The Death of Generation X

I have a confession to make: I'm a former member of Generation X.  No, not the punk band Billy Idol started out in in the late 1970's.  For the uninitiated, the Generation X I'm referring to deals with people born after the 1946 to 1964 Baby Boom.  The exact time span that covers this post-Boomer period is debatable; most articles I've read about the topic say it covers people born roughly between 1965 to 1980.  Others will stretch it back to 1960, putting its endpoint somewhere in the mid to late '70's.  But most agree that it ends no later than 1982.  How ever it's defined,  social scientists began talking about this in the early 90's and I always thought it was a bunch of bunk (it's a family blog, so I'll keep it friendly).  Not that there aren't differences between the generations, but I didn't buy what all these "enlightened" sociologists and social commentators were selling about disaffected, slacker ne'er do wells.   I felt as if I was being treated like a martian by a bunch of aging boomers who had lost touch with the popular culture, and were desperate to figure out why we didn't end up just like them.  After years of walking in the desert on this issue it seems I have an ally in my rejection of the Gen X label, though for different reasons.

I have begun to read, and will give a fuller reflection when I'm done, Generation Me by Jean Twenge, PhD.. She's an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State and has done research concerning the attitudes of the current generation of young adults.  The book is already six years old (a lifetime in the social sciences), and she has come out with another one since, but it was recommended to me by my provincial so I figured I'd heed his advise. Dr. Twenge got off to a good start in my estimation because she's critical of the Generation X moniker.    Twenge, born in 1971 and thus a member of the Generation Formerly Known as X, uses scientific data to back the assertion that previous generational theories got it wrong.  It's not that those of us born after the Baby Boom aren't different from our antecedents, it's that the authors who peddled this stuff were drawing their conclusions from case studies and from analysing music videos, TV shows, movies and fashion trends popular with twenty-somethings, but not from looking at hard data.  Twenge studied the results of over a million questionnaires done over the course of decades in formulating her thesis.  These surveys sought peoples' opinions on various issues and tracked how these attitudes changed over the years.  The study crosses generational lines, so she was able to compare and contrast the various groups. Of course she also critiques the popular culture and conducted interviews with real life people, but unlike many who came before her she had objective data to guide these subjective elements. 

Now, this book is not about me, per say.  Twenge puts Generation Me from 1970 through to 2000-a mix of traditional Gen Xers and what have been commonly dubbed Millennials, among other things.  Where that leaves me, born a few months before the Summer of Love, I don't know.  I'm just glad I'm no longer shackled with the Gen X mark.  I admit my claim that the old distinction is dead is a bit of wishful thinking.  Even the author, who seems to dislike the title as much as I do, concedes that we're stuck with the Generation X name, so my liberation is more in my mind than in reality.  It's just nice to know I'm not alone in my disdain for this misleading label.  And why should I worry anyway?: other than educators and HR departments the only others who care about this stuff are marketing and advertising people trying to separate that golden 18 to 35 year old demographic from its money.  Alas, I'm not a young adult anymore, so all those people selling cars and Coke-a-Cola have lost interest in me a long time ago. 

But what of the current crop of young adults?  Twenge claims that they are assertive, self assured and endowed with a spirit of entitlement.  They are self important, but not self absorbed; they take their self worth as a give in because it's all they've been told since they were old enough to listen, so why think a lot about it?.  They are unconcerned with social expectations or mores, and really believe that they can be all that they can be.  They are independent minded and believe that they shape their own world view with out the influence of outside norms of morality.  This has implications for our society moving ahead, but I would also say for the Church as well.  These attitudes specifically effect vocation awareness and the future of religious life.  If vocation is a call from God, a call essentially from without,  how do young people become aware of it if they've never felt the need to look beyond their own selves for meaning or guidance?  These and other questions will be discusses after I finish the book.