Generation X’ers are 29 to 39 years old. We are not 18, we are not Slackers, we are not flannel-wearing grunge-rockers. We are the generation following the Baby Boomers. This isn’t a big deal, but it’s bugging me that the Generation X label is being applied incorrectly to youth who more correctly belong to Generation Y, and I would like to set the record straight. I also wish the media would get it right. Generation X is not everyone born after the Boomers. At 38, I have almost nothing in common with a 19 year old in terms of cultural references and shared experiences.
Yes, we are. Or at least, I was, when I was eighteen. I’m 29 now, which puts me at the bottom edge of the range, but the whole slacker/grunge thing was solidly a part of my demographic when I was a teenager.
I agree. I’m 24 (which would make me Generation Y or something). I’m sick of being lumped in with people who grew up listening to Bad 80s Music and wearing Bad 80s Fashion, and like Rob Lowe and Molly Ringwald, when I was still playing with My Little Ponys. I like The Hives and Groove Armada, dammit! (But then I also like Lou Reed, but that could be my dad’s influence).
According to my calculations, people born in 1981 are now 24, not 19. So that site must be old and it has not caught up to the fact that grunge went out of style for gen x and everyone else. I also agree generation x ended in 1975. So you have to be 30-40 now. That’s why it’s weird when I meet bald 40 year old accountants and think “Did you like grunge? Did you slack?” Or even people older like Jim Carey in Eternal Sunshine. He’s middle aged, but he’s Gen X. Hmmm.
Poor me. Born in '64 and nobody wants me. Not the Boomers or the X-ers.
The thing is, I was a teenager in the '80s, a college student in the '80s and a young married with children in the '80s. I was very busy during those Bad Fashion Days.
I read that site to try and understand but I don’t. He is saying that grunge slackers are not gen x, but they are. Grunge and slack was the 1990s thing. People who were born between 1965 and 1975 were 15-25 in 1990 and so they ended the 90s being 25-35 and so everything grunge and slacker was them, not the generation Y kids.
And that reminds me that the first time I ever heard the term generation X was in the 90s and I remember my brother rolling his eyes and saying, “oh and I bet the generation after us will be called generation Y, only is will be spelled w-h-y.” (you can imagine him saying that in a very contemptful high-pitched voice.) And of course, this is why we hated the boomers, because they created a culture in which a lame thing like that that would happen, and in which you could predict it happening, and in which you would feel like the only one who both predicted it and found it lame.
I can see your point - maybe we need a definitive test for Gen X membership. Maybe the Ross and Chandler test - did you burst out laughing when Ross and Chandler came in wearing Flock of Seagulls haircuts in a flashback episode? Did you also burst out laughing again when they came in wearing Miami Vice fashion the next year, talking about how stupid they looked last year?
Or maybe the rock video test. Do you a)remember a time before rock videos, and b) remember when they started, and c)watched them religiously whenever you could?
I should clarify - in my OP, I meant that we are no longer youthful slackers and flannel-wearing grunge rockers. Gen X’ers are now 29 to 39 - we’ve outgrown that old image.
I propose that if you haven’t read the novel Generation X. from which the label is taken, then you shouldn’t use the term. The “X” is used like a mathematical variable and is meant to show the lack of cohesiveness and a defining movement among the post Boomer generation.
Generational labels are dumb. I’ve always hated the notion that we’re all the same because we ate Count Chocula and watched Superfriends and Happy Days. It’s all boring consumer nostalgia and stereotypes.
The best analysis of the subject that I’ve read comes from the book Generation by William Strauss and Neil Howe. They give the birth dates for the generation following the Boomers as 1961 - 1981.
Enormously interesting theories, studies, and commentaries on American generations and the cycles they seem to go through. Your generation seems to have a lot in common with the Lost Generation described by Hemingway, Fitzgerald and others.
When I was a young woman in the 1960’s, I remember thinking how lucky your generation would be to have such laid back and hip parents. Instead, Generation X (or the Thirteenth Generation) was given very difficult circumstances to overcome.
cricetus, I agree that you’re certainly not all the same. But you do generally have certain experiences in common that sort of set you apart from other generations. Of course, there’s no firm line or boundary.
Who decides these things? Who, for instance, declared that the BB generation ended in 1964? The first of the Boomers were begetting their own offspring by then.
I agree with Zoe. Strauss & Howe’s definition of 1961-81 is a very good one.
I’ve been interested in generational theory for a long time. My wife and I met on the Usenet newsgroup alt.society.generation-x back in the early 1990’s. Even then those of us in the early 1960’s cohort were having to defend the label from being usurped by the youngsters.
Here’s some anecdotal evidence for why S&H’s years should be used.
My wife was born in 1960, right on the cusp. She regularly finds that she has more in common attitudinally with people younger than her than even people a few years older. But she knows other folk her age who solidly identify with the Boomers, even though they missed out on a lot of the stereotypical boomer experiences: Woodstock, Vietnam, etc. The years 1960-62 seem to be fuzzy – people can break either way. But from 1963 on most people identify with Generation X.
My wife’s now a college professor. Around 2000-2001 she and her colleagues noticed a shift in the incoming undergrads, about the time the first post-Gen-X students were arriving. Whereas previously the students had been more questioning of authority and competitive, the new crop seemed more respectful and team-oriented.
(And this wasn’t just a self-fulfilling prophacy by people who knew about the theory – several of my wife’s colleagues who had never heard of Generations independently noticed a sudden shift in the students’ attitudes. So much so in fact, that they had to adjust their teaching styles to compensate.)
It’s not because we all ate Count Chocula. It’s because attitudes toward children change over time and the lessons that each generation learns in childhood shape their behavior as adults. When I look at the sheltered childhood that my kids are experiencing and compare it to the way that I was allowed to run wild in the streets I can hardly believe the difference.
A woman wrote in to a newspaper advice column a few months ago concerned because she saw two little girls walking to school alone. This was considered evidence of practically criminal neglect on the part of the girls’ parents. When I was a kid, everyone walked to school alone, and a fair number returned to empty houses in the afternoon. It’s different experiences like this that shape different generations.
The generational boundaries always puzzled me. If the years for gen X are 1961-1981, what exactly does that mean? I would think that someone born in 1980 (my boyfriend, for example), would have loads more in common with someone like me (born in 1984) than someone born in 1962. And yet the 80er and the 62er are part of the same generation, and I’m in a different generation. It’s impossible to make a cutoff, really. That’s why I never really paid attention to generation labels.
