The generational labels that demographers saddle us with and that the media blather about ad nauseam are too small. The media know it, because they keep subdividing. And even then, there are further differences having to do with nationality, race, class, mobility and more. How can anyone be characterized even by the smaller but still broad spans of years?
If we share generational characteristics with anyone, it's those we were with when we went to school, and by extrapolation others of the same age. People who listened to the same music, watched the same movies and TV, did a lot of the same activities, lived through the same events in the outside world at roughly the same age.
I was not quite 10 when JFK was assassinated and had just turned 10 when I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. The year I was 14, Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were both murdered, Chicago exploded all around the Democratic National Convention, Pierre Trudeau became Prime Minister of Canada, and Richard Nixon won the U.S. presidential election.
I was 15 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, 16 when National Guard troops killed students at Kent State and Jackson State and when the October Crisis happened, 17 when I first programmed a computer, 18 when I graduated from high school, and 20 when Nixon resigned. That period is accompanied by an incredible soundtrack.
I had a second formative period from roughly 25 to 35 because I was a musician and I hadn't grown up. The Iran hostage crisis happened when I was 25. Ronald Reagan was elected when I was 26, the same year I got a job at a publishing company, my first "real" job. In 1981, at 27, I helped form an original band, began a relationship that continues to thrive 39 years later, and lost my father. At 29 I got a job at another publishing company, this time as an editor, thus officially putting my English degree to use.
Reagan was re-elected in 1984. I was 32 when that third band put out an album (including an anti-Reagan song), 33 when the next band issued a single. I stayed at the same publishing company but slid sideways into software development, learned mostly on the job. And then around 1989, the acting period began, which led to my migration to Canada in 1994 at the advanced age of 40 and a few years of being a film and TV extra and a few more of working as a technical writer on contract.
There's a definite cutoff time for certain things. I grew up on pinball and played Pong and PacMan in bars and arcades, but I never took up video games. The IBM PC did not arrive until 1981, and I didn't use a desktop computer until that editorial job I got in 1983—which was all about desktop computing. I think humour might be something that gets set pretty early, because there's a point after which there are a lot of things that youngers find funny that I do not. There are a whole mess of Gen X cultural touch points that I am either unaware of or don't know much about.
Because I was born in 1954, I am called a Boomer (from "post-war baby boom," in case you've forgotten or never knew—originally we were called Baby Boomers). Someone came up with Generation Jones for late Boomers (I am not much like my sister, who was born in 1950). But do I look like a stereotype to you? For much of my adult life I tried (usually not competently and thus never successfully) to make my living in the arts. I never had children, and thus have no grandchildren. My spouse and I did not buy our first house until we were in our late 40s. And we're still weird and only as mature as we have to be.
I do not subscribe to a culture of busy and overwork. I'm not terribly competitive. I'm not stuck on the music I listened to when I was young (though I still love the music).
I'm a better match with things considered Generation Jones traits. We arrived too late for the cool stuff, like the Summer of Love and Woodstock, but got the benefit of changes pushed by earlier Boomers. On one website I saw Generation Jones described as "practical idealists," and that's pretty much me. But in so many other ways, neither Boomer nor Generation Jones says any more about who I am than than my so-called zodiac sign.
And I do not look down on Millennials! Or Gen Xers or Gen Zers or any other generational label you can think of. I'm quite fond of each generation or sub-generation that has come after me. They missed experiences I had but have had so many that I missed. They think about things in ways that I never did. I learn from younger people precisely because their window into reality is different than mine.
Media love to set things in opposition. It gives them a hook on which to hang an article. And I know there are Millennials dissing Boomers, and Boomers dissing Millennials, but I'm not one of them. Y'all love our music and reboot our fashion anyway. Our parents and grandparents could never say that about us!
*From the Generation X song "Your Generation," a sneering response to The Who's "My Generation." Ironically, Pete Townshend was born in 1945, making him technically an early Boomer (or just before), and Billy Idol was born in 1955, putting him solidly in late Boomer/Generation Jones territory (like me). Intra-Boomer sneering? Really I think it just illustrates that 10-year spans are more useful than 20.
