, 15 years later. Similarly, if this turning unfolds like other fourth turnings, except the Civil War, the climax is probably 10-15 years away. What will it look like? Who knows? Strauss and Howe give seven examples of distress that could bring things to the brink. It could be any of these types of events or some commingling.

• Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
• Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities.
• Cultural distress, with the media plunging into dizzying decay, and a decency backlash in favor of state censorship
• Ecological distress, with atmospheric damage, energy or water shortages, and new diseases
• Technological distress, with atmospheric damage, energy or water shortages, and new diseases
• Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
• Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction. (Fourth Turning, p. 277)

Strauss and Howe have written that cultures seem almost driven to create crises that require reunification and recommitment to the culture for it to survive. Each crisis is followed by euphoria, which leads to disillusion and unraveling, which culminates in a crisis. These are the four seasons or turnings. They are not the first to observe this. Thinkers and philosophers dating back to the Greeks have seen similar dynamics.

As we enter the fourth turning, what does it mean for those alive today? I will tie this all together and wrap this up tomorrow.

Millennial Generation (1982-200?)

Name: Millennial Generation
Birth years: 1982-200?
Archetype: Hero

Like the previous generation, there is no readily accepted name for this generation. Some call them “Generation Y” (after Generation X) some call them the “Mosaic Generation,” emphasizing their greater degree of diversity. Strauss and Howe call them the “Millennial Generation” as they were the generation coming of age as we entered the new Millennium. I will be using the Millennial moniker.

Childhood

Millennials first began to appear on the scene in the early 1980s. Several factors have had an influence on their formative years. First, adults were looking at the dysfunctional behavior of the trailing edge Baby Boomers “Prophet” (born 1942-1960) and leading-edge Generation X “Nomad” (born 1961-1981) cohorts who were just entering young adulthood. Parents, politicians, and experts were concluding that something was going horribly wrong with childhood. Some believe that part of the appeal of Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, was his championing of conservative family values concerning children. Children re-surfaced as a cultural issue.

Second, many Baby Boomer women delayed family formation and childbirth for higher education and starting careers. Many opted to start families as the biological clock began ticking ever louder. Because so many had delayed parenting for so long, these new Millennial children were especially valued by their parents.

Third, leading-edge Xer women were becoming mothers as the 1980s progressed. A common theme heard from many of this generation is a declaration that their children will not have the childhoods they endured with rampant divorce and absentee parents. Xers have tended to be more cautious about marriage and have married later, but when they do tie the knot, it has often been with a greater sense of determination and commitment.

I mentioned in earlier posts that the early 1960s entertainment featured children as cherubic beings like Opie and “the Beaver.” By 1968, children were demonic characters in movies like Rosemary’s Baby and, a little later, The Exorcist. Similarly, E.T. was released in 1982 and became an all-time favorite childhood movie among Xers. Central to the film was a chaotic Baby Boomer parented family with “latchkey” Gen X kids (including Drew Barrymore, who would become a poster child for the stereotyped Gen X bad girl.) It featured an extraterrestrial that was more authentic and loving than human adults. Another Drew Barrymore movie was released less than two years later called Firestarter, about the same time as another movie called Children of the Corn. Both movies featured evil children, and both flopped at the box office. William Strauss and Neil Howe point out that by 1987, three of the most popular movies of the year were Raising Arizona, Three Men and a Baby, and Baby Boom. All three featured children are cherished by adults. It was also in 1987 that Fatal Attraction was released, portraying the potential “downside” to the 1970s loose marriage values.

By 1993, Republican Bill Bennett was publishing his Book of Virtues, championing the importance of raising children with strong personal morality and character. Three years later, Democrat Hillary Clinton published her It Takes a Village to Raise a Child, making a case for healthy societal institutions that support family functioning. Many attribute Bill Clinton’s election success to his ability to connect with “soccer moms” who were intent on providing wholesome childhoods for children. Some claim the two Bush election wins happened partly because “security moms,” mothers who voted for him because they felt he could protect them from global threats. Since the 1988 presidential election, children’s issues have become an increasingly high priority. Everywhere (at least where I live), you can find bumper stickers that remind you to consider, “Is it good for the children?”

As Baby Boomer and Generation X children grew up, you could find increasingly lenient childrearing with each passing year, even between the oldest and youngest children in the same family. That pattern is now reversed. We see increasingly stringent childrearing from year to year, with younger children often receiving more restrictive parenting. As a result, teenagers and young adults today are among some of the most respectful and well-behaved of their age in forty years. Dysfunctional behavior like crime, teenage pregnancy, and substance abuse have significantly declined over the past two decades.

All this being said, parents today seem to exhibit more anxiety and concern about parenting than ever in the past few decades. If children are doing so much better, why is this not easing concerns about parenting? I think it is because forty and fifty years ago, parents saw social institutions and culture as allies in their nurture of children. They could become more lenient and justify being less diligent because other institutions would pick up the slack. Today parents see most institutions of society as dysfunctional, if not outright enemies of what they want for their children. They feel the improvement in their children happens through their dogged determination and not through the community. Plus, the standards of a “well-raised” child keep escalating.

Over the past twenty years, a key aspect of parenting has been the hands-on direct supervision by parents of their children's lives. The parents of Baby Boomers intentionally raised their children to be inner-directed. The neglect of Gen X children virtually assured that they would also be an inner-directed generation. Baby Boom and Xer parents now schedule vast amounts of their children’s lives for them. Children are encouraged to work and think as teams, from school projects to watching “Power Rangers” on TV. That means these children are an outer-directed generation.

The upside is that the Millennials are often masters of coordinating and operating as teams. The downside is that many often lack the ability to make decisions based on long-term vision. I heard one corporate CEO recently say he saw a tremendous aptitude among recent college graduates for task-oriented work, but he was concerned about their inability to connect short-run tactics to long-term vision. Many Millennials feel anxious when their lives develop too much unscheduled time.

The media has also coined a name for some parents (mostly late Boomers and early Xers) of Millennial college students. They are called “Helicopter Parents.” They show up at college freshman orientations to ask questions and clarify policies. They “hover” at registration, helping their kids decide which classes to take. Student advisors report episodes of pressing students for which classes they want to take only to have the student call home on a cell phone and hand the phone to the advisor saying, “Here, talk to my mom.” Some Universities have set up separate Parent orientations to coincide with student-only orientations for the freshman. This is a dramatic change from the world of twenty years ago. Another dramatic change from the not-to-distant past is that more than 70% of children say they have a positive relationship with their parents.

If the Kennedy Assassination was a seminal moment for the Baby Boomers, and the Challenger Explosion was a seminal moment for the Xers, then surely September 11, 2001, was a seminal moment for the Millennial Generation. Just barely four years hence, it is too early to tell what impact those events have had and will have on the psyche of the children who are alive today. It seems likely that it has impressed upon them the idea that the world is a much more dangerous and less secure place than they or their parents believed it to be.

Young Adulthood

The oldest Millennial generation children will begin to turn 25 next month, so there is no history to comment on regarding their character. What might we expect from this generation? Their situation is strikingly similar to that of the G.I. Generation in the 1930s. The world as they know it is confronted with a threat to survival. They look at their elders and see utterly dysfunctional institutions enmeshed in rancorous acrimony. They wonder, “Why can’t these people do anything?” They become increasingly disturbed by the emotionalism of the times and people’s unwillingness to come together for the common good. Forty years ago, Baby Boomers looked at their elders and cultural institutions and saw a faceless efficient machine with no soul. The situation is now a complete reversal. Millennials look at their elders and see folks utterly in touch with their feelings who can’t make anything work. I suspect they will increasingly see their destiny as one of making the civic world work again. If there is a major war or another catastrophic event, it will be on their backs to do the work that makes or breaks the future. If successful, they will have lived out their “Hero” archetype.

A sampling of the Millennial Generation

Kirsten Dunst (1982-    ) Actress
Danica Patrick (1982-    ) NASCAR Driver
Leann Rimes (1982-    ) Singer
Ben Roethlisberger (1982-    ) NFL Quarterback
Lebron James (1984-    ) NBA Player
Ashlee Simpson (1984-    ) Singer
Frankie Muniz (1985-    ) Actor
Michael Phelps (1985-    ) Olympic Swimmer
Mischa Barton (1986-    ) Actress
Amanda Bynes (1986-    ) Actress
Lindsay Lohan (1986-    ) Actress
Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen (1986-    ) Actresses
Hilary Duff (1987-    ) Actress, Singer
Haley Joel Osment (1988-    ) Actor
Michele Wie (1989-    ) Golfer

Generation X (1961-1981)

Name: Generation X
Birth Years: 1961-1981
Archetype: Nomad

The generation born from 1961-1981 has been called “The Baby Bust,” “Survivor Generation,” and “Generation X.” William Strauss and Neil Howe called them the “13th Generation” because they have been the 13th generation since the 1620s. Generation X is the term most frequently used in the media, and for that reason, I will refer to the generation by that name. The name originated from the fact that, unlike the Baby Boom Generation, definitive consumer preferences were hard to nail down.

Childhood

Generation X was born into a second turning. Their Silent “Artist” Generation (born 1925-1942) and leading-edge Baby Boom “Prophet” Generation (born 1943-1960) parents were beginning to question the conformist culture they had been raised with. Beginning with the tumultuous events of 1963, adults of parenting age began to rebel against the idea of family, work, and “a home in the burbs” as the epitome of human existence. Across the airwaves in 1965 came the edgy British sound of the Rolling Stones singing “I can’t get no satisfaction,” decrying the mindless consumerism of the day. There was an awakening to new possibilities. African Americans began to demand that America live up to its creed of equality for all. Women began demanding inclusion in academia and business. Many began to question the billions of dollars and thousands of lives spent on a War in Vietnam. A new consciousness was emerging.

I wrote yesterday that Baby Boomers were purposely taught to be inner-directed idealistic thinkers. As they became young adults in the early 1960s, they exhibited those qualities, although in ways many G.I. “Hero” Generation (born 1901-1924) and Silent Generation adults had not anticipated. The mantra was “I gotta be me,” and if that meant quitting jobs and dissolving marriages to “go find yourself,” then so be it. Divorce rates doubled from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, and most of the divorces were among Silent Generation adults, the parents of the trailing-edge Baby Boomer and leading-edge Generation X children. In a few short years during the 1960s, children went from being a central focus of a fulfilling life to being an obstacle to self-discovery in the minds of many.

