I learned today that I am an “in-between Boomer.”

I don’t fit in with the earliest Baby Boomers who grew up
in the ‘50s but my life experiences don’t quite match up with the last of the
Boomers who are turning 50 this year.

In a story that one of my former editors would call “a
fun read,” The New York Times offers a piece that convincingly makes the case
that the Baby Boom generation is divided into two distinct halves. (Take this quiz to see where you stand.)

The author of the piece, RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
(who turned 50 a few months ago), labels these two
groups the Boomer Classic and the Boomer Reboot.) The
differences between them he cites cover the gammut: sex, drugs and rock ‘n’
roll, the economy, war and the role of women.

Perez-Pena asserts that the youth culture of a
child in the 1940s and ‘50s is far different than the experiences of those who
grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s. And it probably matters even more, he adds, whether
you reached adulthood before or after the early ‘70s, “a time of head-spinning
changes with long-term consequences for families, careers and even survival.”

Here’s a taste of his column:

“If you were an early boomer, even if you
were not drafted or shipped to Vietnam, you had friends, classmates or
relatives who were. The fathers you knew had served in World War II, and
probably thought their sons should answer the call, too. The war was a raw,
central presence in young people’s lives, and in the nation’s cultural and
political battles.

“Late boomers like me had none of that — no
war, no draft, no defining political cause, and most of our fathers were too
young for World War II. I remember, as a teenager, seeing old footage of the
riots outside the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, and thinking, “People
my age don’t feel that strongly about anything.”

“People raised in the immediate postwar years
had more faith in their government, and an idealistic view of America that
curdled in the ‘60s and ‘70s. My childhood memories of the evening news, on the
other hand, include the war, protests, Watergate and the dour faces of Johnson
and Nixon, not the grins of Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy.

“In this way, I think we late boomers have
more in common with the jaded Generation X that followed: we had less idealism
to spoil. No, I don’t remember where I was when Kennedy was killed and
innocence died (I was an infant), but I sure remember where I was when Nixon
resigned and cynicism reigned. Older boomers may have wanted to change the
world; most of my peers just wanted to change the channel.”

 

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