What is my age group called?

[skeptic]

With the ongoing drum beat about various generational groups, I continue to feel left out. I thought maybe I was missing something, but still have not found "my" generation to have a spot on the generational time line. Speaking with a gentleman over breakfast yesterday, born a year before me in 1943, he has noted the same thing. The boomers are always noted as starting in 1946 after the wars, and there is another group, the greatest generation that covers those up through 1940 or so who mostly fought in the war or contributed somehow. Those of us born from 1941-1945 seem to have simply been ignored.

 

Should I be offended; especially in this day of taking offense at any tiny perceived slight? All of us had parents that went through the entire depression and war years, and grandparents that likely did also, but also remembered the previous century and WWI etc. We learned to be thrifty with things in general, not to spend money we did not have, respect adults, period, that school was important and you best not get in trouble there, that personal integrity was a virtue and hard work got you a better place in life, that the indigent more often than not needed a hand up, that manners were reflective of your upbringing, and lots of other things that seem to have lost traction or gone away almost entirely.

 

Oh, and Boy Scouts for the most part were perceived as a benefit to the community, even if you were not involved directly, and they were respected for their efforts on behalf of community and country.

[Stosh]

How's about reveling in the ability to not be pigeon-holded. I might be a boomer, but I'm not much like any of my counterparts. I have always been amazed how I got through the drugs of the 60's without ever taking any. Missed Woodstock too.

 

Stosh

[qwazse]

Stosh, same for my siblings.

 

There was a time when I was post-bommer. Then Clinton started including '64 in that demographic. What a slam.

[scoutldr]

A lucky Boomer raised by the Greatest Generation. I say lucky because Dad was on submarines in the Pacific theater in WWII. 50% of them never came home.

[perdidochas]

With the ongoing drum beat about various generational groups, I continue to feel left out. I thought maybe I was missing something, but still have not found "my" generation to have a spot on the generational time line. Speaking with a gentleman over breakfast yesterday, born a year before me in 1943, he has noted the same thing. The boomers are always noted as starting in 1946 after the wars, and there is another group, the greatest generation that covers those up through 1940 or so who mostly fought in the war or contributed somehow. Those of us born from 1941-1945 seem to have simply been ignored.

 

Should I be offended; especially in this day of taking offense at any tiny perceived slight? All of us had parents that went through the entire depression and war years, and grandparents that likely did also, but also remembered the previous century and WWI etc. We learned to be thrifty with things in general, not to spend money we did not have, respect adults, period, that school was important and you best not get in trouble there, that personal integrity was a virtue and hard work got you a better place in life, that the indigent more often than not needed a hand up, that manners were reflective of your upbringing, and lots of other things that seem to have lost traction or gone away almost entirely.

 

Oh, and Boy Scouts for the most part were perceived as a benefit to the community, even if you were not involved directly, and they were respected for their efforts on behalf of community and country.

 

I think 1943 is the end of the Silent Generation. Silents are those born in from the late 1920s to the early 1940s.

[NJCubScouter]

Yes, I have heard the "generation" between the "Greatest" and the "Baby Boomers" called the "Silent Generation," but as I have said, I don't think any of these labels have any real meaning. It is just something for people to write books and articles and masters' theses about. And with the different definitions, who knows who's who? The last time someone brought this up in this forum I looked up the definitions and found that my first two children could be either Gen X or Gen Y (millenials) depending on the definition. My Eagle Scout is definitely a Gen Y. I think that by the BSA's definition (as indicated in that powerpoint someone linked to yesterday), they are one X and 2 Y's.

 

Scoutldr, we seem to be of a similar demographic, although my father disliked the term "Greatest Generation." He never saw combat, being just a little too young to be in the fighting in Europe. When France was invaded, he was just graduating from high school. When the Battle of Bulge was going on, he was still in basic training. And when the fighting was going on in Germany, he was in France - but then he got sent to "jungle combat training" in preparation for the invasion of guess where? You know how they always say a million men or more would have died in the invasion of Japan? I always got the impression from him that he had expected to be one of the first guys off the landing craft (I think he was a corporal then), or close to it, and he was probably right. I suppose it is fortunate for my eventual existence that that didn't happen.