The popular media, the legalization of abortion, and the behavior of adults flashed “children not welcome” signs, and Generation X kids got the message. As marriages fractured, parents began to look for fulfillment in other directions. The world of their children was a secondary concern. Generation Xers were the much-written-about “latchkey kids” left home alone. Many children concluded they were on their own at an early age.

As the leading edge of Generation X kids entered grade school and started to become aware of the world beyond their homes, the news was not good. As they saw newspapers and heard the evening newscasts, the stories were filled with body counts in some place called Vietnam. Riots, protests, and assassinations were recurring stories. Stories about threats from places like China and the Soviet Union were frequent as well. There was a brutal murder of Olympic athletes from some place called Israel. There were airplane hijackings and stories about ever-escalating crime rates. Then there came economic turmoil. That was followed by the President’s resignation from office, supposedly the most respected person in the land. More economic turmoil, more gas lines, more crime, and more drugs followed.

As the first year of Generation X kids were about to enter their senior year of high school in 1978, a story broke about Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, being declared an environmental disaster by President Carter. Three months later came another story about a mass suicide/murder of more than nine hundred people (including a US Congressman) led by Jim Jones in Guyana. Four months after that came news of a narrowly avoided nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

As this first year of Xer high school graduates either went to college or went to look for jobs, it only got worse. In November of 1979, Americans were taken hostage for 444 days in Iran. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, setting off an international crisis. President Carter reinstated draft registration in 1980 for all males born after 1959. By the end of that year, the nation sank into the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, with inflation above 15% and soaring unemployment. It was also about this time that young adults were beginning to learn about something called AIDS. This was the experience of the leading edge of Generation X as they came of age.

Yesterday I wrote that childhood for the Baby Boomer Generation was one of continued descent into dysfunction with each passing year. For Generation X, it was one of continued ascent out of dysfunction. The group of children born 1961-1964 was the most dysfunctional cohort of the century. Strauss and Howe used a number of measures shown in the graph below. Compared to any other young adult cohort in the past several decades, this group was responsible for the lowest aptitude scores and the highest rates of alcohol consumption, violent crime, drunk driving, substance abuse, arson, and marijuana consumption. From my own study, I know you can add suicide to the list.

 

All these dysfunctions slowly began to subside with the Xers born after 1964, partly because the economy began to improve from about 1983 and partly for reasons I will address shortly. But there is yet one more defining moment for the Xer Generation.

In an effort to interest children in science and technology, NASA teamed up with the education leaders to put a schoolteacher in space. Teachers around the nation had their classes follow the preparation of educator Crista McAuliffe, the first private citizen to go into space, as she prepared for the January 1986 liftoff. Generation X occupied all grade levels from high school down through kindergarten, with kindergarten being the trailing edge of the generation. When the 28th came, televisions in schools all around the nation were tuned in to watch the historic accomplishment. Instead, they witnessed the horrifying explosion of the spacecraft shortly after liftoff. Most Baby Boomers can point to the assassination of President Kennedy as a defining moment in their lives. For most Generation Xers, it was the Challenger explosion that they experienced more intensely than did most adults. It was just one more reminder of how everything from families to federal governments was an unsafe place for your hopes.

The consequence of growing up in the environment Generation X encountered was that they became the most independent-thinking and inner-directed group of the four generations I have discussed. They learned early on to rely on their own resources. They considered much of adult wisdom shibboleths not worth their attention. They were the most atomized of the four generations and tended to form “tribes” for mutual support. (Does playing “Survivor” with competing “tribes” sound familiar?) Earlier Nomad generations, like the Lost Generation (born 1883-1900), were known for the street gangs they created. They were more worldly-wise at an earlier age than other generations. They were “wised up,” as they used to say generations ago.

In some ways, the Generation X experience was like the experience of the Silent Generation forty years earlier, although by any measure, the threats were much more severe for Silent children. The difference was that during the Silent Generation’s childhood years, the struggle for adults was mostly with outward circumstances as they rallied together as a community and protected their kids. Adults during Generation X’s childhood were inwardly focused as they searched for purpose and vision, ignoring their children's plight.

Young Adulthood

Xers entered young adulthood as the third turning was starting. The Baby Boomer attitude toward them was in some ways like the attitudes the G.I. Generation exhibited toward the Silent Generation. The G.I.s had experienced the Depression and World War II. The Silent Generation was born too late to experience the secular crisis fully and they were considered lesser for it. Baby Boomers had experienced the spiritual crisis of the 1960s with the March on Washington, Kennedy Assassination, Campus protests, and Woodstock. Generation X was born too late to experience this and they were somehow lesser for it. In the minds of many Baby Boomers, Xers were irreverent cynical slackers.

It has been said of the G.I. Generation that their attitude toward authority was “Establish authority.” The Silent Generation's attitude was “Respect authority.” The Baby Boom Generation's attitude was “Rebel against and seize authority.” For Xers, the attitude was “Whatever.” Growing up, Generation X had its fill of institutions, from family to government, which promised and never delivered. If you want something, you must get it yourself.

For business, this meant unusually high levels of entrepreneurial activity. Corporations learned that Baby Boomers valued advancement and status and used those as motivators. When Generation X young adults began to enter the market, these strategies did not work as well. Xers would take half cuts in pay to quit a corporate job and work someplace that allowed for more flexibility and creativity. The dot.com boom was a Xer-driven phenomenon, and while it went out of control, the impact of Xer entrepreneurialism is still present.

For families, this meant cutting through the cultural clichés and really getting focused on the kids. Many Xers expressed a desire to give their children the attention and security they believe was denied them. For spirituality, this meant impatience with hype and wanting authenticity. By and large, cultural and civic institutions were neither entities to be revered nor antichrists to be toppled. They were irrelevant.

Generation X entered the job market when entry-level jobs were scarcer. As the 1980s advanced, the rate of change accelerated. The expectation of a lengthy career with a corporation never crossed the mind of many. They were free agents, taking advantage of the best opportunities, and that didn’t always mean more money. There has also been a certain thrill-seeking quality to their endeavors. From extreme snowboarding to bungee jumping, it is about living it to the fullest. The same is often true for work and relationships. The very idea of sitting in one place with the same company is anathema for many.

As the 1990s unfolded, the entrepreneurial bent and technological savvy of the generation also evidenced itself. Entrepreneurs became quite wealthy, even with the dot.com bust. Globalization has become the issue of the last decade and if you look very deeply, you will find that it is often Xer expertise and creativity that is literally reconfiguring how the world connects. Globalization is integrating more people than ever into a prosperous world economy but in the United States, it is also dislocating many people as entire industries fall and rise at an unnerving speed. Many of the jobs most affected are those of Xer young adults. The greatest social inequality within any generation is within Generation X.

When it comes to relationships with their elders, especially Baby Boomers, Generation X gets it both coming and going. On the one hand, Xers are a generation of amoral capitalists exploiting others with their entrepreneurial activities. On the other hand, they are immoral slackers for whom we need to cut welfare benefits so they will get a job.

In politics, Boomer President Bill Clinton turned to Xer George Stephanopoulos for his savvy and political insight. The Christian Coalition turned to Xer Ralph Reed. Xers have tended to like free-spirited politicians like the independent Jesse Ventura, elected Governor of Minnesota, or the Republican maverick John McCain. But as with most other institutions, Xers tend to keep their distance from political institutions.

Over the years, childrearing by Xer parents has shown increasing levels of protection and nurture. Baby Boom parents in the early 1980s saw punk rock culture and dysfunctional behavior of children and young adults. They made child rearing a social cause. The changes they made within institutional structures were partly the reason for trailing edge Xers' improving behavior. Boomer parents emphasized instilling teamwork and achievement, all they saw lacking in Xer kids. (Thus, in essence, creating a new Hero generation starting in 1982, much like Missionary “Prophet” Generation (born 1860-1882) did with the G.I. Generation, and for many of the same reasons, notably the destructive, rebellious behavior of Lost “Nomad” Generation (born 1883-1900) young adults.) Leading edge Xer parents shared some of the same concerns as Boomers, but the focus has moved gradually toward protecting children from decaying culture and threats of the world.

Midlife

The first Generation X children began to turn forty in 2001. William Strauss and Neil Howe suggest that Nomad generations began to transform as they reach midlife. A pragmatic social conservatism sets in. In the case of this Nomad generation, Strauss and Howe predict that they will move from being X to X-hausted. They are entering midlife in a time of growing crisis. Their elders are engaged in paralyzing and rancorous divisiveness. They are looking ahead and seeing that the social benefits Baby Boomers will enjoy likely won’t be there for them at the end of life. (If history is any indicator, they are probably right.) Those who have done well to this point in life will be inclined to become more risk-averse and protect what they have. Those who have not done so well will desire to hold on to what precious little they have.

The trend will be toward increased concern about the plight of children and protecting them. (Possibly even over-protecting them.) They will likely emphasize all the things they felt were missing in childhood, like strong families and compliance with the rules for the sake of the greater good. They will in essence be creating a new Artist generation, much like the Silent Generation that is passing from the scene. In fact, they have probably already begun this process in the last five to ten years.

Politically, they will likely become the arbiters between the competing factions of Baby Boom leaders, keeping the course from straying too far from radicalism in any direction. They have successfully played this role in past fourth turnings except for the one that began in 1860.

