ABSTRACT
Many generations are given names and identities, perhaps increasingly, as journalists and marketers see generations as potential niches in the market of readers and consumers. Most generations are well known for something they accomplished or experienced as young adults. The Generation of 1914 fought World War I (Wohl, 1979); the Greatest Generation fought World War II and then created the civic culture of the 1950s (Brokaw, 1998); the Generation of 1968 were student activists worldwide (Passerini, 1996). But the defining fact about the baby-boom generation (some of whom also became members of the Generation of 1968) was that it was born. This was viewed as socially consequential at the time and ever after-because of the impact on education, health care, labor force activity, and so on. In this chapter we examine a different issue. We consider the psychological meaning of generation in the lives of those people who actually composed the Baby Boom. To do that, we consider briefly what the Baby Boom felt like to those who created it and, much more extensively, what it has felt like to those who populated it. We also consider what we know about the significance of generation in individual psychology. Our treatment will begin from the assumption that a birth cohort (group of people born at the same time) like the Baby Boom becomes a generation (a birth cohort defined by its shared social history) when it is viewed as one by others, and by its own members (see Alwin, McCammon, & Hofer, chap. 3, this volume). The Baby Boom qualifies on both counts. Finally, we examine how the meaning of generation changes over the course of adulthood, at least into middle age.
