Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Interesting... although we are Boomers you were just younger enough to not get the reference to the song, or not enthralled enough to the 1960's "drugs, sex, rock & roll" to not pick up on it soon after its heyday. Perhaps you are on the edge of the "young Boomers"?
I saw the Stones in the summer of 1965, was at Woodstock 1969 and at that time there was no "asking my parents" about being a "hippie" (whatever that means), I was in the middle of it. I was earning my own living. I believe it was the product of us knowing we would be grabbed by the government at any moment and forced to kill people in some obscure country or serve time in federal prison... as teenagers - that was always hanging over us. Drugs, sex & rock & roll was how we were able to respond since we couldn't vote.
I worked from age 13 all through high school, a very working class background, and did construction jobs to pay my way through university several years later, no "spoiled" kids in my group.
Sounds like the male version of myself. We are the early boomers. In college and then working, strongly opposed to the Viet Nam war. How to stop that useless war consumed a lot of our thoughts and actions.
We had our music, peaceful protests, semi hippie beliefs like organic gardening, environmentalism, anti materialistic consumption and greed, idealistic desire for love and human kindness.
Late 1960s I was married and teaching first grade but still hung onto these values. I knew several men who got drafted and went even though they were against this war. Most men lived in dread.
One other thing though: in teachers college they were telling us we should let our students do whatever they wanted. This was coming from our professors, not us. Permissiveness was the new trend. As a new teacher I quickly found that it didn't work. I think it's the permissiveness, no rules, spoil them rotten, give them everything, even participation trophies. That's why they think the world owes them a living.
I resent the entitlement of some of the current generation of young adults BUT they didn't get that way by themselves. Somebody spoiled them and made them think that the world owes them a living. I know a lot of adults in their 40s and younger who can't even cook their own dinner. I know people who grew up in America, were 18+, and didn't know how to use the washing machine, let alone a power tool. They'd never helped build something in the garage, they never changed the oil in a car, or even PUT oil in a car. It became a joke that they didn't like "adulting". They weren't born adult! Somehow, they arrived at age 18 totally unprepared for the world. Guess who did that to them? That's right, their parents expected nothing of them, and they "rose" to their parents' expectations. They knew nothing, because their parents taught them nothing. And people wonder why these folks still live in their parents' basement...it's because their parents never taught them to be responsible and to do the things we all take for granted. And their parents ALLOW them to live in the basement, continuing to infantilize grown women and men.
I resent the entitlement of some of the current generation of young adults BUT they didn't get that way by themselves. Somebody spoiled them and made them think that the world owes them a living. I know a lot of adults in their 40s and younger who can't even cook their own dinner. I know people who grew up in America, were 18+, and didn't know how to use the washing machine, let alone a power tool. They'd never helped build something in the garage, they never changed the oil in a car, or even PUT oil in a car. It became a joke that they didn't like "adulting". They weren't born adult! Somehow, they arrived at age 18 totally unprepared for the world. Guess who did that to them? That's right, their parents expected nothing of them, and they "rose" to their parents' expectations. They knew nothing, because their parents taught them nothing. And people wonder why these folks still live in their parents' basement...it's because their parents never taught them to be responsible and to do the things we all take for granted. And their parents ALLOW them to live in the basement, continuing to infantilize grown women and men.
That is a valid point. If young adults don't have basic life skills like food prep or using household appliances, that is squarely on their own parents.
Even in the past, though, girls were taught these things but not boys, and girls might not have been taught about things like oil. My exh never knew you were supposed to separate laundry into light and dark or similar fabrics, and once when we were going somewhere and needed a shirt ironed, he protested when I walked away after plugging in the iron. I said, "Let me go do xyz while the iron heats up."
"Whaddya mean?"
He thought an iron was like a power tool, you just plug it in and turn it on and use it!
How can the generation born in the 1950s, which is 100% Boomer, be both "silent" and "idealist"?
The delineation of generations is approximate and murky. One definition of "generation" is that the successor generation is the former's children. Yet according to "The Fourth Turning", the nth generation's kids are the n+2 generation... So the Boomers' kids are Millennials, not X-ers. And so on. Neither do the generations fit into neat 20-year cohorts. Gen-X for example traditionally is listed has having lasted only 15 years (1965-1980).
