Generation Jones
By Janie Magruder
Arizona Republic
 |
| Advertiser news services and library photos
Boomer generations Generation Jones Baby boomers —Arizona Republic Improve your generation grasp For more information on baby boomers and others: "Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069" by William Strauss and Neil Howe; William Morrow, $16.95 "Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America" by Marc Freedman; PublicAffairs, $14 "Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life" by Gail Sheehy; Bantam, $7.99 "The Fourth Turning" by William Strauss and Neil Howe; Broadway, $16.95 "When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work" by Lynne C. Lancaster and David Stillman; HarperBusiness, $15.95 On the Web |
Ripped from the headlines of 1964:
- Three young men, registering black voters in Mississippi, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan one month before the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.
- The surgeon general warned about the dangers of smoking, a message Congress then required on all cigarette packs.
- Sen. Barry Goldwater ran for president.
- American fashion designer Rudi Gernreich introduced the monokini, a topless swimsuit.
- The Beatles appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show."
Also that year, about 4 million infants were born in the United States, the last of the baby boomers. They brought up the rear for a generation that spans 19 years and includes 80 million Americans.
Older baby boomers protested, burned and marched to change the world. But those who were born in '64 who are turning 40 this year missed the war protests and civil unrest. By the time they came of age, they thought to better the world by bettering themselves. They dove into self-help programs such as est and Lifespring.
They are individualistic, like Generation X, but driven and optimistic, true hallmarks of baby boomers, and they are still out to make their mark.
Two boomer waves
The baby boom refers to a dramatic spike in the U.S. population that occurred from the end of World War II to 1964, about 4.2 million babies per year, according to the Census Bureau. Before 1946, the average number of births per year was 2.6 million. After the boom, starting in 1965, it was 3.4 million.
"First wave" boomers, according to generational experts, were born from 1946 to '56 and became adults in the mid-1960s to early '70s. Chuck Underwood, a generational consultant and president of Generational Imperative Inc. in Cincinnati, describes the older boomers as "save-the-world revolutionaries"; their younger counterparts are "self-improvement partiers."
"When everyone thinks of baby boomers, they think of the '60s," Underwood says. "But the second-wave boomers came of age after that, forming their core values when America had shifted from 15 years of social activism and made a dramatic switch to the party era."
Jonathan Pontell, a California-based pop-culture expert, has coined a term for the 53 million Americans born from 1954 to 1965, whom he says are neither true baby boomers nor Generation Xers (born 1965-81). Ninety percent of Pontell's "Generation Jones" feel they fit somewhere in between, according to a 2000 survey by New York City-based Omni Research Group.
These "Jonesers" expected great things of themselves but fell short when the economy soured in the early '80s. As a result, Pontell says, they've become cynical. They still crave doing great things, but fear it may be too late.
"It was hard for us to jump in and make money, but we put all our self-fulfilling dreams on hold and went first for the cash," said Pontell, whose research is at www.generationjones.com. "And now, we're at the point in our lives when we've started to feel like it's now or never."
Underwood says baby boomers owe much to their parents, who taught them a strong work ethic, gave them a sense of their family roots and pounded away at the notion that anything was possible. The generation's second wave is clearly flexing its can-do muscle.
Feeling in between
Doug Ducey, president and chief executive officer of Cold Stone Creamery, joined the company in 1995 at age 31 and was promoted to his current post a year later. Ducey, who turns 40 in April, views his mother as a baby boomer, through she was born in 1945 and thus missed the cutoff by one year.
"She's closer to a baby boomer than I am because of the people and experiences she was around ... MLK, JFK, protests, the rebellious nonconformity," the resident says. "I don't feel a part of the baby boomers or Generation X, but somewhere in between."
Some young boomers identify more with the generation because of their personal experiences before age 20, when most values are formed, Underwood says.
"Their core values could be influenced upward into the boomers or downward into Generation X by the age of their siblings, by longer stays in the classroom or by going into the military," he says.
Mary Jane Rogers, who turns 40 in May, considers herself a "card-carrying" member of the baby boomers. She spent part of her formative years in the San Francisco Bay Area, with politically active parents and two older siblings, both baby boomers.
She bounced to the Beatles at age 6 months and knew all the words to the Doors' "Light My Fire," when she was 4. At 10, she was glued to the television set when President Richard M. Nixon resigned.
"I may have missed out on some of my current peers' coolness," says Rogers. "But I can play Trivial Pursuit, and people don't expect me to be able to tap into that old baby boomer knowledge of my siblings."
Hope springs eternal among boomers because they grew up during a wondrous, prosperous time in America. Edwin Benoit, who started an advertising company four years ago, feels that optimism and is borrowing the best qualities from baby boomers and Generation X.
"I wouldn't want to feel like I was on the tail end of anything," Benoit says. "What I pull from Gen X is technology, and from the baby boomers an interest in music, a lust for improving life."
Still, there's no doubt which group the Chandler resident respects more.
"Baby boomers — you got to hand it to them," says Benoit, who talks about the generation as if he wasn't part of it, though he turns 40 next month. "They rewrote music, they were trailblazers, they had great vision. They always were a spark, they were going to turn the world upside down. How can you top them?"