A sampling of Generation X

George Clooney (1961-    ) Actor
Ann Coulter (1961-    ) TV Commentator, Author
Eddie Murphy (1961-    ) Actor, Comedian
Barack Obama (1961-    ) US Senator, Illinois
George Stephanopoulos (1961-    ) TV Journalist, Former Presidential Advisor
Ralph Reed (1961-    ) Christian Coalition Leader, Political Advisor
Jeffery A. Rich (1961-    ) CEO Affiliated Computer
Brian L. Roberts (1961-    ) CEO Comcast
Meg Ryan (1961-    ) Actress
David P. Steiner (1961-    ) CEO Waste Management, Inc.
Jim Thune (1961-    ) US Senator South Dakota
David Vitter (1961-    ) US Senator Louisiana
Steve Young (1961-    ) NFL Quarterback
Clint Black (1962-    ) Singer
Matthew Broderick (1962-    ) Actor
Vincent Edward “Bo” Jackson (1962-    ) Baseball and Football Player
Jon Bon Jovi (1962-    ) Singer, Actor
Garth Brooks (1962-    ) Singer, Songwriter
Roger Clemens (1962-    ) Baseball Player
Sheryl Crow (1962-    ) Singer Songwriter
Tom Cruise (1962-    ) Actor
Scott T. Ford (1962-    ) CEO Alltel
Jodie Foster (1962-    ) Actress, Director
Mike Judge (1962-    ) Cartoonist (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill)
Demi Moore (1962-    ) Actress
Jerry Rice (1962-    ) NFL Player
Jon Stewart (1962-    ) News Satire
Johnny Depp (1963-    ) Actor
Brad Henry (1963-    ) Governor of Oklahoma
Whitney Houston (1963-    ) Singer
Helen Hunt (1963-    ) Actress
Randy Johnson (1963-    ) Baseball Player
Michael Jordan (1963-    ) NBA Player
Karl Malone (1963-    ) NBA Player
Mark McGwire (1963-    ) Baseball Player
Brad Pitt (1963-     ) Actor
Mark Pryor (1963-    ) US Senator Arkansas
Rick Rubin (1963-    ) Record Producer, Def Jam Records
Quentin Tarantino (1963-    ) Movie Director, Screenwriter, Actor
Barry Bonds (1964-    ) Baseball Player
Jeff Bezos (1964-    ) Founder and CEO of Amazon.com
Dan Brown (1964-    ) Author
Nicholas Cage (1964-    ) Actor
Melinda Gates (1964-    ) Philanthropist
Teri Hatcher (1964-    ) Actress
Sallie Krawcheck (1964-   ) Chief Financial Officer Citigroup
Rob Lowe (1964-    ) Actor
Christina Norman (1964-    ) President of Music Television Network
Jay Sugarman (1964-    ) CEO iStar Financial
John E. Sununu (1964-    ) US Senate New Hampshire
Michael Dell (1965-    ) Founder, Chairman and President of Dell Computers
Mario Lemieux (1965-    ) NHL Player
Larry Wachowski (1965-    ) Movie Director
Halle Berry (1966-    ) Actress
Cindy Crawford (1966-    ) Supermodel
Gail Devers (1966-    ) Olympic Runner
Janet Jackson (1966-    ) Singer
Adam Sandler (1966-    ) Actor
Mike Tyson (1966-    ) Boxer
Kurt Cobain (1967-1994) Singer
Matt Drudge (1967-    ) Internet Journalist
Faith Hill (1967-    ) Singer, Songwriter
Michael Johnson (1967-    ) Olympic Runner
Julia Roberts (1967-    ) Actress
Deion Sanders (1967-    ) Football and Baseball Player, Sports Commentator
Andy Wachowski (1967-    ) Movie Director
Gillian Anderson (1968-    ) Actress
L L Cool J (1968-    ) Singer
Timothy McVeigh (1968-2001) Bombed Oklahoma City Federal Building
Barry Sanders (1968-    ) NFL Player
Will Smith (1968-    ) Actor, Singer, Partner in Overbrook Entertainment
Jennifer Aniston (1969-    ) Actress
Tucker Carlson (1969-    ) Journalist, TV Commentator
Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter (1969-    ) President Def Jam Records
Sean “P Diddy” Combs (1969-    ) Singer, Businessman
Trey Parker (1969-    ) Animator, Co-Creator of South Park
Renee Zellweger (1969-    ) Actress
Catherine Zeta-Jones (1969-    ) Actress
Matt Blunt (1970-    ) Governor of Missouri
Mariah Carey (1970-    ) Singer
Matt Damon (1970-    ) Actor
Jennifer Lopez (1970-    ) Singer, Actress
Tim Story (1970-    ) Film Director
Lance Armstrong (1971-    ) Cyclist
Jeff Gordon (1971-    ) NASCAR Driver
Pete Sampras (1971-    ) Tennis Player
Matt Stone (1971-   ) Co-Creator of South Park
Picabo Street (1971-    ) Olympic Skier
Ben Affleck (1972-    ) Actor
Cameron Diaz (1972-    ) Actress
Eminem (1972-    ) Singer
Jennifer Garner (1972-    ) Actress
Mia Hamm (1972-    ) Soccer Player
Shaquille O’Neal (1972-    ) NBA Player
Gwyneth Paltrow (1972-    ) Actress
Manny Ramirez (1972-    ) Baseball Player
Dave Chappelle (1973-    ) Comedian
Oscar De La Hoya (1973-    ) Boxer
Nick Lachey (1973-    ) Singer
Derek Jeter (1974-    ) Baseball Player
Hilary Swank (1974-    ) Actress
Drew Barrymore (1975-    ) Actress
Angelina Jolie (1975-    ) Actress
Tobey McGuire (1975-    ) Actor
Alex Rodriguez (1975-    ) Baseball Player
Tiger Woods (1975-    ) Golfer
Lindsay Davenport (1976-    ) Tennis Player
Reese Witherspoon (1976-    ) Actress
Sarah Michelle Gellar (1977-    ) Actress
Clay Aiken (1978-    ) Singer
Kobe Bryant (1978-    ) NBA Player
Katie Holmes (1978-    ) Actress
Usher Raymond (1978-    ) Singer, Producer, Actor
Jennifer Love Hewitt (1979-    ) Actress
Christian Aguilera (1980-    ) Singer
Michelle Kwan (1980-    ) Figure Skater
Jessica Simpson (1980-    ) Singer, TV Personality
Michael Vick (1980-    ) NFL Quarterback
Venus Williams (1980-    ) Tennis Player
Hayden Christensen (1981-    ) Actor
Paris Hilton (1981-    ) Celebrity, TV Personality
Beyonce Knowles (1981-    ) Singer
Brittney Spears (1981-    ) Singer
Justin Timberlake (1981-    ) Singer
Serena Williams (1981-    ) Tennis Player
Elijah Wood (1981-    ) Actor

Baby Boom Generation (1943-1960)

Name: Baby Boom Generation
Birth Years: 1943-1960
Archetype: Prophet

Childhood

The Baby Boom Generation is named after the explosion in fertility rates from the 1940s up to the early 1960s. There were two important contributors to the boom. First was the return home of World War II soldiers. Family formation had been slowed because of the war and a jubilant nation was ready to return to peacetime pursuits. Second, as I wrote in yesterday's post, the Silent "Artist" Generation (born 1925-1942) young adults saw marriage and work as a way of achieving respect. Ninety-four percent of women born 1931-1935 became mothers compared to only 81% for the G.I "Hero" Generation (born 1901-1925) women twenty-five years earlier.

The experience with fascism over the previous decade and the looming threat of communism led some experts to believe that the best defense against totalitarianism was a democracy of inner-directed idealistic citizens. The G.I. and Silent Generation parents took this to heart. It Dovetailed with the philosophy pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock. Spock encouraged parents to raise children in a permissive affirming environment. Mothers intently focused on raising their children, and fathers worked to build the economy.

Apart from these concerns, the sheer size of the Baby Boom Generation guaranteed their impact would be felt for eighty or more years. They necessitated more pediatricians, schools, and teachers at the beginning of their lives. At the end of their lives, there will be a swelling demand for government entitlements.

What did this mean for the Baby Boom Generation as they came of age? It meant that they became one of the most pathological generations ever! The Baby Boom Generation began to reach college age in 1961 and the last group turned age 18 in 1978. SAT scores started a steady decline in 1963 until they bottomed out in the early 1980s with the first wave of "Nomad" Generation X (born 1961-1981) students. William Strauss and Neil Howe observe,

“From first-wave to last-wave [Baby Boom] teenagers, death rates for every form of accidental death rose sharply – and the rates of drunk driving, suicide, illegitimate births, and teen unemployment all doubled or tripled. Crime rates also mounted with each successive cohort, giving rise after the mid-1960s to “crime waves” that seemed to worsen with each passing year. During the 1970s, the incidence of serious youth crime grew twice as fast as the number of youths.” (Generations, 305)

Young Adulthood

As the 1960s arrived, a new wave of optimism unfolded. A young idealistic G.I. Generation President was elected, and the press described the state of affairs romantically as Camelot. The cautious, conservative Eisenhower era was past. John Kennedy talked of a New Frontier, helping other nations through the Peace Crops, and putting a man on the moon before 1970. However, something was not right underneath the surface.

By the early 1960s, many men were questioning the stifling nature of corporate life. Women were beginning to question the gender roles they had been raised with. Birth Control pills hit the market in 1960, giving women some control over their fertility. With each passing year, the US saw itself being drawn farther into a conflict in a place called Vietnam. Meanwhile, Blacks in Southern states were beginning organized resistance to racism.

The year 1963 proved to be a pivotal one. Betty Friedan published her book "Feminine Mystique" challenging the roles women had played. Trailing edge Silent Generation musician Bob Dylan released his song "Blowin' in the Wind," asking how long war and oppression must continue. The nation was troubled as their TVs showed the brutal assault on peaceful Black demonstrators by authorities in Alabama. In August, a visionary and charismatic Black minister from Georgia addressed 250,000 people at the Washington, DC mall, declaring, "I have a dream" of racial justice in America. Then, in November, the nation watched their televisions in horror as their idealistic president was assassinated. Camelot died with him.

Beginning with events like the free speech movement in 1964 at Berkley, the elite cultural institutions underwent a dramatic transformation in a few short years. Rioting broke out in major cities. Increasingly radical groups like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen began to emerge. Counter-culture groups like Hippies and Jesus Freaks sprang up. There was the summer of love in 1967. Anti-War protests escalated in 1968, and riots broke out at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Two more idealistic leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, were assassinated that year. Illicit drug use entered mainstream culture for the first time. There was the Woodstock Festival in August 1969, which many considered the high point of idealistic 1960s events. Just a month earlier, Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon, but many then asked if the money couldn't have been better used to address social ills. In just a few short years, the nation had gone from the placid world of "Leave it to Beaver" to violent protests and young adults calling for revolution.

