# Thirtysomethings: an age group with no generational affiliation **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 26, 2015, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609 "2015-11-26T05:38:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/21 "2015-11-28T04:04:57Z")
Us just-missed-it boomers are called “Generation Jones.” You should acquire your name for the GenX/Millenial bumper group. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/22 "2015-11-28T04:28:57Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > A decade’s worth of people (currently in their fifties) having no generation at all? Not what I said. I just didn’t put them into a generation, is all. > [@](#): > > And then “the oldest Millennials were born in 1998”. But this is in total opposition to how the term has been used in popular culture and the media. So what? I said that would be my definition. My definition is based on just as much evidence as everyone else’s. More, probably. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/23 "2015-11-28T06:24:08Z")
So can I just say “elderly” means age 18-30, even though no one else uses the term that way? > [@Kiros](#): > > The media can do whatever they want, but I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone currently aged 29-35 (b. 1980-1986) who comfortably identifies as a millenial. My wife does, and she is right in the middle of that range (will turn 32 soon). Like me, she is bemused by how her cohort was seen as the prime, up and coming exemplars of that generation when we met in 2007, but has subsequently somehow aged out, even though it’s not supposed to work that way. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/24 "2015-11-28T07:30:57Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > So can I just say “elderly” means age 18-30, even though no one else uses the term that way? Of course you can. Nobody’s stopping you. However, your doing that won’t have the slightest relevance to anything I’ve done. These generational terms aren’t common words, they’re mostly invented proper nouns created by marketing teams, usually to describe demographics and/or to sell books about them. The only one which has gained anything like mainstream usage is Boomer, which pretty universally _does_ include people who were old enough for Vietnam and/or Woodstock. Which was the criterion I used in my little gloss of the term above. So… who here’s a member of the Pepsi Generation? ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/25 "2015-11-28T09:40:28Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Precisely. This is my thesis exactly. And as I say, they did the same damn thing with Generation X, as you should probably remember–because around the time you graduated from high school, they were briefly moving _your_ age cohort into that generation before the snap back a decade or so ago. Since I remember, my generation (then called Gen Y), was always distinct from my siblings (firmly Gen X), at least based on birth year (1983 in my case). It wasn’t until I was almost in college that I stopped hearing Gen Y and then heard Millennial, but still I wasn’t ever considered Gen X. I refuse to be considered Gen X, and I’m a proud Millennial. I got into all the issues Millennials are facing now in the workforce. They have been “aged out” not in the research areas or research centers who determine the “generation years”, but by some media who may want to keep edgy or refuse to see that Millennials do age and face different challenges as they age. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/26 "2015-11-28T09:46:48Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Of course you can. Nobody’s stopping you. > > However, your doing that won’t have the slightest relevance to anything I’ve done. These generational terms aren’t common words, they’re mostly invented proper nouns created by marketing teams, usually to describe demographics and/or to sell books about them. The only one which has gained anything like mainstream usage is Boomer, which pretty universally _does_ include people who were old enough for Vietnam and/or Woodstock. Which was the criterion I used in my little gloss of the term above. I’m on the edge of giving up, because your usage is so weird. But I can’t resist pointing out that there were SO many Boomers who were too young for either of those (unless in the case of Woodstock they came with their parents), and also plenty of people from the pre-Boomer “Silent” generation in both places. In fact, if there were any Boomer \*musicians \*at Woodstock, it was not many. And as I said, the kids born at the peak of the baby boom would have mostly been around 8-12 years old when that huge concert was held. I’ll just throw out two more mainstream media cites for Boomers being born from 1946-1964, which is what I remember hearing ever since the '80s, when I first heard of the term: > **[Advice for aging boomers: Let your pet carry some of the load](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-you-get-older-let-your-pet-carry-some-of-the-load/)** > > Movement to improve care for older pets has been going on for some time; but idea of training pets to help out aging baby boomers is relatively new > **[The Boomer List ~ About the Film | American Masters | PBS](https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/the-boomer-list-preview-the-film/3123/)** > > From the time of its birth, the baby boomer generation (1946-1964) has significantly and uniquely changed our world. 2014 marks an important shift in And in response to those who scoff at the validity of talking about generations at all, I really like what the [Pew Research Center had to say](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/02/24/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change/) on the subject in their 2010 report on Millennials (which, BTW, they defined as being born after 1980; they defined GenX as '65-'80 and, again, Boomers as '46-'64): > [@](#): > > Generational analysis has a long and distinguished place in social science, and we cast our lot with those scholars who believe it is not only possible, but often highly illuminating, to search for the unique and distinctive characteristics of any given age group of Americans. But we also know this is not an exact science. > > We acknowledge, for example, that there is an element of false precision in setting hard chronological boundaries between the generations. Can we say with certainty that a typical 30-year-old adult is a Gen Xer while a typical 29-year-old adult is a Millennial? Of course not. > Nevertheless, we must draw lines in order to carry out the statistical analyses that form the core of our research methodology. And our boundaries-while admittedly too crisp-are not arbitrary. They are based on our own research findings and those of other scholars. > > We are mindful that there are as many differences in attitudes, values, behaviors and lifestyles within a generation as there are between generations. But we believe this reality does not diminish the value of generational analysis; it merely adds to its richness and complexity. