In his column about divorce
Cecil says:
This left me wondering what are the time frames for Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y? :dubious:
This could become a major existencial crisis for me.
What is my appropriate label? I was born in 1974; does that mean I was born just a few years after the “smack middle” of Generation X? What is my place in the Universe? What does it all mean?
Lothos
You will find an excellent explanation about Gen X and all that we embody in this little web article. Hopefully, you may now feel a stronger bond between yourself and your peers.
Hola!
I HATE HATE HATE the term Generation X. Some ass who works for mass media thought that one up.The ass in question used X at the time because our generation did not stand for anything or do anything worthwhile.
Never mind that my generation fought in the Persian Gulf and are largely responsible for the breakthroughs that we have in computers and science. This will be the generation that will cure many diseases and possibly go to Mars.
Generation X? Hardly. For my calculations I will use “Our generation” and “Next generation” because I find the X and Y connotations so repulsive.
Baby Boomer 1945-1964
Our Generation 1964-about 1981
New Generation (known as Y) From about 1981.
SENOR
So some uncreative schmuck decides to label us “Generation X” because they can’t figure out what we stand for. Now some even less creative schmucks are calling the generation after ours “Generation Y”. Bleah.
Thanks for your responses everyone. I read Douglas Copeland’s book some years ago and I understood the label, but he doesn’t mention the years in which Generation X were borne.
señor I agree with the article quoted by Morkfromork in that 64 to 81 is a bit too long a period for it to be part of the same generation.
Wellcome to the boards Morkfromork and thank you for the link, it is quite an interesting read. 
Another thing - the “baby boom” interval stretched out over time. When I was a young boomer, I remember that I was just barely one according to most lists I saw - the cutoff used to be mid-50’s, and it was a very precise label for those people born immediately after WWII. Nowdays, the 1964 cutoff is usually used. There are people that slip under the wire for being “boomers” who weren’t even born yet when JFK was assassinated, something which used to be some sort of cultural litmus test (“where were you when JFK was killed?”).
I suspect that the “generation x” label (whether you like the term or not), has been broadening over time, too.
I’ll grant the “Persian Gulf” statement, since wars are always fought mostly by the young. The rest is overly facile. Accomplishments are not the exclusive province of any age group, particularly scientific / technical ones which usually build on earlier work. The development of computers owes a huge debt to people like Von Nuemann, Grace Murray Hopper, Alan Turing, Shannon and Shockley, to name a few, whose generation was pre-WWII.
Each “generation” makes the mistake of believing themselves to be the pinnacle of human development. In the end, generational labels have far less impotance than they are usually assigned.
When the term “Gen X” was coined, weren’t they talking about people who were teenagers at the time? So, couldn’t you essentially say, anyone who was 13 - 19 years old when they coined the term is part of Gen X?
So what year was it coined?
when was it coined?
Maven’s Word of the Day Probably 1991.
Excellent observation. From my viewpoint, Gen-X really didn’t stand up for much at the time, and sure seemed to not care about anything. Of course, it could be argued that there wasn’t much to stand up for, but hey, rich white guys never cease to find causes they care about, so why shouldn’t America’s youth be able to do the same?
So true. Though I do believe this phenomenon is partially due to the current situation between Iraq and our trigger-happy President.
This is what prompted me to ask the OP, since in the early 90’s I was a teenager, but the label seemed to apply to people who were then in their 20’s, or 30’s not their early or even late teens.
I agree with yabob, the Baby Boom generation seems to comprise more than one generation, although I have no idea how many years go into a generation. Perhaps a more enlightened demogra-doper ™ can help out.
There is an excellent book on this very subject called Generations. (I think the authors’ names are Straus and Howe. It goes into each generation quite in depth. According to this book, generations last approximately twenty years. It considers baby-boomers to be roughly those born between 1943 and 1963, I believe. Before that was the "Silent Generation, and, of course, before that was the “G.I. Generation.”
It is interesting to see these dates at work in my own family. My sister was born as part of the Silent Generation. I was in on the very beginnings of the Boomers. Our interests, customs, attitudes, music choices, etc. are so different! I identify much more with people younger than I am. Some people my age tend to have some of the characteristics of the slightly older Silent Generation.
If I am correct, the Lost Generation was the one before the G.I. Generation.
The book also has a theory that we go through a cycle every eighty years. Generation X would have some basics in common with the Lost Generation. Generation Y would have traits in common with the G.I. Generation.
Again, according to this book, there has been only one time in the history of the U.S.A. that a generation’s traits were skipped so that that cycle was sixty years instead of eighty years. That was during the Civil War era.
The book goes into much detail and is a fascinating read!
Here is a link to an overview and better explanation:
http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/alumni/sf/Generations.html
Maybe it is a more accurate accessment.
BTW, those in the leading edge of the Boomers are moving into their 60’s this year. Be kind to the elderly. They might give you a toke or a Grateful Dead album…er, CD… 
What’s a toke?
Thanks a lot for the reference Zoe, sounds very interesting!
:lothos puts book in his reading list:
A soda in the south. Oh, you said toke.
Toke is a slang term for smoke off a joint. That would be marijuana.
Disclaimer: marijuana use is illegal in the United States.
I don’t think it’s all that excellent. The author thinks that Gen Y should encompass all of six years :rolleyes:
It seems to me that the labels have a lot more to do with self-identification than with year of birth. There is, indeed, a recognizabble subculture which is identified by the label “Generation X”, and that subculture does seem to have traits in common with, say, Hemmingway’s generation (the “Lost Generation”). However, the boundaries are rather fuzzy. My sister (born in 1974) and myself (1977), for instance, consider the “Generation X” subculture to be rather repugnant, and likewise take offense with being identified with a label derived from such. We’re not “Generation Y”, we’re “Children of the '80s” (meaning that we were children in the '80s, not that we were born then). True, it’s not the most creative label in the world, but then, neither is “Generation X”. On the other hand, I had a college roommate who was born in 1980, and who most certainly did identify with Generation X.
The “Lost Generation” actually refers to people born shortly before the turn of the century (20th, that is), who were young, loud and snotty during the 1920s. I don’t know when the GI Generation started. I’ve read that the average age of GIs in WWII was anywhere between 19½ and 22, depending on the source. Either way, the beginning of the “generation” would fall within the First World War. The generation that falls between them would include Arthur Miller and Arthur M Schlesinger, Jr., whose auto biography includes comments about coming of age during the twenties and getting handed the thirties upon reaching adulthood. In The Age of Roosevelt, he decribes the consequent attraction to Communism and, I believe, coins the phrase “in a world they never made.”