The events of 1963-1964 seemed to cause a dam burst. The presidential campaign of 1964 pitted Lyndon Johnson's liberal policies against Senator Barry Goldwater's new conservatism. Goldwater's policies seemed hopelessly out of touch with the national climate, but they actually gave birth to a movement that would come to maturity in the Reagan Revolution sixteen years later. After the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Democrats became increasingly dominated by the cultural elites and reformist movements. During the 1970s, conservative Christians began to reengage in the political process. They supported centrist Evangelical Democrat candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976, but it was Ronald Reagan who linked Goldwater's economic conservatism with social conservatism to build a conservative base, siphoning many socially conservative Democrats to create modern-day Republicanism. Thus, from 1964 to 1984, the trajectory for political debate was set.

As the 1970s unfolded, it seemed as though leaders were either corrupt or inept. The conclusion of the Vietnam War was an embarrassment to a nation that had never lost a war. President Nixon resigned in disgrace from office in 1974. The decade seemed to move from one economic crisis to another. Inflation with high unemployment (stagflation) seemed impervious to efforts to address it. The Three Mile Island nuclear plant disaster in 1979 caused people to question the wisdom of the leaders who were building the plants. Then, in November of that year, the US embassy in Iran was overrun and hostages were taken for 444 days. President Carter acknowledged in his "Malaise Speech" that for the first time in American history, most Americans believed the next five years would be worse than the next five. The following year, an election year, the nation sank into its worst recession since the Great Depression.

The irony of the late 1960s and succeeding years is that forty years earlier (late 1920s and 1930s), the G.I. Generation young adults entered a world where leaders all seemed to be in touch with their "feelings" and bitterly divided over visions. No one seemed to be able to make anything work. They set to work rebuilding institutions that worked and worked like a machine. So effective were they that two generations later, when a new generation of inner-directed idealists emerged, they revolted and condemned the G.I. efforts as stifling and inhuman. The generation of Baby Boomers looked inward and declared, "I gotta be me!" They rebelled against G.I. created institutions. There was little talk of sublimating the self for the common good.

But there was another cultural trend lurking below the surface during the period from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. It is common today to see bumper stickers that ask, "Is it good for the children?" Not so during this era. Strauss and Howe point out that entertainment media of the times symbolically shows a powerful transition. In the early 1960s, children had the cherubic characters of Opie and "the Beaver." By 1968, the character had become the demonic character of Rosemary's Baby and Damien of "The Exorcist" in 1973. Divorce rates doubled from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Abortion became legal in 1972, and fertility rates dropped. Demographers began to refer to the generation born after 1964 as the "Baby Bust." For many, children were an obstacle to the individualistic inner-directed soul-searching common to trailing edge Silent and leading-edge Baby Boomer adults.

Midlife

While looking at the radical events of the 1960s and 1970s, it is often forgotten that not everyone was on board with the new radical agendas. A conservative movement emerged as a counterbalance to the perceived decline of traditional values like free enterprise, family, and patriotism. The events of the 1980s and 1990s were driven every bit as much by idealistic inner-directed Baby-Boomers so were the events of the 1960s and 1970s. In the latter case, it was conservative idealists.

The early 1960s had the New Frontier with G.I. President Kennedy casting the vision. The early 1980s had Morning in America with G.I. President Reagan. The 1980s are often characterized as an era of pure selfishness and loss of idealism (as though the 1960s did not have its share of narcissism.) I believe that characterization is not accurate. The Regan Revolution was an idealistic revolt against the ideals of the 1960s-era idealists. Kennedy sensed the restlessness of the idealists in his generation and gave them a voice. So did Ronald Reagan.

As the nation entered a third turning in 1984, Baby Boomers became adults and had families of their own. As they looked down the generational ladder (both chronologically and in terms of character), they saw the future of their children in the generation behind them. Punk Rock was the rage, and just about every pathological behavior, from drugs to crime to sexual behavior, was at alarming levels. It was at this time that Boomer parents and leading edge "Nomad" Generation X (born 1961-1981) parents began to post "Baby on Board" signs in their cars. With the same driving idealism they had used to challenge the system, they went to work creating prosperous home environments with all the amenities they could afford (and many they couldn't) to shelter their children from corruptive influences. Bill Clinton's elections to the presidency in the 1990s would be credited in part to the voting of "Soccer Moms," so named for their devotion to families and transporting children around to wholesome events like music lessons and soccer games.

The second turning, 1964-1984, saw about 10 to 15 years of energetic idealist changes before waning. The third turning, 1984-200?, began with another energetic burst before waning in the early 1990s. The nation elected Bill Clinton president in 1992. He worked hard to have a neo-Kennedy aura. Then the nation also elected conservative Republicans to control of the House of Representatives in 1994. They promoted their "Contract with America," touting a Reagan-like political philosophy. Two competing ideals and visions are promoted by an inner-directed idealistic generation.

Most of the dysfunctional behavior of youth in the early 1980s declined over the next two decades. However, it seemed as though institutions were decaying and losing credibility. Twenty and thirty years before, parents had viewed social institutions as allies in raising their families. By the 1990s, they were often viewed as the enemy.

Elderhood

I expect we will look back in a few years and identify September 11, 2001, as the beginning of the fourth turning. Writing in the mid-1990s, Strauss and Howe expected some catalyzing event to happen around 2005, give or take a few years. They now seem prophetic in retrospect.

By the end of the third turning, America had elected Baby Boomer Bill Clinton twice, and Baby Boomer George Bush had just been elected. The 2000 and 2004 elections were two of the closest elections in history. The Republicans narrowly control both Houses of Congress. The nation is now referred to as the red and blue states (Eerily reminiscent of the start of another fourth turning in 1860, where there were free states and slave states.) Baby Boomers are now nearly in control of all levers of power throughout the culture. They occupy the presidency and easily have the majority of seats in Congress.

If history is any lesson, there is reason for concern. The first Baby Boomers will begin to retire in 2007. As a prophet generation begins to reach the end of life, there seems to emerge a growing sense that destiny has not yet been fulfilled. With the same vigor, they attacked issues of their youth and the issues of midlife, they turned toward the fulfillment of their prophetic vision. Their visions are not just philosophical abstracts. They are moral imperatives based on immutable standards. But which vision and which immutable standards?

As you examine the opinions of Baby Boomers about controversial events, you will see a common dynamic. When measuring not only favorability but intensity felt about a position, Baby Boomers often have the most intense feelings at both ends of the favorability question! They were the most in favor and the least in favor of the Vietnam War. They were the most in favor and least in favor of the 1991 Gulf War.

Each advance of one vision is perceived by adherents of the other vision as apocalyptic. The rancor and hyperbole ratchet ever higher as each side presses for their vision to prevail. Eventually, some crisis (which they have usually had a part in creating) brings the conflict to a head. Each of the last three crisis eras climaxed in destructive wars (1940s World War II, 1860s Civil War, 1770s Revolutionary War.) Of course, the difference now is we have nuclear weapons. If history is any indicator, we had better hold on to our seats. The next 15-20 years are going to be a bumpy ride.

Conclusion

The Baby Boom Generation was raised during a time of peaceful prosperity. They were socialized to be an inner-directed idealistic generation. As they entered adulthood, they rejected what they saw as a sterile and plastic world. Opportunities for women and minorities were expanded, and many began to explore spirituality and inner peace. It was also a time of neglecting children and distrust of civic institutions. At the third turning, another vision emphasizing economic freedom and family emerged as they entered midlife. They worked hard to provide prosperous environments for families, but civic institutions seemed decayed. They now found themselves entering elderhood and becoming aware of their mortality. They are beginning to focus their energy on the unfinished agendas of their prophetic destiny.

