Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Here is a hypothetical: what if a Boomer couple meets and marries in, perhaps, 1985 or so- maybe the man is 35 and the woman is 30. They would have skipped a generation. Would the child born then identify with the generation of their peers, the millenials, or generation x, because he/she is the child of baby boomers?

The child would identify with the Millennial Generation. The children of older Boomers were generally Generation X, while the children of the younger Boomers are usually Millennials.

According to wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomer, the Baby Boomers were born from 1946 to 1964. 1964 minus 1946 is 18 years. That means that the younger must be from 1955 onward, and the 9 years before that must be the older. But the man is 35, born in 1950, making him old. The woman is 30, born in 1955, making her young. What then?

That's the conventional definition, but from a Generational Dynamics perspective, the Baby Boomers begin in 1942, the first year that have no personal memory of the last crisis and lasts until 1959. The Millennial generation begins around 1982, so if the child is born in 1985, that's the generation he's going to identify himself with.

I have a question: what were the awakening era climaxes of the previous two eras? I know this one was Nixon resigning in disgrace, but while I know of the other two, I can't find how it ended. Any suggestions?

idunknow wrote: > I have a question: what were the awakening era climaxes of the
> previous two eras? I know this one was Nixon resigning in
> disgrace, but while I know of the other two, I can't find how it
> ended. Any suggestions?

That's a good question, and one that I hadn't really thought much
about before, or researched.

Following the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 was an Awakening era
war, which ended with the "Era of Good Feeling," which was a fairly
significant political event. The Awakening climax would have been
something related to these events.

After the Civil War, there were a number of generational themes --
rights of southern blacks, economic freedom, rise of labor unions,
American isolationism. A lot of these issues came to a head in the
1890s, and I would guess that the Awakening climax occurred in that
decade. Or perhaps it was the assassination of William McKinley in
1901.

The hypothetical describes my father and step-mother, and my half-brother who's attitude is in line with Millennials.

Regarding the question of American Awakening climaxes, two good candidates would be the elections of 1828 and 1896. Most narratives of political history view these as watershed moments: The 1828 election began the age of "Jacksonian Democracy" and was a victory of the young frontier leaders over the old aristocrats, who were often veterans of the Revolutionary War; the 1896 election is seen as beginning the "progressive era", which has all the markings of an unraveling - in this case, the unraveling takes the form of "social progress" and social justice campaigns with the aim of reforming institutions instead of breaking them down.