Title: Baby boomers.

POPLINE Document Number: 201563

Author(s):

Light PC

Source citation:

New York, New York, W.W. Norton and Company, 1988. 319 p.

Abstract:

At 75 million strong, the baby boomers packed the maternity wards as infants, the classrooms as children, and the campuses, employment lines, and mortgage markets as young adults. Born between 1946 and 1964, they are members of 1 of the largest generations in US history. Some baby boomers are rich, others poor. Not all baby boomers got good jobs--some are still caught in the American underclass of the unemployed, others are stranded in dead-end jobs, trapped behind other baby boomers. Chapter 1 debunks the caricatures of baby boomers by asking some basic questions about the real baby boomers. How have they differed from people who came both before and after, and why? What was so special about their childhoods anyway? Chapter 2 continues the search for the real baby boomers by addressing the growing worry about intergenerational warfare. Because of their size, the baby boomers have been locked in a perpetual buyer's labor pool and seller's housing market: they make less but are paying more. Compared to their parents at the same stage of life, the baby boomers are in financial trouble. Baby boomers have real economic problems, and they do not want to solve these problems by cutting their parents' and grandparents' Social Security and Medicare. The younger baby boomers are different from their older siblings; women are different from men; those who completed a year or more of college are different from the poor and disappearing middle class; and those who served in Vietnam are very different from those who protested. As chapter 3 suggests, this can be a source of great polarization. The greatest gap exists within the baby boom, not between the baby boomers and their parents and grandparents. Nevertheless, the baby boomers do share some common ground. They grew up in the standardized kitchens and houses that came with the building codes of the 1940s, studied the standardized curricula that came with the drive for universal access to education of the 1950s, and lived with the standardized fear that came with atomic bomb drills and the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Chapter 4 analyzes these early memories. Chapter 5 paints a portrait of the baby boom's separation from political and social traditions. Chapter 6 suggests that the baby boom's separation also involves a rejection of party identification as a basis for political decisions and an abiding commitment to individualism, self-reliance, and introspection as a generational style for solving problems. Chapters 7-9 consider the baby boomers' responses to politics and political parties. Chapter 9 concludes that the election of 2016 may be the 1st election in history that will be more than a referendum on a generation than on a party or a candidate.

Keywords:

United States
Baby Boom
Population Characteristics
Political Factors
Socioeconomic Factors
Mass Media
Family Characteristics
Income
Standard of Living
Developed Countries
North America
Americas
Fertility
Population Dynamics
Demographic Factors
Population
Economic Factors
Communication
Family and Household