A sampling of the Baby Boom Generation

Presidents: William Jefferson Clinton, George Walker Bush

William Bennett (1943-    ) Author, Secretary of Education
Bill Bradley (1943-    ) Senator, Presidential Candidate, NBA Player
Kay Bailey Hutchison (1943-    ) Senator
Joe Namath (1943-    ) NFL Quarterback
Robert De Niro (1943-    ) Actor
David Geffen (1943-    ) Entertainment Executive
Newt Gingrich (1943-    ) Speaker of the US House
Janis Joplin (1943-1970) Singer
John Kerry (1943-    ) Senator, Presidential Candidate
Jim Morrison (1943-1971) Singer
Bob Woodward (1943-    ) Journalist
Michael Douglas (1944-    ) Actor
Joe Frazier (1944-    ) Boxer
Rudy Giuliani (1944-    ) US Attorney, Mayor of New York City
Marvin Hamlisch (1944-    ) Composer
Molly Ivins (1944-    ) Author, Columnist
George Lucas (1944-    ) Director, Producer, Screenwriter
Lawrence Ellison (1945-    ) CEO Oracle
Tommy Franks (1945-    ) General at US Central Command
Patricia Ireland (1945-    ) Feminist Leader
Steve Martin (1945-    ) Actor, Comedian
Bette Midler (1945-    ) Singer, Actress
Dianna Ross (1945-    ) Singer
Diane Sawyer (1945-    ) TV Journalist, ABC Morning Anchor
Cher (1946-    ) Singer, Actress
Sally Field (1946-    ) Actress
Lew Frankfort (1946-    ) CEO Coach
Richard S Fuld, Jr (1946-    ) CEO Lehman Brothers Holdings
Reggie Jackson (1946-    ) Baseball Player
Liza Minnelli (1946-    ) Singer, Actress
Michael Ovitz (1946-    ) Entertainment Executive
Dolly Parton (1946-    ) Singer, Songwriter, Actress
Steven Spielberg (1946-    ) Movie Director, Producer
Donald Trump (1946-    ) Real Estate Executive, TV Personality
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1947-    ) NBA Player
Hilary Rodham Clinton (1947-    ) Senator, Former First Lady
Tom Delay (1947-    ) House Majority Leader
Stephen King (1947-   ) Author
David Letterman (1947-    ) TV Talk Show Host
James Patterson (1947-    ) Author
Rob Reiner (1947-    ) Actor, Director
Nolan Ryan (1947-    ) Baseball Player
O. J. Simpson (1947-    ) NFL Star, Sportscaster, Actor, Murder Defendant
Howard Dean (1948-    ) Vermont Governor, Presidential Candidate, Head of DNC
Al Gore, Jr. (1948-    ) Senator, Vice President, Presidential Candidate
William McGuire (1948-    ) CEO United Health Group
Kweisi Mfume (1948-    ) Congressman, Head of NAACP
Clarence Thomas (1948-    ) Supreme Court Justice
Gary Trudeau (1948-    ) Cartoonist (Doonseberry)
Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948-    ) Composer
John Belushi (1949-1982) Comedian, Actor
Edwin Crawford (1949-    ) CEO Caremark Rx
Billy Joel (1949-    ) Singer, Songwriter
Jessica Lange (1949-    ) Actress
Bill O'Reilly (1949-    ) TV Commentator
Meryl Streep (1949-    ) Actress
John W. Thompson (1949-    ) CEO Symantec Corporation
John Chambers (1950-    ) CEO Cisco Systems
Jeffrey Katzenberg (1950-   ) Entertainment Executive
Jay Leno (1950-    ) TV Talk Show Host
Bill Murray (1950-    ) Actor, Comedian
Nora Roberts (1950-    ) Author
Tim Russert (1950-    ) TV Journalist, "Meet the Press" Moderator
Stevie Wonder (1950-    ) Singer, Songwriter
Dale Earnhardt (1951-2001) NASCAR Driver
Richard Fairbank (1951-    ) CEO Capital One Financial
Rush Limbaugh (1951-    ) Political Commentator
Sally K. Ride (1951-    ) First Woman Astronaut in Space
Jesse Ventura (1951-    ) Professional Wrestler, Governor of Minnesota
William Kristol (1952-    ) Editor Columnist
Rodney Mott (1952-    ) CEO International Steel Group
Paul Allen (1953-    ) Entrepreneur, Billionaire
Anne Mulcahy (1953-    ) CEO Xerox
David Novak (1953-    ) CEO Yum Brands
Kevin Rollins (1953-    ) CEO Dell Computers
Antonio Villaraigosa (1953-    ) Mayor of Los Angeles
Brenda Barnes (1953-    ) CEO Sara Lee
Matt Groening (1954-    ) Creator of "The Simpsons"
Ron Howard (1954-    ) Movie Director, Actor
Michael Moore (1954-    ) Moviemaker, Political Activist
Walter Payton (1954-    ) NFL Player
Condoleezza Rice (1954-    ) National Security Advisor, Secretary of State
Jerry Seinfeld (1954-    ) Comedian, Actor
Howard Stern (1954-    ) Radio Personality
John Travolta (1954-    ) Actor
Rick Warren (1954-    ) Minister, Bestselling Author
Denzel Washington (1954-    ) Actor
Oprah Winfrey (1954-    ) TV Talk Show Host, Actress, Businesswoman
Kevin Costner (1955-    ) Actor
William Gates (1955-    ) Microsoft Founder and CEO
Alberto Gonzales (1955-    ) First Hispanic US Attorney General
Edwin Moses (1955-    ) Track and Field Athlete
John G. Roberts (1955-    ) Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
Steven Jobs (1955-    ) Apple Computer Exec., Pixar Exec.
Eric E. Schmidt (1955-    ) Google Chairman and CEO
David Copperfield (1956-    ) Magician
Julie Gerberding (1956-    ) Director of Center for Disease Control
Mel Gibson (1956-    ) Actor, Director
Tom Hanks (1956-    ) Actor
Sugar Ray Leonard (1956-    ) Boxer
Joe Montana (1956-    ) NFL Quarterback
Meg Whitman (1956-    ) Ebay President and CEO
Katie Couric (1957-    ) TV Journalist, NBC Morning Editor
Spike Lee (1957-    ) Film Director
Russell Simmons (1957-    ) Record Producer, Def Jam Records
Steve Case (1958-    ) AOL Time-Warner CEO
Ellen Degeneres (1958-    ) TV Talk Show Host
Michael Jackson (1958-    ) Singer
Madonna (1958-    ) Singer, Actress
Prince (1958-    ) Singer
John McEnroe (1959-    ) Tennis Player
John Wilder (1959-    ) CEO TXU
Brian Williams (1959-    ) NBC News Anchor
John Elway (1960-    ) NFL Quarterback
Cal Ripken, Jr. (1960-    ) Baseball Player

Silent Generation (1925-1942)

Name: Silent Generation
Birth Years: 1925-1942
Archetype: Artist

Childhood

Silent Generation children were born just as the nation entered a fourth turning. The culture had been unraveling for the previous twenty years, and a crisis was at hand. Silent children watched their elders struggle against the most difficult economic times of the century. As war clouds gathered around the world in the 1930s, they were very much aware of their elder's concerns. More than ever, compliance and conformity were expected by parents who had no time or energy to address recalcitrant children. Silent children generally lived up to expectations. The US Population grew by 7% in the 1930s, the lowest decennial growth rate ever.

Young Adulthood

Growing up, Silent Generation children stood in awe of the accomplishments of their elders. They looked forward to an opportunity to prove themselves when they became adults and joined the struggle against societal problems. However, just as they reached adulthood, the fourth turning ended, a new prosperous first turning began, and G.I. Generation folks returned home from war. Government benefits to war veterans meant that colleges were immediately overrun with G.I.s taking leadership roles and positions of prestige. Similar events happened in business as G.I.s were given preferential treatment in hiring.

Shortly after World War II came the Korean Conflict, and the Silent Generation proved themselves well. However, some G.I.s weren't impressed. As they saw it, they had liberated the world while Silent soldiers fought to a stalemate on a peninsula where the distinguishing accomplishment was a retreat. Thus, in this and many other ways, Silent Generation young adults were made to feel inferior to the next elder generation.

One way to gain respectability quicker was to get a job, marry and start a family. William Strauss and Neil Howe point out that the average age at marriage in the early 1950s was 23 for men and 20 for women. Of the cohort of Women born 1931-1935, 94% had children averaging 3.3 births! That compares to 81% of women and 2.3 births 25 years earlier with the G.I Generation.

With the fourth turning crisis over, both G.I. and Silent Generation parents began to loosen the reins on children in the 1950s. Times were prosperous, and parents lavished the prosperity on their children. They wanted a different kind of childhood from the austere upbringing they had received. Motherhood was raised almost to the point of idolatry. What few women were in the workforce were moved out to make room for returning G.I. men.

Midlife

As the 1960s approached, gnawing doubts about life choices for the Silent Generation began to emerge. Men who had bought the "work hard and play by the rules" mentality began questioning the sterile mechanical nature of their work lives. Oral contraceptive birth control hit the market in 1960, and Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique in 1963, challenging contemporary ideas of femininity. Women began to question the social order. No states had "No-Fault Divorce" in 1969, but that number jumped to 45 by 1975. The divorce rate doubled in less than ten years, and the bulk of the divorces were Silent Generation marriages. (Generations, 284) During the 1960s, the mindset went from seeing children as a badge of honor to children as a burden. Abortion also became legal in 1972.

The Silent Generation took the institutions created by the G.I.s as a given and sought to reform them. An explosion of activist organizations emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s. Scratch deep enough, and you will usually find a Silent Generation person started them. The Silent Generation valued inclusion, acceptance, consensus, and compromise but sought these things in the confines of a G.I.-defined world.

In the meantime, a new generation was emerging. The children of the Baby Boom "Prophet" Generation (born 1943-1960) began to enter college in 1960. They were raised to believe that they were children of destiny and could accomplish anything they put their minds to. Many of the generation shared the same distaste for the cold mechanical environment of the G.I.-created world, but they had no desire to reform it. They wanted revolution. They wanted to bring forth their own prophetic vision of the world. Silents were like a middle child sandwiched between an overbearing older sibling and a rebellious younger one. Always being the peacemaker, Silent Generation leaders often felt themselves pulled both ways and got a reputation for indecisiveness.

Elderhood

As the Silent Generation moved into positions of influence and power in the late 1970s through the early 1990s, they entered a third turning known as the "Culture Wars." The Reagan Revolution began in 1981 with its decidedly ideological agenda. It contrasted starkly with the more "Centrist" image cultivated by previous presidents like Carter, Ford, and Nixon. The Moral Majority interjected conservative religious values into the national debate. A turning point came with the nomination of Robert Bork (Silent Generation) to the Supreme Court in 1987. Many conservatives felt a brazenly partisan attack ambushed Bork. "Getting Borked" became the expression for being a victim of an all-out political attack. The level of rancor has increased ever since.

The Silent Generation leaders were the masters of process. They were often seen as the intellectuals, policy wonks, and technocrats of large bureaucracies. Through the 1980s and 1990s, many of them tried to promote civility. For their efforts, Ronald Reagan dismissively referred to them as "the kids." Spiro Agnew called them "the vicars of vacillation" and "the nattering nabobs of negativity." (Generations, 290) Baby Boomers considered them dull, uninspired bureaucrats incapable of inspiring leadership toward the visions they had in mind. Then, there was the 1988 presidential campaign.

The Republicans chose George H. W. Bush to represent them in the 1988 presidential election as Ronald Reagan left office. The Democrats had a large field of contenders. After Mario Cuomo opted not to run in March of 1988, seven candidates were left in the race. Joe Biden, Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, and Paul Simon were all Silent Generation members (Lloyd Bentson, at age 67, was a G.I.) The press began to refer to the election as George Bush and the "Seven Dwarfs." Dukakis won the nomination and selected G.I. Bentson as his running mate, partly to gain some of the G.I. gravitas. The press nicknamed him "Duke," which only showed how unlike a G.I. he was when compared to "The Duke," John Wayne, a G.I. icon. The icing on the cake was Dukakis's appearance as a tank driver, which people took as him playing pretend compared to George Bush, who had actually been in a war.

The penchant for process and bureaucracy is the hallmark of Silent Generation leadership throughout the institutions of American culture. While others admire their desire for inclusion, justice, and fairness, they have often given the impression of being indecisive and lacking vision. There has not been a Silent Generation president, and barring the failure of George W. Bush to complete his term, there likely will not be one (Dick Cheney is of the Silent Generation.)

