Tag: babyboomers

On the beginning of the end of the baby boom

Dolly Parton and Tim Curry died last week, both 80. While their endings were significant events in their own way, they’re ending also signified something more general, which is the beginning of the end of the Baby Boomers. Both Parton and Curry were born the year when the baby boom occurred, post World War II. Like Curry and Parton, more and more of that demographic is getting up there in terms of age. I suspect that means we will see a lot of news on famous people dying, if only because it is a big demographic. (Not only them, but as the above chart shows, there is still a significant number of the Silent Generation who also have one foot in the grave.)

So if you were sad about the passing of Dolly and Tim this week — I was and so were many others — then brace yourself. There’s likely to be a wave of that happening in the next few years.

 

Generation Jones: the cusp gen, between boomers and Gen X

If you are a member of those people born between 1954 and 1965, you may never felt comfortable being associated with Boomers or Gen X. You may have felt a bit of both and a bit of neither. Congratulations, there is a gen for you now: Generation Jones.

Let me let Wikipedia explain:

Generation Jones is the social cohort of the latter half of the baby boomers to the first years of Generation X.

The term was first coined by the cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell, who identified the cohort as those born from 1954 to 1965 in the U.S.who came of age during the oil crisis, stagflation, and the Carter presidency, rather than during the 1960s, but slightly before Gen X. Other sources place the starting point at 1956 or 1957.

Unlike boomers, most of Generation Jones did not grow up with World War II veterans as fathers, and for them there was no compulsory military service and no defining political cause, as opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War had been for the older boomers.

Also, by 1955, a majority of U.S. households had at least one television set, and so unlike boomers born in the 1940s, many members of Generation Jones have never lived in a world without television – similar to how many members of Generation Z (1997–2012) have never lived in a world without personal computers or the internet, which a majority of U.S. households had by 2000 and 2001 respectively.

Unlike Generation X (1965–1980), Generation Jones was born before most of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s.

So, lots of reasons why you may feel unique. And you are. And also this generational explanations for how you are is slightly more accurate than horoscopes, but not much more, in my opinion.

For more on this, see Generation Jones – Wikipedia