Anyone with semi-adult children (so labeled because one trait of GenX, GenY, and the IGen/Gen Z) is that they are aging slower, and enter adulthood later), knows that they don’t seem to resemble previous generations. Certainly Boomer pull what little hair out they have left saying “What’s wrong with these kids?”
It’s well known that kids today date later (if at all), learn to drive later, marry later and, much to our chagrin, move out of the house later. And, a common trait they often leave once . . . then, like a boomerang, come back.
This will be the first of a multi-part look at a fascinating, data-filled new book by psychologist Jean Twenge offers insight about people from 80 to 10. You might have suspected a few of these traits to be true, but would be shocked to find other assumptions challenged.
Twenge used surveys whose data sets totaled responses from 39 million people! Thus, she probably had one of the biggest data sets in history. Because she has real data—-and not just theories—-she is able to critically examine the earlier book Generations by Neill Strauss and William Howe. Occasionally she agrees, often she finds their ideas didn’t stand up to reality.
Twenge previously wrote “I-Gen” about the generation of young people who grew up with iPhones and iPads. The whole “everybody is special” claptrap can be seen in the explosion of phrases in American books such as “I Love Me” or “I am Special” since 2005, which rose fivefold.
She also found that while Strauss and Howe predicted a “major event” around 2020, they had the reactions of the Millennials (who were the modern stand-in for the Greatest Generation) wrong. They predicted this group would “come together collectively as one to face the challenge of the pandemic, relying on their strong sense of patriotic duty and rule-following.” But where both Twenge and Strauss/Howe seem to miss the boat is in ascribing generational tendencies without looking at the actual impact of individuals in destroying trust—-Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and the entire FBI and CDC. Moreover, the Millennials, at least as I have witnessed, have never had a strong sense of “patriotic duty.”
In an exceptional chart, Twenge contrasts the introduction of technology (television, computers, internet news, social media, but fails to point out that the impact of most of these was toward greater social isolation. This would later appear in mental health problems and higher suicide rates across multiple generations, including Boomers. Interestingly, in her chart listing entertainers and business people or people in the news, she omits one of the most important of all boomers, Rush Limbaugh, who was far more influential than Garry Trudeau, Jill Biden, Amy Tan, Patty Hearst, or Neil deGrasse Tyson. Boomers have displayed consistently rising days of poor mental health per month going back to the late 1950s, a trait Twenge ascribes in part to a high divorce rate.
This tied to another trait noticeable across all generations, namely the poorer one was the more likely he was to have more days depressed. Twenge found that in fact money did appear to buy happiness, and that by the 2010s, whites in the lowest fifth of income were five times as likely to be unhappy as those in the top fifth. Shocked, I tell ya!
Her research also shows the old saw that working women who created the “latchkey kids” appeared with Gen-Xers. Not even close. In fact, married women with school age kids starte working in greater numbers as far back as 1948! Between 30-60% of Boomer schoolchildren had working moms. I know I did, but only as a junior high schooler, who spent afternoons at a grandparent’s house while my mother worked. Rather than a sudden Gen-X “burst, the number of high school kids who said they had a mother who worked has grown steadily from 1948 to 2000 when it finally hit a plateau.
Gen-X of course was famous for having a lower age for the first sexual encounter and a higher age for marriage. Having seen so many failed marriages, they committed to marriage more and the divorce rate fell so that by 2019 it was half of what it as in 1984 (when we had the first divorced President in office). This group that focused on self and had high esteem would have problems, because high esteem is not a predictor of success!
What also stands out from the data on the Boomers and Gen-X—-but also virtually all others—-is the steady decline in trust of other people. It has fallen by half for all generations since 1945. Once again, people played a role: this didn’t just happen. From LBJ’s “Veetnam” lies to Richard Nixon’s “I’m not a crook” to Clinton’s sexcapade lies to WMDs and most recently the China Virus vax, lockdown, and mask lies, people on the whole have lost trust in virtually all authority figures and institutions, from the church to the military to police (anyone seen the FBI and their stupid “Proud Boys” Patriot Front knockoffs lately) to the Russia Hoax. Worse, since churches for the most part are unwilling to call out sin lest it drive off a few tithers and volunteers, trust is at an all time low.
When this is combined with the isolation brought on by technology, the exacerbated by the China Virus lockdowns, we have a massive number of youts who are gonna need more than My Cousin Vinny to get out of this.
Larry Schweikart
Rock drummer, film maker, NYTimes #1 bestselling author
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