Twilight

The Silent Generation is fading from leadership as America enters a fourth turning. They still hold the political positions of Vice President, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Minority Leader, Speaker of the House, and House Minority Leader. They are still the heads of corporations and boards, but their influence is ebbing. While economically, the Silent Generation has experienced almost uninterrupted improvement over their lifetime, there has been a steadily growing sense of cultural decay since young adulthood. Their worst nightmare is coming true: A rancorous public square of competing ideologies.

Conclusion

The Silent Generation was born into a world of crisis. They were compliant children who honored the sacrifice of their elders. Born too early to partake in the glory of their elders and too late to embrace a radical new generation coming behind them fully, the Silent Generation often found itself trapped between loyalty to old institutions of a passing generation and the desire for institutions with a friendly face from a younger generation.

A sampling of the Silent Generation

Presidents: None
Losing Presidential Candidates: Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis

Lenny Bruce (1925-1966) Comedian, Social Critic
William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-    ) Columnist, Author
Johnny Carson (1925-2005) TV Talk Show Host
Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968) Senator, US Attorney General, Presidential Candidate
Paul Newman (1925-    ) Actor
Gore Vidal (1925-    ) Author
Malcolm X (1925-1965) Black Muslim Leader
Alan Ginsberg (1926-1997) Poet
Alan Greenspan (1926-    ) Federal Reserve Chair
Hugh Hefner (1926-    ) Publisher
Timothy Lahaye (1926-    ) Minister, Bestselling Author
Jerry Lewis (1926-    ) Comedian
Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) Actress
Harry Belafonte (1927-    ) Singer
Caesar Chavez (1927-1993) Labor Organizer, United Farm Workers
Bob Fosse (1927-1987) Jazz Dancer, Choreographer, Director
Sidney Poitier (1927-    ) Actor
Andy Warhol (1927-1987) Artist
Michael Harrington (1928-1989) Author, Social Critic
Jack Kevorkian (1928-    ) Physician, Assisted Suicide Advocate
Shirley Temple Black (1928-    ) Actress, Ambassador
Grace Kelly (1929-1982) Actress
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) Minister, Civil Rights Leader
Neil Armstrong (1930-    ) Astronaut, First man on the moon
Warren Buffet (1930-    ) Investor
Mario Cuomo (1930-    ) Gov. of New York, Democrat Leader
Clint Eastwood (1930-    ) Actor
Sandra Day O'Conner (1930-    ) First Woman Supreme Court Justice
Ross Perot (1930-    ) Entrepreneur, Presidential Candidate
Pat Robertson (1930-    ) Religious Broadcasting Executive, Presidential Candidate
Bancroft, Anne (1931-2005) Actress
James Dean (1931-1955) Actor
James Earl Jones (1931-    ) Actor
Bernard F. Law (1931-    ) Former Roman Catholic Archbishop
Mickey Mantle (1931-1995) Baseball Player
Willie Mays (1931-    ) Baseball Player
Dan Rather (1931-    ) TV Journalist
Barbara Walters (1931-    ) TV Journalist
Johnny Cash (1932-2003) Singer
Edward M. Kennedy (1932-    ) Senator
Elvis Presley (1932-1977) Singer
Donald Rumsfeld (1932-    ) Defense Secretary
John Updike (1932-    ) Author
Jerry Falwell (1933-    ) Minister, Evangelist, Founder of Moral Majority
Dianne Fienstein (1933-    ) Senator
Susan Sontag (1933-2004) Critic, Essayist, Novelist
Henry Aaron (1934-    ) Baseball Player
Pat Boone (1934-    ) Singer
Shirley MacLaine (1934-    ) Actress
Ralph Nadar (1934-    ) Consumer Advocate, Presidential Candidate
Bill Russell (1934-    ) Basketball Player, First Black Pro Basketball Coach
Norman Shwarzkopf (1934-    ) Gulf War General
Bart Starr (1934    ) NFL Quaterback
Gloria Steinem (1934-    ) Author, Feminist
John Sweeny (1934-    ) AFL-CIO President
Woody Allen (1935-    ) Actor, Director
Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998) Black Panthers Leader, Social Critic
Jack Kemp (1935-    ) VP Candidate, HUD Secretary, NFL Quarterback
Wilt Chamberlain (1936-1999) Professional Basketball Player
James Dobson (1936-    ) Focus on the Family, Founder
Elizabeth Hanford Dole (1936-    ) Senator, Red Cross head, Cabinet Member
Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989) Political Activist
Buddy Holly (1936-1959) Musician
Michael Landon (1936-1991) Actor
John McCain (1936-    ) Senator
Bill Cosby (1937-    ) Comedian
Jane Fonda (1937-    ) Actress, Activist
Dustin Hoffman (1937-    ) Actor
Colin Powell (1937-    ) Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Robert Redford (1937-    ) Actor
Janet Reno (1937-    ) First Woman US Attorney General
Ted Turner (1938-    ) TV Executive, Philanthropist
Natalie Wood (1938-1981) Actress
Russell Means (1939-    ) Indian Rights
Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963) Assassinated John Kennedy
Harry Reid (1939-    ) Senate Minority Leader
Tom Brokaw (1940-    ) TV Journalist
Nancy Pelosi (1940-    ) House Minority Leader
Joan Baez (1941-    ) Singer
Stockley Carmichael (1941- 1998) Black Power Activist
Dick Cheney (1941-    ) Vice President
Bob Dylan (1941-    ) Musician, Songwriter
Jesse Jackson (1941-    ) Minister, Civil Rights Leader
Martha Stewart (1941-    ) Homemaking Advisor, Entrepreneur, TV Personality
Muhammad Ali (1942-    ) Boxer
Michael Eisner (1942-    ) Disney CEO
Harrison Ford (1942-    ) Actor
Bill Frist (1942-    ) Senate Majority Leader
Dennis Hastert (1942-    ) Speaker of the House
Garrison Keillor (1942-    ) Author, Broadcaster
Calvin Klein (1942-    ) Fashion Designer
Kate Michelman (1942-    ) Abortion Rights Activist
Barbara Streisand (1942-    ) Singer Actress

G.I. Generation (1901-1924)

Name: G.I. Generation
Birth years: 1901-1924
Archetype: Hero

Childhood

Just prior to the birth of the G.I. Generation, muckraking reporters exposed the neglect of children in big city tenements and the exploitation of child labor. The legislation was passed to protect children. A trend toward developing city parks and playgrounds emerged in cities across the nation to give children and families a safe place for recreation. The sharpest rise ever in school enrollment occurred during this generation's childhood. Emblematic of this generation's penchant for outer-directed teamwork was the formation of the Boy Scouts (1910) and the Girl Scouts (1912). This was a generation schooled in and motivated by civic values.

Much of the attention G.I. children received was motivated by a perceived decline in cultural values and institutions. There was fear of the "Red Threat" of Communism after World War I that led to several Supreme Court cases addressing civil liberties. Unions and labor unrest were growing. Prohibition was passed in 1919 to restrict the consumption of alcohol, only to give rise to organized crime. The emergence of flappers, speakeasies, and Jazz were seen as new lows in American culture. Jim Crow laws were passed across the nation, and the Ku Klux Klan reached its zenith in the 1920s as they marched in Washington, D.C., with the support and admiration of many. The Warren Harding administration of the early 1920s was marked by scandal. Social inequality was high. Meanwhile, the Modernist vs. Fundamentalist debate divided churches across the nation.

Young Adulthood

As the 1920s came to a close, farm regions of the country were already in an economic depression. When the stock market crashed in 1929, a fourth turning started. The nation was now in crisis. Government and economic institutions seemed paralyzed. Bank closings ensued. Riots and civil unrest emerged. Communists, socialists, and labor organizations began to get a hearing from those outraged at the social inequalities. Hyperbolic discourse in the public square reached a fever pitch as competing factions, often led by Missionary "Prophet" Generation (born 1860-1882) leaders, battled to make their prophetic visions for America prevail.

To a generation raised on teamwork and cooperation, it seemed as if the nation were about to disintegrate. Leaders and institutions were utterly dysfunctional. Thus, when Franklin Roosevelt issued the call to rebuild the nation, the G.I. Generation joined the various "New Deal" initiatives to save the nation's civic fabric.

As the world economic crisis persisted through the 1930s, the war clouds formed in Germany and East Asia. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the conflicted situation subsided in the US. Under the visionary guidance of Missionary "Prophet" Generation leadership (ex. Franklin Roosevelt, George Marshall, and Douglas MacArthur) and the innovative, pragmatic leadership of the Lost "Nomad" Generation (born 1883-1900), leaders (ex. Dwight Eisenhower, Chester Nimitz, and Omar Bradley), the G.I. Generation exhibited their "can-do" teamwork traits to their fullest. Whether as a G.I. storming the beaches of Normandy or being "Rosie the Riveter" assembling war material, the G.I. Generation overcame great odds by submitting personal desires to the civic good. Strauss and Howe named them "G.I." partly because of their victory in WWII and because G.I. implies a nameless community effort.

Midlife

Emboldened by wartime victory, the G.I. generation entered a first turning with high aspirations. They set to work building business, civic, and government institutions that ran like machines. Bigger was almost always better. Anything could be accomplished through technology and scientific expertise, from raising children (enter Dr. Spock) to putting a man on the moon. G.I.s were determined for their children to be the best and brightest of any generation.

As the Missionary Generation began to pass from the scene, Lost "Nomad" Generation leaders assumed power. The pragmatic leadership of Lost presidents, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, was too uninspired for the rising ambitious generation. The nation elected G.I John Kennedy, president, the youngest candidate ever to be elected to office. Kennedy had his New Frontier. He challenged America to put a man on the moon. Johnson followed with the Great Society, a War on Poverty, and a real war in Southeast Asia. Though of a different party, Nixon pursued similar strategies.

Elderhood

A second turning began about 1964, and by the late 1960s, it was becoming clear that the G.I.s had overreached and underestimated the challenges they faced. They put a man on the moon, and efforts at advancing civil rights were realized (although the latter was often through the strategic prophetic witness of people like Dr. Martin Luther King) but whipping poverty and defeating communists Vietnam style revealed a significant lack of appreciation for complexities. The economy began to sputter in the 1970s, and stagflation exposed just how powerless presidents like Nixon, Ford, and Carter were at addressing economic difficulties.