The band's name (before it was shortened to Gen X) was taken from the name of a book published in 1965 about mod culture in the U.K. Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X was published in 1991.
If we share generational characteristics with anyone, it's those we were with when we went to school, and by extrapolation others of the same age. People who listened to the same music, watched the same movies and TV, did a lot of the same activities, lived through the same events in the outside world at roughly the same age.
I was not quite 10 when JFK was assassinated and had just turned 10 when I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. The year I was 14, Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were both murdered, Chicago exploded all around the Democratic National Convention, Pierre Trudeau became Prime Minister of Canada, and Richard Nixon won the U.S. presidential election.
I was 15 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, 16 when National Guard troops killed students at Kent State and Jackson State and when the October Crisis happened, 17 when I first programmed a computer, 18 when I graduated from high school, and 20 when Nixon resigned. That period is accompanied by an incredible soundtrack.
I had a second formative period from roughly 25 to 35 because I was a musician and I hadn't grown up. The Iran hostage crisis happened when I was 25. Ronald Reagan was elected when I was 26, the same year I got a job at a publishing company, my first "real" job. In 1981, at 27, I helped form an original band, began a relationship that continues to thrive 39 years later, and lost my father. At 29 I got a job at another publishing company, this time as an editor, thus officially putting my English degree to use.
Reagan was re-elected in 1984. I was 32 when that third band put out an album (including an anti-Reagan song), 33 when the next band issued a single. I stayed at the same publishing company but slid sideways into software development, learned mostly on the job. And then around 1989, the acting period began, which led to my migration to Canada in 1994 at the advanced age of 40 and a few years of being a film and TV extra and a few more of working as a technical writer on contract.
There's a definite cutoff time for certain things. I grew up on pinball and played Pong and PacMan in bars and arcades, but I never took up video games. The IBM PC did not arrive until 1981, and I didn't use a desktop computer until that editorial job I got in 1983—which was all about desktop computing. I think humour might be something that gets set pretty early, because there's a point after which there are a lot of things that youngers find funny that I do not. There are a whole mess of Gen X cultural touch points that I am either unaware of or don't know much about.
Because I was born in 1954, I am called a Boomer (from "post-war baby boom," in case you've forgotten or never knew—originally we were called Baby Boomers). Someone came up with Generation Jones for late Boomers (I am not much like my sister, who was born in 1950). But do I look like a stereotype to you? For much of my adult life I tried (usually not competently and thus never successfully) to make my living in the arts. I never had children, and thus have no grandchildren. My spouse and I did not buy our first house until we were in our late 40s. And we're still weird and only as mature as we have to be.
I do not subscribe to a culture of busy and overwork. I'm not terribly competitive. I'm not stuck on the music I listened to when I was young (though I still love the music).
I'm a better match with things considered Generation Jones traits. We arrived too late for the cool stuff, like the Summer of Love and Woodstock, but got the benefit of changes pushed by earlier Boomers. On one website I saw Generation Jones described as "practical idealists," and that's pretty much me. But in so many other ways, neither Boomer nor Generation Jones says any more about who I am than than my so-called zodiac sign.
And I do not look down on Millennials! Or Gen Xers or Gen Zers or any other generational label you can think of. I'm quite fond of each generation or sub-generation that has come after me. They missed experiences I had but have had so many that I missed. They think about things in ways that I never did. I learn from younger people precisely because their window into reality is different than mine.
Media love to set things in opposition. It gives them a hook on which to hang an article. And I know there are Millennials dissing Boomers, and Boomers dissing Millennials, but I'm not one of them. Y'all love our music and reboot our fashion anyway. Our parents and grandparents could never say that about us!
*From the Generation X song "Your Generation," a sneering response to The Who's "My Generation." Ironically, Pete Townshend was born in 1945, making him technically an early Boomer (or just before), and Billy Idol was born in 1955, putting him solidly in late Boomer/Generation Jones territory (like me). Intra-Boomer sneering? Really I think it just illustrates that 10-year spans are more useful than 20.
The band's name (before it was shortened to Gen X) was taken from the name of a book published in 1965 about mod culture in the U.K. Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X was published in 1991.
