Generation X

For other uses, see Generation X (disambiguation).

Generation X is a term used to describe generations in many countries around the world born from 1965 to around 1981. The term has been used in demography, the social sciences, and marketing, though it is most often used in popular culture.

History of the term

Origins

In the U.S. Gen X was originally referred as the "baby bust" generation because of the small number of births following the baby boom.

In the UK the term was first used in a 1964 study of British youth by Jane Deverson. Deverson was asked by Woman's Own magazine to conduct a series of interviews with teenagers of the time. The study revealed a generation of teenagers who "sleep together before they are married, don't believe in God, dislike the Queen, and don't respect parents," which was deemed unsuitable for the magazine because it was a new phenomenon. Deverson, in an attempt to save her research, worked with Hollywood correspondent Charles Hamblett to create a book about the study. Hamblett decided to name it Generation X.

Popularization

The term was first used in popular culture in the book Generation X by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson. It was later expanded on by Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland in Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991), which describes the angst of those born between roughly 1960 and 1965, who felt no connection to the cultural icons of the baby boom generation. Coupland himself was born in 1961. In Coupland's usage, the X referred to the namelessness of a generation that was coming into an awareness of its existence as a separate group but feeling overshadowed by the boomer generation of which it was ostensibly a part.

Coupland took the X from Paul Fussell's 1983 book Class, where the term "Category X" designated a region of America's social hierarchy, rather than a generation. Coupland first wrote of Generation X in September 1987 (Vancouver Magazine, "Generation X," pp. 164-169, 194), which was a precursor to the novel and slightly preceded the term "twentysomething". Coupland referred to those born from 1958 to 1966 in Canada or from 1958 to 1964 in the United States (see trailing edge boomer). As Coupland explained in a 1995 interview, "In his final chapter, Fussell named an 'X' category of people who wanted to hop off the merry-go-round of status, money, and social climbing that so often frames modern existence." As the term Generation X later became somewhat interchangeable with twenty something, he later revised his notion of Generation X to include anyone considered twenty something in the years 1987 to 1991.

In the US, at times the term "baby busters" is used interchangeably with "Generation X," Reagan Generation and MTV Generation can typically denote those born starting in 1965, with various dates offered for its ending year.

13th generation

In the 1991 book Generations, William Strauss and Neil Howe called this generation the "13th Generation" because it's the 13th to know the flag of the United States (counting back to the peers of Benjamin Franklin). Strauss and Howe defined the birth years of the 13th Generation as 1965 to 1981 based on examining peaks and troughs in cultural trends rather than simply looking at birth rates. Howe and Strauss speak of influences that they believe have shaped Generation 13. These influences are as follows:

• Disaffectation with governance, a lack of trust in leadership, particularly institutional leadership
• Rampant political apathy
• Increase in divorce (institution of marriage)
• Increase in mothers in the workplace
• The zero population growth movement
• Availability of birth control pills ("Children were things you took pills not to have")
• "Devil-child films"
• Increase in educational variance
• Decrease in educational funding and loan availability (simultaneous with increase in advertising for military service)
• Inception of the Internet
• The end of the Cold War

Generation X in the United States

For some of this generation, Generation X thinking has significant overtones of cynicism against things held dear to the previous generations, mainly the Baby Boomers. Another cultural hallmark of Generation X was grunge music, which grew out of the frustrations and disenchantment of some teenagers and young adults.

Generation X grew up during the later years, end of, and the decade following the Cold War. This time included the Ronald Reagan era. As the first of their cohort reached adulthood, they experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union and the United States of America's emergence as the world's lone superpower.

The perception of Generation X during the late 1980s was summarized in a featured article in Time Magazine:

. . .They possess only a hazy sense of their own identity but a monumental preoccupation with all the problems the preceding generation will leave for them to fix . . .This is the twenty-something generation, those 48 million young Americans ages 18 through 29 who fall between the famous baby boomers and the boomlet of children the baby boomers are producing. Since today's young adults were born during a period when the U.S. birthrate decreased to half the level of its postwar peak, in the wake of the great baby boom, they are sometimes called the baby busters. By whatever name, so far they are an unsung generation, hardly recognized as a social force or even noticed much at all...By and large, the 18-to-29 group scornfully rejects the habits and values of the baby boomers, viewing that group as self-centered, fickle and impractical. While the baby boomers had a placid childhood in the 1950s, which helped inspire them to start their revolution, today's twenty-something generation grew up in a time of drugs, divorce and economic strain. . .They feel influenced and changed by the social problems they see as their inheritance: racial strife, homelessness, AIDS, fractured families and federal deficits.

In economics, a study was done (by Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Urban Institute) that challenges the notion that each generation will be better off than the one that preceded it. The study, 'Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?" focuses on the income of males 30-39 in 2004 (those born April, 1964 – March, 1974) and is based on Census/BLS CPS March supplement data.

The study, which made national headline news on May 25, 2007, emphasizes that in real dollars, that cohort made less (by 12%) than their fathers at the same age in 1974, thus reversing a historic trend. The study also suggests that per year increases in father/son family household income has slowed (from 0.9% to 0.3% average), barely keeping pace with inflation, though progressively higher each year due to more women entering the workplace contributing to family household income.

See also

• Baby Boomer
• Generation Jones
• Generation Y
• Generation Z
• Generation Einstein
• MTV Generation

External links

• Early Xer: Things that early Gen Xers grew up with
• CBC Digital Archives – Generation X: Lives on Hold
• Bicentennial Baby: Musings on Generation X and Y
• New Learning Strategies for Generation X - from the ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult Career and Vocational Education.