On top of this, the generations born since 1924, especially those born since 1942, began to openly question the agendas and values of the G.I. Generation starting in the 1960s. They perceived the G.I.s as cold and mechanical, lacking a human touch in all they created. The G.I.s were taken aback by this rebellion against the grand world they had created and were often puzzled and angered by the ungrateful critiques of their leadership. They perceived the new consciousness as a direct threat to the world they had worked so hard to create.

G.I.s began to hand power over to succeeding generations by the end of the 1970s. Still, even after 1980, the presidency was held for twelve years by G.I.s Reagan and Bush, Sr. Compared with Silent "Artist" Generation (born 1925-1942) leaders, the G.I.s somehow commanded more respect. In fact, G.I. Generation members held the presidency for 32 years, from 1961 until 1993, longer than any other generation in history.

Twilight

The G.I. Generation was almost entirely in their retirement years at the beginning of the third turning in 1984; they were the ones who faithfully held together any number of civic organizations. As they have faded, so has the health of many civic institutions. Because of the G.I. Bill for World War II veterans, social security, and a host of other government programs, the G.I. Generation is the most prosperous generation of seniors in history. They have often used that wealth to build gated communities and devised ways to seclude themselves from what they perceived to be a decaying culture. The youngest G.I.s are over eighty years old and quickly fading from sight.

Conclusion

The G.I. generation was born in an era of civic unraveling. Much was expected of them by their elders, and much was delivered. Through dogged determination, self-sacrifice, and teamwork, they survived the Great Depression and won World War II. In the post-war era, they built some of the most impressive institutions in the history of humankind, but they soon overreached in their civic ambitions. It was a bitter pill for a generation unaccustomed to failure. They tended to view the rebellious response to their agenda by later generations as the primary source of dysfunctions in our culture. When they are heard from anymore, it is often a disillusioned voice about a post-war dream that has been lost.

Curiously, the generation of parents that began raising children in the early 1980s looked around and saw the anti-social, destructive behavior of Generation X teenagers. They began to focus once again on children, becoming more protective. They sought to instill the virtues of teamwork, community, and civic virtue. In other words, they were creating a new "Hero" generation called the Millennial Generation, born from 1981 to about 2000.

(Tom Brokaw wrote a book about this generation called The Greatest Generation a few years ago.)

A sampling of the G.I. Generation

Presidents: John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush.

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) Jazz Musician
Walt Disney (1901-1966) Cinema Animation Empire
Clark Gable (1901-1960) Actor
Roy Wilkins (1901-1981) Director of the NAACP 1955-1977
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) Poet, Writer, Author
Ray Kroc (1902-1984) McDonald's Founder
Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) Composer
Carl Rogers (1902-1987) Psychotherapist
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) Novelist
Bing Crosby (1903-1977) Singer, Actor
Clare Booth Luce (1903-1987) War Correspondent, Playwright
Benjamin Spock (1903-1998) Pediatrician
Lawrence Welk (1903-1992) Band Leader
Ralph Bunche (1904-1971) Under Sec. to UN, First Black to Win Nobel Peace Prize
Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) Physicist, Director of the Manhattan Project
B. F. Skinner (1904-1989) Psychologist
Howard Hughes (1905-1976) Industrialist, Aviator
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) Writer
Curtis LeMay (1906-1990) Air Force General
Walter Ruether (1907-1970) Labor Leader, UAW
John Wayne (1907-1979) Actor
Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) US Supreme Court Justice (1967-1993)
Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) Senator
James Stewart (1908-1997) Actor
Milton Berle (1909-2002) Comedian
Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) Broadcast Correspondent
Richard Wright (1908-1960) Novelist
Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) Senator, Presidential Candidate
Lucille Ball (1911-1989) Comedienne
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) Playwright
Milton Friedman (1912-    ) Economist
Tip O'Neill (1912-1994) Congressman, Speaker of the House
Rosa Parks (1913-2005) Civil Rights Activist
Joe DiMaggio (1914-    ) Baseball Player
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) Monk, Writer
Francis Crick (1914-2004) Bio-Physicist, Nobel Prize Winner
Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) Singer, Actor
Walter Cronkite (1916-    ) News Anchor
Robert McNamara (1916-   ) Defense Secretary, World Bank Head
Katherine Graham (1917-2001) Washington Post Publisher
Katherine Hepburn (1917-    ) Actress
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) Composer
Oral Roberts (1918-    ) Preacher/Evangelist
George Wallace (1918-1998) Segregationist Gov. of Alabama, Presidential Candidate
Sam Walton (1918-1992) Founder of Wal-Mart
Billy Graham (1918-    ) Evangelist
Paul Harvey (1918-    ) News Commentator
Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) First Black Major League Baseball Player
John Glenn (1921-    ) Astronaut, Senator
Donna Reed (1921-1986) Actress
Judy Garland (1922-1969) Singer, Actress
Norman Lear (1922-    ) TV Producer
Charlton Heston (1923-    ) Actor
Henry Kissinger (1923-    ) Sec. of State, National Security Advisor
James Baldwin (1924-1987) Author Playwright
Marlon Brando (1924-2004) Actor
Lee Iacocca (1924-    ) Auto Executive
Abigail Van Buren (1924-    ) Advice Columnist

Generation Archetypes

In my last post, I wrote about the saeculum and its four turnings (or seasons). Each turning has a collective "mood." What drives these moods is the configuration of generations alive during each turning.

Drawing on the work of political theorists and historians dating as far back as the Greeks and the Old Testament, William Straus, and Neil Howe believe there is a repeating pattern of four generational archetypes: Prophet, Nomad, Hero, and Artist. The mood of the turning shapes the parenting and nurture a rising generation receives. As the oldest generation fades from the scene, there is almost an unconscious yearning to recreate the virtues of the passing generation in the generation being born.

Here is a summary of traits for each generational archetype combined with the placement of five generations living today.

The information in this chart describes variables about generations in the aggregate. Most misuse of the data stems from a failure to appreciate this. There is a temptation to read information about your own generation and say, "That doesn't describe me," and therefore conclude the typology is worthless. The other temptation is to read this data like a horoscope and conclude that by knowing a person's age, you can pigeonhole their character. Neither of these is appropriate.

By way of analogy, most would agree that Alabama is a politically conservative state. Does that mean that a liberal living in Alabama should conclude that Alabama is not conservative because she is not conservative? Does that mean when we meet someone from Alabama, we can automatically conclude that he is conservative? No on both counts. Still, it is true to say that Alabama is a conservative state, and anyone who lives their lives in that milieu. The same is true for a member of a generation.

One of the things I like about the dates Strauss and Howe assign to generations is the number of variables they consider. I have seen a variety of dates given for living generations. The reasons for breaking points are often interesting but not based on as thorough an analysis as Strauss and Howe's dates. For instance, demographers often speak of the "Baby Boom" as people born 1946-1964, but Strauss and Howe use 1943-1960. Both are right for their purposes. The fertility rate began to rise beyond historical rates in 1946, peaked in the late 1950s, and dropped significantly in the early 1960s. By 1965, the fertility rates had fallen to historically typical levels. Plotting the rates on a chart with the mean rate for the century, you can vividly see what happened. However, Strauss and Howe are asking a different question. The fertility rate turned upward in 1943, indicating a change of attitude about parenting decisions.

Similarly, a precipitous decline in the fertility rate began in about 1960, showing parenting values had changed again. Thus, 1943-1960. The lines between generations are permeable, not rock solid. I like to think of a computer screensaver that shows a picture for a while and then dissolves out as a new one is "dissolving" in. There is a break between the two but not a sharp transition.

One other point needs to be made about Strauss and Howe's work. It is not fatalistic. They believe this generational pattern is strong and resilient but not inevitable. They believe that out of the 14 or so turnings that America has experienced, their scenario has played out all but once. That was during the Civil War. If you look at a generation like the G.I. "Hero" generation (born 1901-1924), they confronted a major secular crisis as young adults. Meeting and overcoming that challenge gives the Hero generation an almost euphoric sense of empowerment that shapes their performance in the last half of their existence. A similar presumed "Hero" generation fought the Civil War, which came abruptly at the beginning of a fourth turning (about 15-20 years ahead of the way the scenario usually plays out.) The Civil War did not lead to a euphoric sense of empowerment, and the "Hero" generation morphed into an "Artist" generation, the archetype that should have followed it. Thus, in effect, the Hero generation was skipped.

Part of what I like about Strauss and Howe's work is the ecological mindset it uses to analyze history. Many use generational analysis as a linear tool where a narrow range of political and social events unique to them shapes each generation. Strauss and Howe see oscillations over decades as the culture swings back and forth, never quite sustaining balance. For example, there are times when children are under-protected in childhood. Society begins to focus on children. Soon children are better protected, but the movement swings beyond equilibrium to overprotection. Society responds once again as it loosens up concerning children. But again, the correction goes too far, and children are under protected. There is a never-ending quest for equilibrium.

Finally, consider this picture of Mt. Rushmore.

Each of these presidents was of a different generation archetype and placed in the correct sequential archetype order on the mountain.

• George Washington - Liberty Generation, born 1724-1741 (Nomad)
• Thomas Jefferson - Republican Generation, born 1742-1766 (Hero)
• Theodore Roosevelt - Progressive Generation, born 1843-1859 (Artist)
• Abraham Lincoln - Transcendental Generation, born 1792-1821 (Prophet)

This is the configuration at the end of a First Turning. Was there an unconscious connection with these archetypes in their selection? Who knows?

Over the next few posts, I will summarize each of the living generations and how this ecology of generations has unfolded.

The Turnings

William Strauss and Neil Howe claim America has just entered the “Fourth Turning” of the fifth saeculum since the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Below is a chart showing the timeframes of each saeculum and the turnings within that saeculum.