I find the conventional delineation of generations to be off. I'd group the birth-years of 1958-1973 into one generation... too young to have participated in the tumults of the 1960s (or in most cases even remembered them), but old enough to be adults or nearly-adults in the final throes of the Cold War, and to have gone through college and entered the workforce before the popular advent of the internet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheShadow
...I know people who grew up in America, were 18+, and didn't know how to use the washing machine, let alone a power tool. They'd never helped build something in the garage, they never changed the oil in a car, or even PUT oil in a car. It became a joke that they didn't like "adulting". ..
Many "adult" attributes have shifted over the years. Mechanical skills, such as wielding a wrench or a hammer, have come to be disparaged and avoided. In their stead come "soft skills", such as negotiating, reading body-language, diffusing crises and so on. On the technical side, computers are dominant. Even in things like car repair, the newly prized skill-set is the reading of trouble-codes on the engine computer, and not things like reading spark plugs.
Among the more monetarily endowed classes, the 20th century trend to self-reliance as come full circle. Just as 19th century aristocrats would have servants to perform menial or domestic tasks, so too now, the programmers in Silicon Valley have gig-workers and other de facto servants to walk dogs, do the laundry, prepare meals and so on. The new version of "adulting" is to earn enough money to be able to comfortably outsource the uncomfortable.
Many "adult" attributes have shifted over the years. Mechanical skills, such as wielding a wrench or a hammer, have come to be disparaged and avoided. In their stead come "soft skills", such as negotiating, reading body-language, diffusing crises and so on. On the technical side, computers are dominant. Even in things like car repair, the newly prized skill-set is the reading of trouble-codes on the engine computer, and not things like reading spark plugs.
Now, this is something I know about because we own an auto repair shop. Reading codes on the computer is not a "prized skill," but it is absolutely necessary to repairing modern autos. Without the diagnostic computer, it's virtually impossible to correctly diagnose many problems. Other problems CAN be diagnosed without it, but with much more time and effort (and corresponding cost to the customer).
I'm not a mechanic whatsoever (my husband is the mechanic), but even I can plug in the diagnostic computer and see what codes it is showing. Identifying the fault is often easy. Being able to use tools to fix or replace parts is the special, prized skill.
I guess I also agree with those on here who say things run in cycles. Probably been that way since the beginning of humanity.
It's human nature (and maybe a scientist would know if it's also the nature of the physical world??) to try to maintain equilibrium. So you get a kid from a very strict family and often they will vow to not rasie their kids that way. They will go in the opposite direction.
Things used to be so strict that the saying was, "Children are to be seen and not heard."
I'm not sure how it was in the 1950s but at my house we had some rules but nothing mean or cruel. I heard of homes where the kids were raised military style and also homes where things were really overly relaxed.
Sorry, Boomers are largely responsible for the Millennials.
Look at the years:
Boomer 1946-1964
Gen X 1965-1980
Millennial 1981-1996
Gen X weren't the ones who were having all those babies in the 1980s. That was the later Boomers. The very oldest Gen X were only 33 when the Millennial years ended , and the youngest were only 16!
As a solid Gen X myself (1969), I can tell you that most people in my age group have 0-2, maybe 3 kids. Rarely more than that. We were not "lavish procreators." And most of our kids were born well into the Gen Z generation.
I had in mind a 2004 film "Garden State" whose director Zach Braff is a Gen X, and how much that film to me embodied the psychology of all Gen Xers I ever knew. In that film, and among all Gen Xers I know, having kids seems to be viewed as the single truly important & meaningful thing in life. On the contrary, I am a Boomer who does not have kids, I know a lot of Boomers without kids, and do not recall that having kids was ever a particular obsession in my generation. Maybe my sample of acquaintances is skewed?
...I know a lot of Boomers without kids, and do not recall that having kids was ever a particular obsession in my generation. Maybe my sample of acquaintances is skewed?
Quite possibly...pretty much all of the Boomers I've encountered have kids; for adults without kids I've known, it actually leans heavily towards Gen-Xers. The Millennials I've known (older Millennials, though - now in their mid-30s, give or take a few years, I don't know many younger Millennials) are pretty much all married with multiple kids also.
My experience might be a skewed datapoint as well - pretty much all of my friends & acquaintances are college-educated professionals who at some point as adults were in Southern California, so it's definitely not a representative selection of the entire Generation(s).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