[CalicoPenn]

I prefer following the Strauss and Howe generational mapping which is the preferred mapping of academia over the generational mapping of the marketing profession, which is the mapping most often referred to by the media. For example, under marketing mapping, the Baby Boom starts in 1946 and ends in 1964 but under Strauss and Howe, the Baby Boom starts in 1943 and ends in 1960.

 

The generations according to Strauss and Howe:

 

GI Generation (note - NOT called the "Greatest Generation" - that name came from a documentary) - 1901-1924

Silent Generation - 1925-1942

Baby Boom - 1943-1960

13th Generation (aka 13ers or Generation X) - 1961-1981 (The term Generation X came from a book by Canadian Author Douglas Copeland and he also uses 1961 as the starting point for Generation X) (And yes, this means that President Obama is, under this mapping, the first Generation X President)

Millenial Generation - 1982-2004

Homeland Generation - 2005 to now.

 

There are some sociologists and anthropologists suggesting that the last 2 years of one generation and the 1st two years of the next generation don't wholly belong to one or the other generation but are more of a transitional cohort between the generations in that they seem to share the common traits of both generations.

 

 

[LeCastor]

It appears I touched a nerve with my post about "working with Millenials". That certainly wasn't my intention. NJ, it was I who posted the PowerPoint from BSA.

 

We are all individuals who have our own ways of doing things and moving through life. It's not necessary to label ourselves or get worked up about those who attempt to label us. Sure, people of a similar age tend to exhibit the same sorts of behavior and that's due to any number of factors in history, culture, technology, etc. It's not a bad thing.

 

We must not, however, poo poo the younger generations, especially if we are Scouters who choose to work with these youth.

[mattman578]

Old fart I think that is your age group

[NJCubScouter]

CalicoPenn,

 

See, this is part of the problem I have with all this. I compare this "mapping" to my own family, and I know one family is not statistically significant, but that's what I have to work with. I have two younger brothers. By any standard, Brothers #1 (me) and #2 are "late Baby Boomers." Brother #3 is six years younger than I am, which on your chart puts him in Generation X, and not even in the two-year "transition area." And yet, I regard his attitudes and behavior as much more a part of the "60's generation" than either of his two older brothers. He is certainly furthest to the political "left" of all of us, by a considerable distance. And then there is my father. To me, he was part of the "World War II generation", whatever the label for that may be, and yet this has him in the "Silent Generation" (though in the transitional area at the beginning.) That seems really, really arbitrary to me. And then there is my oldest child, who seems to be in the "transitional area" between Generations X and Y. So, first of all, if you include the "transitional area", she is supposed to share some generational characteristics with my younger brother, which I don't think is the case. And then there is the fact that she is supposed to be a mixture of two kinds of attitudes, but I am not sure what.

 

If there really is an academic basis for all of this, I will defer to the superior knowledge of those who have spent their time studying it. But I just don't see it.

[SSScout]

"It depends"....

 

Scoutson once complained to me about the amount of school work he had. He said ,"dad, it isn't fair. You had so much less history to learn than I do............"

[packsaddle]

In a previous lifetime, I used to ask the class what time of year has the seasonal greatest rainfall. Invariably they'd mention spring or late winter. Then I'd ask them to analyze the 100 years or so of daily rainfall data that I had, using the ARIMA model of time series analysis. I challenged them to find the pattern. They couldn't. There was no significant difference between the data and random noise. But many of them insisted that there must be a pattern. There had to be.

So I gave them a dataset generated by a random number generator and instructed them to apply a moving average alone. That did the trick. There it was, a very recognizable regular pattern of variation. Why, they asked, didn't they think of this before? And then I told them about the random numbers. (I just love dope-slapping their minds)

 

We have a tendency to 'see' patterns...even if none exists. This finely-developed sense might be advantageous as long as we apply some discipline to it. But otherwise it leads us to 'see' things like 'race', or it leads us to stereotype certain groups and form prejudices. And once formed, we cling to these deceptions as if they are our children, which in a sense they are.