 

A key dynamic in Strauss and Howe’s theory is the oscillation of crises. Each saeculum begins with a high sense of community and unity. Civic structures run effectively and efficiently. During the Second Turning, a spiritual crisis emerges. The youth begin to feel that the social order is confining and stale. They become introspective as they search for deeper meaning. During the Third Turning, the insights gained from introspection and spiritual quest are deepening and consolidating. However, in the meantime, the cultural institutions are coming apart, and the culture fragments. During the Fourth Turning, a secular crisis emerges. It often (though I don’t think it necessarily) culminates in an armed conflict. There is a struggle to develop a common ground to rebuild and rejuvenate cultural institutions for the future. After the crisis climaxes, a new saeculum is born. During the First Turning, gains in community cohesion are deepened and consolidated, eventually giving birth to a new spiritual crisis. And so the cycle goes. The names of the Second and Fourth Turnings in the chart suggest the historical events related to each crisis.

Because of the dynamics of the generations involved and the issues they face, there is a mood common to each of the turnings. The table below italicizes the Third Turning, indicating the current turning when the book was published eight years ago.

Studying the two tables in this post will show how a saeculum and its turnings unfold. On Monday, I will return to this discussion with some discussion of the specific generations and how they interact to create the turnings.

Introduction to Strauss and Howe

More than twenty years, I was in graduate school at Kansas State University, studying sociology and demography. There was considerable interest at the time in the Baby Boom generation. Landon Jones published his book Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation in the fall of 1980. The Baby Boom generation was named as such because there was a dramatic increase in fertility rates starting in 1946. The rate peaked around 1957 and then declined to more typical by 1964. There was considerable conversation about the validity and implications of generational cohorts. That debate continues.

The idea of generational analysis originated with marketing experts who detected distinctive consumer preference patterns among Americans born from about 1946-1964. This group of American children had unprecedented purchasing power and influence over parents' purchasing decisions. American business was driven to understand the behavior of Baby Boomers. Demographers and historians quickly shared this interest. The phenomenon soon raised larger questions. Is it possible that there are other generational cohorts?

"Generation X" soon emerged as the name given by marketing gurus to the kids born from 1965 to the early 1980s. Studying and naming this group proved to be a more difficult challenge. There was such fragmentation in interest and attitudes that they were named X, meaning the marketers could not find a descriptive label. Others began to push generational analysis to Americans born before 1946.

William Strauss and Neil Howe developed the first full-orbed conceptualization of a historical generational pattern. Drawing on experience in political science, history, and economics, they wove together cyclical ideas from a wide range of sources, including scholarly historians and contemporary market research. They wrote two books that elaborated their schema.

The first book, Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584-2069, was published in 1991. This book described their basic conceptualization and presented a generation-by-generation analysis of British-American culture over 500 years. The book is filled with a wealth of data and anecdotal stories to illustrate their ideas.

The second book was The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, published in 1997. It went deeper into the analysis of how generations interact and impact each other to perpetuate an ongoing cycle of behavior. As I proceed through this discussion, it is largely this book I will be referring to, but not exclusively.

I think the easiest way to get a handle on Strauss and Howe's theory is to begin by defining five key concepts and then exploring how they relate.

Life-Stage – There are four life stages, each consisting of about 20 years:

Childhood  (Ages 0-20)
Young Adulthood  (Ages 21-41)
Midlife  Ages  (42-62)
Elderhood  Age  (63-83)

(Clearly, people live beyond 83, but in the aggregate, they quickly vacate the societal scene and tend to exert minimal influence on societal events.

Cohort Generation – When many people think of generations, they think of grandparents, parents, siblings, children, grandchildren, etc. This is a family generation. The word "generation" for these purposes refers to a cohort generation. This type of generation is a group of people who feel a unique location in history because of a shared formative experience and simultaneously inhabit the same part of a life cycle. Consequently, most generations are about 20-22 years long (although a few are shorter and others longer.)

Generational Archetype – There are four generational archetypes. These archetypes repeat themselves in sequential order. In order, they are:

Prophet
Nomad
Hero
Artist

I will elaborate on these later, but here is a listing of the most recent generations and their archetypes according to Strauss and Howe:

 

 

Turning (Season) – As each generation is about twenty years in length, there are only four in the fullness of life at any given time. It also means that about every twenty years, there will be a near-perfect alignment of the four generations with the four life stages. The youngest birth year cohort of the oldest generation will have aged beyond their early eighties, and the new youngest birth cohort of the new generation will have just been born. Over the next twenty years, each generation will mature to the next life stage as another generation fades and a new one is born.

Each time there is an alignment between generations and life stages, a "turning" happens. Strauss and Howe use the idea of seasons, and just as each season has distinctive characteristics, so are their distinctive characteristics about the cultural ethos of each "season." Here are the four turnings given as seasons with their generational configuration from oldest generation to youngest at the beginning of the turning.

Spring (High) – Prophet, Nomad, Hero, Artist
Summer (Awakening) Nomad, Hero, Artist, Prophet
Fall (Unraveling) – Hero, Artist, Prophet, Nomad
Winter (Crisis) – Artist, Prophet, Nomad, Hero

According to Strauss and Howe, we have entered winter (the Fourth Turning) within the last five years.

Saeculum

Saeculum comes from Latin and refers to "an age" of roughly 100 years. In this case, it refers to an era of about eighty years or one complete cycle of the four turnings. The most recent saeculum begin about 1946.

(If you want to read more on this topic, visit the Life Course Associates website. At that site, a page talks about some of the key concepts I have mentioned here.)

History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but it Rhymes

What time is it? Ask that question; usually, someone will look at a watch and tell you what it reads. Actually, there are several valid answers to the question. How about daytime? Wintertime? Christmastime? Wartime? Downtime? Dinnertime? Tool-Time? (Okay. Maybe not the last one.)

All these have in common that they mark some point in a cycle, an oscillation of repeating events: Night and Day. Seasons. Holidays. War and peace. Action and rest. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Our lives are filled with rhythms of time measured in myriad ways. How often are we consciously aware of these rhythms?

Westerners are not as attuned to rhythms as many other cultures are. Rhythms of time are somewhat of an obstacle to our idea of progress. We build climate-controlled environments in which to live and work so we may escape the rhythms of the seasons. We talk about being "24/7/365" as the gold standard for customer service as we attempt to escape daily rhythms. We adjust interest rates, alter the money supply, or make federal budget adjustments to escape the boom-and-bust oscillation of the business cycle. "Progress" is often defined by our very ability to subdue the rhythms around us and make them yield to our vision for life.

It is hard for us to appreciate just how unique this idea of "progress" and taming "time" is. Only very recently in human history have we come to think this way. Some of the earliest human records known have no chronological structure to them. They are organized by typologies of events, not sequentially.

For some cultures, the timing of your birth in relation to a time cycle influences your character. You were of a certain character based on when you were born. Many are familiar with the Chinese practice of a cycle of twelve years, each year signified by an animal. We are in the year of the Rooster, and the year of the Dog is coming. Many people still follow astrology which identifies your character by a zodiac symbol. The Mayan people of Central America were some of the most advanced timekeepers in the world. Instead of laying their calendar out in neat rows and columns, their calendar was circular. When you were born was of significance to them as well.

Meaning in life for the ancients was grounded in conforming to the appropriate rituals and behaviors that marked each time or season. There was a sense in which you lost yourself to the reaffirmation of the eternal cyclical order. This is not to say that some ancients and some cultures were without a sense of linear time (i.e., time progressing from a beginning to an end), but cyclical time defined life in most ancient cultures across the planet.

Something unique happened about 4,000 years ago. Thomas Cahill, in The Gift of the Jews, shows that the Jews were the culture that introduced us to the idea of history as a linear progression toward some end. Christianity carried forward this view of time into Western Civilization. However, for the first 1,500 years of Christianity, linear time was only appreciated by a small minority of the educated elite. About 500 years ago, the world was changed forever when two powerful ideas converged.

A desire to classify and quantify just about everything emerged in Europe, probably starting with Aquinas' Aristotelian theology in the 13th Century. Over the next few centuries, this desire grew into an obsession, as documented in Alfred Crosby's Measurement of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250-1600. In the 15th Century, the printing press was invented (1452), and Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks (1453). Constantinople was the center of Greek scholarship. Greek scholars fled to Europe before the invasion, bringing their knowledge and libraries. The printing press empowered the ready distribution of new knowledge, and the Renaissance was born.

The study and quantification of the natural world was not unprecedented in other cultures at other times. The distinctive difference for Europe was a marriage of this quantifying impulse to the idea of linear time and that history is moving toward some end. The invention of the printing press made knowledge of classical thought, quantification, and Christian theology's linear view of time available to exponentially more people. The marriage of these streams of thought resulted in an idea of "progress" as a progression from existence A to a more desirable existence B through rational observation and measurement (science.)

It is hard to overstate the impact of this revolution on our contemporary existence. Without the new European perspective, the idea of the economy as an ever-expanding pie of wealth (instead of a zero-sum game) would not likely have emerged. The concept of an ancient universe evolving would have been nonsense. The social movements that have led to so much advancement in the quality of human life would have been impossible. Of course, we also would not have had Marxist-Leninism, with its belief that humanity is evolving toward a utopian socialist state.

I must wonder if our relentless quest to ignore or conquer the cycles of our existence blinds us to forces that may be shaping our lives. The Bible, from which we derived our linear-driven view, says:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (NRSV)

Several modern scholars discerned a cyclical nature of human events. Historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) believed he saw cycles in history. Historians Arthur M. Schlesinger (1888-1965) and son Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-    ) specialized in analyzing historical cycles. Then sociologists like Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889-1968) developed social theories around oscillating forces. I have always been fascinated with Sorokin's theories and with his ability to forecast culture fifty years down the road. These scholars have met with limited acclaim, and I think it is partly because of the modernist impulse to believe that we are masters of our own destiny. It is not popular to believe that we are subject to social/cultural dynamics that extend before and after our lives.

The most recent and extensive conceptualization of historical cycles is the work of historians William Strauss and Neil Howe. They believe a repeating cycle of inter-generational dynamics runs its course about every eighty years. That means no human being ever lives through more than one full cycle. Thus, the unfolding dynamics always seem new and peculiar to every age. Strauss and Howe believe that we find detectable recurring patterns if we take a longer view. They would argue that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. I will write a little about their perspective in the next few posts.