On the Subject of Generational Nonsense (Part 2)

The custom of naming generations began in the post–World War II era. It was not spearheaded by social scientists. Marketers began the practice sans scientific foundation.

Inspiration often comes from outside marketing. For instance, marketers borrowed boomer from Landon Jones’ 1981 book, Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom. Interestingly, the oldest boomers were by then 35. They became the first age cohort in history to be given a name used ubiquitously.

Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson's 1964 novel Generation X gave marketers for the next so-called generation. Douglas Copeland's 1991 book - Generation X: tales for an accelerated culture – brought the term into widespread usage.

At the end of the day (to use a hackneyed phrase), the value of giving calendrically defined cohorts names has less value than the ubiquitous usage would indicate. A Wikopedia chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_generation on generations supports this view. The chart clearly depicts the arbitrary manner in which generations are named. There is an absence of uniformity concerning how many years frame a cohort’s existence, and lack of uniformity as to the calendrical bookends of a cohort.

Some say the boomer cohort began in 1946 and ended in 1957. Others say its birth years run from 1946 through 1964. There is less consistency in marking the beginning and ending birth years of both Generation X and Generation Y.

William Strauss and Neil Howe took the idea of a generationally defined view of history to its highest levels in their book Generations. However, their reckoning lacks the statistical consistency upon which accuracy of comparative analysis of generations depends in crucial contexts. For instance, the cohort they call The Transcendental Generation spans 29 years: 1792 – 1819 while their Progressive Generation spans just 16 years: 1843 – 1859. Assigning defining attributes to a 29-year age cohort seems problematic to me for reasons I will give in my next post.

The shortest generation in the Wikopedia chart is Generation Jones, so named by Jonathan Pontell.

Pontell unabashedly goes against the grain and reduces the boomer cohort to seven birth years (1946 – 1953). He then calls Generation Jones the largest adult cohort. But what does Pontell consider a cohort? He defines the birth years of Generation Jones’ as 1954 –1962. That indeed is the largest 8-year adult cohort. However, few would agree that an age cohort spanning just eight years is worthy of being named as a generation.

A danger in naming cohorts in the manner popular among marketers is gross distortion of reality. For instance, boomers were first defined synonymously as the Me Generation. That was accurate at the time because boomers were in their self-centered youthhood. However the attribute stuck. As boomers grew older, it was commonly believed that boomers would remain egocentric in their worldview and lifestyles as they went into old age.

But that prediction has proven wrong, as evidenced by the biggest boom in philanthropy in history that is being led by boomers.

This was a predictable event. I wrote about it in the late 1980s under a section heading in Serving the Ageless Market, “The Coming if the Age of Aquarius II.” I said boomers would generally age in much the same manner as their parents had: concerned about the meaning o their lives and whether they would have made a difference by the time they drew their final breath. I wrote this:

Fifteen to twenty years ago [remember, this was written in 1988], the oldest of the Boomer cohort trimmed their hair, shaved their beards, removed their funny jewelry, and put their bras back on and joined the establishment to fulfill the urges of the first experiential lifestyle stage of adulthood – the Possession Experience years. Many, succeeded beyond their expectations despite their earlier negative views of materialism.

Now, two decades or so after redefining social decorum with the caricatured behavior of youthful excess while espousing noble ideals, many Boomers are revisiting those ideals. They are asking themselves the perennial midlife question, "Is this all there is?" Many are saying, "The values of that matter most are still those we marched for in our youth." They see glimmers of great new possibilities in a new life, a new society, based upon their "old values."

Boomers are taking us back to "basics" after they led society away from them in the Age of Aquarius. We may now be in the beginning stages of its sequel, the Age of Aquarius II.

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Granted that not all people become philanthropic-minded in the second half of life, it is a well-known tenet in adult development psychology that shifting from self-centeredness to others-centeredness is a milestone that signals a person’s advancement into higher levels of human beingness. Those who don’t experience this in the Fall and Winter seasons of their lives are – well, developmentally retarded, shall we say.

I’ll continue this examination of the practice of naming generations in my next post.

Comments

[Katrina]

The cut backs are already hapnipeng as baby boomers are laid off in their early 50s to discover they will never work again. They're husbanding their savings, hoping to reach age 62. Imagine an economy where 50 percent of consumers are trying to live on Social Security checks.