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/27 "2015-11-28T09:59:41Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > They have been “aged out” not in the research areas or research centers who determine the “generation years”, but by some media who may want to keep edgy or refuse to see that Millennials do age and face different challenges as they age. Yes, that’s true. Good distinction, and I totally agree. It still drives me crazy when the media does it though. And for people born in the early '80s, they were definitely calling them GenX for a couple years there right around the turn of the millennium. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/28 "2015-11-28T10:15:08Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Yes, that’s true. Good distinction, and I totally agree. It still drives me crazy when the media does it though. And for people born in the early '80s, they were definitely calling them GenX for a couple years there right around the turn of the millennium. Not in my area, at least. And certainly when I was 12-ish or so, I remember my age group being considered gen Y, not Gen X. It was “Gen Y, Gen Y, Gen Y… oops, Millennials”. Perhaps it also depends on where you were born and what media you were exposed. It does drive me crazy. It also makes me laugh when I’m the only Millennial in groups and faculty meetings and they go “This is how to teach Millennials”. Really, like me? Yea, the media doesn’t seem to notice they have used the Millennial designation for young 20 something for the past 10 years. The research centers though, have, which is why some of the things they mention about Millennials (no job permanency, job security, student loans, social mores in regards to marriage and gender division) are things that concern late 20s/early 30s more than college-aged people who are, as the name says, still in college and not in the workforce (and not yet married). ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/29 "2015-11-28T10:28:02Z")
It will be interesting to see how long it is before the media “rehabilitates” your age group back into the Millennial generation (where, as you say, the social science researchers will be safekeeping you the whole while). I’m gonna say at least another five years. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/30 "2015-11-28T12:22:00Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Us just-missed-it boomers are called “Generation Jones.” You should acquire your name for the GenX/Millenial bumper group. I’ve seen the very uncreative Generation XY used in a lot of places for the border folks. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/31 "2015-11-28T13:48:57Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > **Rigamarole** , you could say the same for a lot of things. “Tall/short”; “strong/weak”; “young/middle-aged/old”; “child/adolescent/adult”. Doesn’t mean those aren’t valid descriptive categories to help make sense of the world. Those words do have real meaning though, even if the scale is subjective. “Generations” aren’t real, nor do these labels have any meaning or importance. They’re just silly phrases for some media writers to fluff up their pieces with. I don’t understand why it’s so important to you and others to define and propagate these completely arbitrary, made-up generational designations. I’m pretty sure naming generations never happened prior to 1945, when an actual real-world historical event led to an increase in births, which people decided to give a cute name to (some people may have gone and retroactively tried to name “generations” prior to that, but as far as I know it didn’t start until then). Can we just be the generation that stops making up cutesy names for arbitrary sets of birth years that nobody agrees on anyway? ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/32 "2015-11-28T14:10:52Z")
Nah, they have a generation. Thirtysomething is just the general age group that the media isn’t bitching about or lionizing. That’s when you’re supposed to STFU and get down to “real life”. (Fortysomething Gen-X’er here. First the media hated us, then they ignored us, now we’re suddenly a sandwich generation taking care of Boomers and our kids.) ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/33 "2015-11-28T14:15:22Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > I’m a proud Millennial, on the older age of the scale (early 80s). I sure as hell share more traits with my cousin ten years younger (and firmly Millennial) than with my cousin 7 years older (firmly Gen X). I was born in 1980 and I have more in common technologically with my 19-year-old co-worker than my 40-something sisters. Culturally, though I’m more Gen-X. As with most things in life, it’s all a spectrum. ---
**Author:** ![EmilyG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/emilyg/32/364_2.png) [@EmilyG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmilyG)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/34 "2015-11-28T14:20:48Z")
When I turned 31 this past September, I remarked that it’s an age where I’m too old to be young and too young to be old. I think technically I’m considered an older millennial, but I don’t always feel particularly affiliated with that group. I started a thread here once, when I was 29 and a coworker was 41, and my (older than both of us) boss said my coworker and I were of the same generation, even though I considered him quite a bit older than me. And I loosely call anyone younger than me a “kid,” though I mean it in an affectionate, and not derogatory, way. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/35 "2015-11-28T20:33:21Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > Those words do have real meaning though, even if the scale is subjective. “Generations” aren’t real, nor do these labels have any meaning or importance. They’re just silly phrases for some media writers to fluff up their pieces with. On one hand, there are watersheds in history, after which everything and everyone is significantly changed forever. But they don’t happen every 25 years. By coincidence, and uniquely in American history, they are spaced by single, long lifespans: Yorktown, Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor. (I don’t put 9/11 as one of them). However, you get to be a “generation” starting when you have enough money to merit notice, and ending the moment your first child’s skull starts crowning. Every so often marketers recalibrate their products to whomever occupies this window. This policy started when Lee Iococca put a sporty body on a dowdy Falcon frame, and added a holder in the console for a jar of Dippidy-doo ---
