Posted on 08/05/2004 10:29:02 PM PDT by Marie
"Trace the life cycle to date of Americans born in 1961. They were among the first babies people took pills not to have. During the 1967 Summer of Love they were the kindergartners who paid the price for America's new divorce epidemic. In 1970 they were fourth-graders trying to learn arithmetic amid the chaos of open classrooms and New Math curricula. In 1973 they were the bell-bottomed sixth-graders who got their first real-life civics lesson watching the Watergate hearings on TV. Through the late 1970s they were the teenage mail-hoppers who spawned the Valley Girls and other flagrantly nonBoomer youth trends. In 1979 they were the graduating seniors of Carter-era malaise who registered record-low SAT scores and record-high crime and drug-abuse rates.
"From Boom to Thirteenth, America's children went from a family culture of My Three Sons to one of My Two Dads. As millions of mothers flocked into the work force, the proportion of preschoolers cared for in their own homes fell by half. For the first time, adults ranked automobiles ahead of children as necessary for "the good life." The cost of raising a child, never very worrisome when Boomers were little, suddenly became a fraught issue. Adults of fertile age doubled their rate of surgical sterilization. The legal-abortion rate grew to the point where one out of every three pregnancies was terminated. Back in 1962 half of all adults agreed that parents in bad marriages should stay together for the sake of the children. By 1980 less than a fifth agreed. America's divorce rate doubled from 1965 to 1975, just as first-born Thirteeners passed through middle childhood."
(Excerpt) Read more at etext.org ...
"Old Cracker posted a vanity tonight about the hopelessness of my Generation. (20-30's) I think that the above article, while old, does a much better job of defining this generation than I ever could. It's long, but powerful and well worth the read"
Was that in addition to Old Crackhead's anti-Southpark screed?
"Old Cracker posted a vanity tonight about the hopelessness of my Generation. (20-30's) I think that the above article, while old, does a much better job of defining this generation than I ever could. It's long, but powerful and well worth the read"
Was that in addition to Old Crackhead's anti-Southpark screed?
And call us slackers - I suppose for not picking up the slack of our brothers, sisters and friends they killed before birth.
I feel the same way. There are ways to fix SS so that it remains viable. However, doing so would require that people who are receiving SS now make some sacrifices. That isn't going to happen.
What will happen, in the long run, is that the SS system will collapse. I accept that and am planning for my future on the assumption that there will be no SS checks coming for me when I get old.
The collapse will lead to misery for many people. I don't really care, to tell you the truth. If you rely on the government to take care of you, you deserve whatever misery you get.
My fiance and I are completely and utterly aware that we will have no Social Security. That doesn't mean that its inevitable collapse will have no effect on us.
It's a waste to have to contribute to it. I'm resentful, to be honest, and it's only going to get worse. On top of the SS contribution we must also contribute to our own retirement accounts. Fortunately I have a fully-vested private pension plan as well (which is also becoming a rarity). We still worry, and we both have a good 40 years until retirement!
My parents struggled financially and have virtually nothing in savings for retirement. It saddens me that the good, God-fearing couple who raised me will not have a relaxing and comfortable retirement. We will help them as much as we can - not that they will accept much (or any) help! At the same time we will have our own family to raise. It is going to get awfully hard if there's no social security for my parents...but we will not let them live on the street or go hungry.
Now look again--and notice a countermood popping up in college towns, in big cities, on Fox and cable TV, and in various ethnic side currents. It's a tone of physical frenzy and spiritual numbness, a revelry of pop, a pursuit of high-tech, guiltless fun. It's a carnival culture featuring the tangible bottom lines of life--money, bodies, and brains--and the wordless deals with which one can be traded for another. A generation weaned on minimal expectations and gifted in the game of life is now avoiding meaning in a cumbersome society that, as they see it, offers them little.
Empirically that is utterly unhelpful. Post-Sept. 11, it sounds even sillier.
Hard decisions are going to have to be made. If the boomers want to be remembered in any other way than "sucking the life out of country" (well put btw), than they need to make a sacrifice. Their grandparents did in WWI, their parents in the depression and WWII/Korea, my generation in Gulf War IⅈBoomers are the only generation to condescendingly balk at true sacrifice. It's time to atone, stand and deliver.
It was written in '92, dude...
I totally agree! We could solve the problem by excluding from SS everyone born between 1945 and 1960 who never served in the armed forces, ...or was a registered democrat from 1965-to present. :)
I know, but it was a prediction about the future. It was silly then, and looks sillier now in light of the way the future actually played out.
My sister was born in 1960, and my younger sib and I (who were born in 68 and 70 and consider ourselves "Generation Reagan") always called her "Backwash of the Hippies". That used to make her really angry. She's not really "like" my sib and I from a values and work ethic standpoint, though we were all raised in the same home with the same parents. She's very socially conservative and not a fiscal liberal, exactly, but she's very "Earth Mother" type.
It's a tone of physical frenzy and spiritual numbness, a revelry of pop, a pursuit of high-tech, guiltless fun. It's a carnival culture featuring the tangible bottom lines of life--money, bodies, and brains--and the wordless deals with which one can be traded for another.
Seems to explain the popularity of the reality shows, extreme sports, internet porn, low-carb beer and Paris Hilton...
I'm part of what the author (weirdly) calls "thirteeners." I don't enjoy any of the stuff you list, nor do I even know anyone in my age group who claims to. Obviously lots of people in my "generation" do enjoy them, but there are also lots of people who don't. And those who do and don't can be found across age groups. I just don't think "generations" (as opposed to age, or religious intensity, or whether you are married with kids, etc.) is a very useful way to think about how Americans are different.
Some baby boomers did see themselves as some sort of revolutionary vanguard, of course, but that was probably part of the problem.
In many ways, you just described me. Fashion trends don't over ride the underlying conservative core, though. When push comes to shove, she'll put her family first.
Yeah.... Low-carb beer sucks.
What year were you born in. If you're 1961 or earlier you're an "againg boomer". If you were born 1962 or later you're "a brat"
for later
1969. Actually I'm in between generations. Baby boomers and there offspring. My parents pre-date the baby boom.
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