In social science research, it’s not typical to disprove/falsify a hypothesis. It is typical to find or fail to find support for a hypothesis. AFAIK, this is true in the hard sciences as well. As an example, how would you prove that bird flu can’t be spread from person to person? How would you prove there are no generational differences? You wouldn’t do either, you would look for evidence to support the hypothesis that it can be transmitted, or that there are differences.
Strauss & Howe (and others’) books do provide factual support for their model in the form of demographic data, legislation, and survey data. I wouldn’t describe what they have as a hypothesis, it’s a model unifying various hypotheses with various degrees of support. It’s not so different from Guns, Germs & Steel in that respect.
Sociology is not, say, physical chemistry, but it’s not astrology, either.
[internetslacker]Very interesting observation, Pochacco… but I must admit a bit unsettling. Is the youth of tomorrow more “programmed” now by the media and government to be good little productive oil-burning tax-paying citizens? Rhetorical question… but your anecdote certainly has me worried…
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Pretty much…yes. It’s not so much that they’re “programmed”. They’ve just grown up with relative affluence and have been constantly coddled and nurtured since infancy. They’ve always had technology like the internet and cell phones whereas I (33) didn’t have that until after college.
They are starting to enter the workforce now and there are a lot of them (under 25) at my company. We call them “the swarm” because they try to solve every problem together, they can’t work without constant direction and they glom on to any authority figure they can find. Interestingly, many of them still live at home while pretty much everyone I knew when I was that age had long since moved out.
They seem a lot happier, almost to the point of idiocy, while my peer group tends to be cynical to a fault. In many ways they seem more childish than we did at that age. Not at all brash or arrogant like a Gen-Xer. Our generation’s work ethic could be summed up in “look out, I know what the hell I’m doing!” while theirs is “am I doing this correctly”?
WW1 - 1914-1918
Napoleonic Wars - 1800-1815
War of the Spanish Succession (what many call the first global conflict): 1701-1713
Thirty Years War - 1618-1648
Protestant Reformation - 1517
Predicting that Western society (or the US) might go through some sort of transformational upheaval in the first 20 years of a new century isn’t all that original, nor does it need sociology.
And I’m wondering why the authors think that such a process will be a strong predictive point in a study of generational differences: Are they claiming that the generational differences will cause the disruption?
I work at a college, and I definitely notice a difference between our current students and my generation (and I’m only 28!). Our students seem much closer to their parents than my peers were. It’s not uncommon for these students, most of whom come from out of state, to talk to their parents every day. Parents seem to remain more involved in their college student’s academic life when it comes to doing research on study abroad options, selecting an internship, etc. Admittedly, I work with a privileged pool of Gen Yers, but colleges across the U.S. have noticed the phenomenon.
Is that a reflection on the students, or the parents and changing technology? Afterall, it is only fairly recently that long distance phone calls became cheap. I have my doubts that your typical family could afford a daily long distance call even 10-15 years ago.
What sticks in my mind is that even if you can call home every day from college, why the hell would you want to? Or is that just a product of my being 27?
Incidentally, is 1979 in Generation X or Y? I’ve seen X listed as ending before 1979 and Y as starting after. Am I just interstitial?
treis, I’d say it’s a combination of both. Cell phones and e-mail obviously make it a lot easier to stay in touch now. But I do think that the fact that it’s easier for parents to stay involved in their adult children’s lives affects those children. It can, and in some cases definitely does, make the students less independent and self-reliant. It seems that many people would like to extend their childhood into their mid-20s and that many parents are perfectly happy to let them. Obviously, YMMV, but I do think it’s an increasing trend.
Depends on whom you turn to. Pochacco says he remember the cutoff being 1982 according to Strauss & Howe. I seem to recall 1981 being the cutoff in 13th Gen, but it’s been 12 years since I’ve read it for class. At any rate, that puts you in the Generation X. I also seem to recall Strauss & Howe subdividing GenXers into “Atari-wavers” and “Nintendo-wavers” depending if you were an early or late Xer.
But S & H don’t claim that the upheaval is tied to the turning of the century in any way. Why would it be? Their “generations” are about 20 years each, leading to a four-generation repeating cycle that’s between 70 and 90 years long.
Furthermore, they’re only talking about the United States (although presumably Canada is part of the cycle as well). They’re not claiming that the rest of the world is synched up to the American cycle, although presumably the same social forces are working in other societies around the globe.
And finally, the events that you list above, while important, are not what we commonly consider major historical turning points for the United States. The previous major crises that S & H refer to are The Great Depression, The Civil War, and The Revolutionary War. Their argument is that a major upheaval on the scale of those three events will occur in the next 15 years. Something that completely remakes the United States into something very different than it is now.
(FWIW, in their books S&H actually trace the chain of generational crises further – all the way back to The War of the Roses.)
They’re claiming that generational differences affect how the leaders in a given era respond to a crisis. When an Idealist generation like the Baby Boomers are in charge they see the solution to any problem in grand, global terms. It isn’t enough just to muddle along – dealing with the crisis becomes a moral imperative.
Furthermore, according to S&H, the crisis is probably worse because the previous generation of Adaptives HAS just been muddling along for 20 years or so. So whatever triggered the big crisis has probably been building for while.
So the generational tendencies don’t cause the crisis, but they do affect its magnitude and the way the country responds to it.
In their original book Generations, published in 1991, S & H describe a scenario where terrorists have planted a nuclear weapon in New York City. They then walk through four different ways the situation could play out depending on where in the generational cycle the attack occurred. Interestingly, their prediction for how an Idealist President would respond (launching a global war on terror) is very similar to how George W Bush DID respond to the 9-11 attacks 10 years later.
S&H might have said 1981. I didn’t look it up before I posted. In any case it’s not like there’s a hard line. It takes a few years for the shift to occur.
My wife was born in 1960, one year before Generation X “officially” started but she’s never considered herself a Baby Boomer.
Back when I was in college in the early 80’s I had lots of friends who were going to school in the same town as where their parents lived. (Some were high school friends who stayed in my home town, some were college friends who hadn’t moved away like I did.)
Even though it was a local call, NONE of them called their parents every day. That would have been weird. My girlfriend lived 15 minutes from her parents and she called them about once a week.
I’d say the only trend I’ve noticed is that when the subject comes up, the thread is bombarded with Gen Xers and their “When I was a lad…” stories about how much more independant/cool/cynical they were than Gen Yers.
Right and Baby Boomers would come in with stories about how much more free/hip/socially conscious they were than Gen X. The generation before them would go on about how hardworking/tough/patriotic they were.
As the OP is not interested in annecdodes or generational sterotyping, it seems that one would need to turn to statistics like depression rates, crime, or other demographic benchmarks and graph these against each generations timeline.
The problem is that people aren’t defined by their statistics. The other thing is what are the “differences” the OP is refering to? There are obvious differences like Gen Y grew up with Internet access, cell phones and IM while Gen X didn’t have this stuff until well into their 20s. That in and of itself should create a different set of childhood experiences.
There are stylistic differences like Gen X wearing flannel shirts and Nirvana T-shirts at the age when Gen Y wears…whatever kids wear these days.
Obviously each generation has different memories of events or pop culture.
But how does one measure how or whether these things alter a persons psyche?