**Author:** ![journeyman\_southpaw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5e9695/32.png) [@journeyman\_southpaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/journeyman_southpaw)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2015, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/36 "2015-11-29T00:23:23Z")
Those of us currently in our thirties might be able to relate to these articles: [Generation Catalano - We’re Not Gen X. We’re Not Milennials.](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2011/10/generation_catalano_the_generation_stuck_between_gen_x_and_the_m.html) [Reasonable People Disagree about the Post-Gen X, Pre-Millennial Generation](http://magazine.good.is/articles/generation-xennials) [The Oregon Trail Generation: Life Before and After Mainstream Tech](http://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/04/oregon-trail-generation/) ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2015, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/37 "2015-11-29T02:53:04Z")
I will check those links out, thanks. > [@Rigamarole](#): > > Those words do have real meaning though, even if the scale is subjective. “Generations” aren’t real, nor do these labels have any meaning or importance. They’re just silly phrases for some media writers to fluff up their pieces with. I don’t understand why it’s so important to you and others to define and propagate these completely arbitrary, made-up generational designations. > [@](#): > > Generational analysis has a long and distinguished place in social science, and we cast our lot with those scholars who believe it is not only possible, but often highly illuminating, to search for the unique and distinctive characteristics of any given age group of Americans. But we also know this is not an exact science. > > We acknowledge, for example, that there is an element of false precision in setting hard chronological boundaries between the generations. Can we say with certainty that a typical 30-year-old adult is a Gen Xer while a typical 29-year-old adult is a Millennial? Of course not. > Nevertheless, we must draw lines in order to carry out the statistical analyses that form the core of our research methodology. And our boundaries-while admittedly too crisp-are not arbitrary. They are based on our own research findings and those of other scholars. > > We are mindful that there are as many differences in attitudes, values, behaviors and lifestyles within a generation as there are between generations. But we believe this reality does not diminish the value of generational analysis; it merely adds to its richness and complexity. ---
**Author:** ![oara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b77776/32.png) [@oara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oara)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2015, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/38 "2015-11-29T03:28:41Z")
I have really not paid much attention to this, but it did seem that, at one time, Gen X meant Kurt Cobain, and I was like at the tail end of Gen X where it didn’t really mean me. But if wikipedia says “early 1960s to the early 1980s” and I was born in the mid-70s, I guess I’m well in it now. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2015, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/39 "2015-11-29T03:58:07Z")
Yeah, I think the musicians in particular that are associated with a certain generation tend to be older than most of the members of the generation, or even all of them (take Jefferson Airplane, for example: all six of the original bandmembers were born from 1938-1944). ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2015, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609/40 "2015-11-29T04:49:36Z")
> [@journeyman\_southpaw](#): > > Those of us currently in our thirties might be able to relate to these articles: > > [Generation Catalano - We’re Not Gen X. We’re Not Milennials.](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2011/10/generation_catalano_the_generation_stuck_between_gen_x_and_the_m.html) > > [Reasonable People Disagree about the Post-Gen X, Pre-Millennial Generation](http://magazine.good.is/articles/generation-xennials) > > [The Oregon Trail Generation: Life Before and After Mainstream Tech](http://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/04/oregon-trail-generation/) From the second piece at the middle link: “Generation X, the last cohort to really enjoy the fruits of the golden age of American prosperity…” This is pretty funny if you’ve actually read Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, the novel that gave the generation its name. Pretty much the central thesis or theme of the book is that GenXers are the opposite: the ones who arrived too late for those fruits and who resent Boomers as a result. [This contemporaneous review](https://sologenxwarriors.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/the-generation-that-was-born-a-decade-late.jpg) gives some sense of that, although once again we have the curious definition at that time of GenX being 1961-1971. And then I had to laugh at what a “get off my lawn” curmudgeon it is writing that last “Oregon Trail” link.\* But it does hint at a division between my nearly 32-year-old wife and people slightly older: > [@](#): > > Myspace was born in 2003 and Facebook became available to all college students in 2004. So if you were born in 1981-1982, for example, you were literally the last graduating class to finish college without social media being part of the experience. My wife was totally into Facebook in college (although if this is accurate, not when she started college); when she and I met, she was in grad school and got me signed up as soon as it was available to non-college people. * * * \*Yet when I get to the end, I discover the writer is “Director of Content and Social Media” at her company ?!? This is the same person who wrote “The importance of going through some of life’s toughest years without the toxic intrusion of social media really can’t be overstated.” Um, okay. Did this op-ed double as her “take this job and shove it” letter? LOL [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thirtysomethings-an-age-group-with-no-generational-affiliation/738609.md?page=3)