Coming of Age in a Post-Boomer World

By Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, and Michael X. Delli Carpini

An excerpt from A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen, to be released by Oxford University Press in May 2006.

On March 19, 2003, the United States attacked Iraq. The devastating aerial bombardment of Baghdad and other major cities, described by military leaders as a campaign of “shock and awe,” involved thousands of sorties flown by U.S. fighter planes, bombers, and helicopters. Several days later, over 150,000 troops entered Iraq from Kuwait and began their trek north, battling Iraqi soldiers and paramilitary fighters along the way. Within three weeks they reached Baghdad, and Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed. Each day hundreds of millions of television viewers around the world watched live broadcasts as the events unfolded.

In the United States, practically every American was transfixed by the military light shows, edited video, and debriefings being transmitted daily into their homes. What was the impact of these images? There is of course no simple answer to this question, as each individual was undoubtedly affected by a host of personal experiences that influenced the way he or she attempted to make sense of the flood of images and commentary. But personal experiences are not completely unique. They are influenced by larger economic, cultural, political, and technological trends, and by the resulting events that capture the attention and imagination of whole communities, societies, and, as the Iraq War itself demonstrates, even the world.

The combination of personal and collective experiences can lead to generational difference in political attitudes, opinions and behaviors. In 2003 [as the Iraq War began,] Dutifuls (those born during or before 1945) were 58 years old or older, with a median age of approximately 70. As this age cohort viewed the unfolding events, they could draw on personal memories, feelings, and attitudes shaped by collective experiences reaching back as far as World War II. Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) were between the ages of 39 and 57, with a median age of approximately 47. For most of this age cohort, Vietnam (and for some, Korea) marked the outer limits of their collective memories of war. GenXers (born between 1965 and 1976) were 27 to 38 years old as they watched the first cruise missiles hit Baghdad in 2003, with a median age of about 32. For most of this cohort, the Vietnam War was something experienced as a child or adolescent at best, with the invasions of Panama or Grenada, the “collapse of communism,” or the brief and overwhelmingly one-sided first Gulf War providing much more tangible touchstones to issues of foreign affairs. And DotNets (born after 1976) were in their teens and early twenties. For most of this cohort, the Iraq War was their introduction to international conflict in the post-Cold War era.

The unique experiences of these four cohorts—either by witnessing different collective events or living through broader technological, economic, cultural, or political shifts—distinguish them from one another. They are also differentiated by the fact that experiences that are collectively shared are interpreted differently depending on one’s age at the time they occur. While dramatic events such as the assassination of a president or a terrorist attack affect all members of society, the impact is unlikely to be the same for each cohort because it is experienced at different points in the life cycle. For example, while several age cohorts lived through the Vietnam War, it was experienced very differently by middle-aged men who had fought in previous wars, younger men who were eligible to be drafted, and elementary school boys whose only knowledge of the fighting may have been glimpses of the evening news. This matters because research suggests that the events and conditions experienced in youth and early adulthood play a critical role in the development of an individual’s and a generation’s subsequent worldview.

But who experiences certain events and trends and how they experience them are not the only factors that lead to the formation of a generation. A key element in this process is the larger information environment in which such events occur. Most Americans “experienced” World War II through newspapers, radio, and occasional newsreels, the Vietnam War through taped footage broadcast nightly by one of the three news networks, the Gulf War through live network and cable coverage, and the war with Iraq through all of these, plus the Internet.

Finally, perceptions—about the nature and impact of particular events, longer term trends, and even particular age cohorts or generations themselves—can affect generational characters as much as the events, trends, and cohorts themselves, especially in the mediated world within which we currently live. Our collective stereotypes of the “roaring twenties,” the “Depression era,” the “tumultuous sixties,” the “conservative eighties,” or the “post-9/11 era,” while based at least in part in reality, can be as important as the reality itself. Similarly, our stereotypes of the community-oriented and self-sacrificing “greatest generation,” the radical, politically engaged “sixties generation,” or the cynical, lost, and self-absorbed “slacker generation” can be as important, even self-fulfilling, as the reality upon which they are only partially and broadly based . . .

GenXers and DotNets grew up in different worlds from those experienced by their predecessors. Throughout their childhoods and early adulthoods, the country witnessed the deterioration (and perhaps partial rejuvenation) of social institutions (such as public schools), a revolution in technology and communication, and a weakening of traditional political practices. They have experienced demographic busts and booms, unsurpassed economic prosperity followed by a recessionary bursting of the bubble, and a globalism that carries both everyday opportunities (international cuisine) and large-scale threats (terrorism). All of this has been accompanied by changes in the cultural environment that have reinforced the lessons of these phenomena and shaped the outlook of the young men and women who have come of age in the post-Boomer era.

While both cohorts shared many similar experiences, there are some key differences in the circumstances of their childhoods and the conditions of their early adulthoods. And as noted earlier, even shared experiences may be seen through very different lenses because of the different ages at which they were experienced by GenXers and DotNets. As we also noted earlier, the interpretations we develop of this period and of the generations emerging from it are as important as the actual conditions in which these cohorts came of age. For example, the socialization of GenXers is generally described in negative terms. Observers claim that as children, Xers bore the brunt of political and social changes in the larger society, and as young adults they disproportionately suffered from transformations in the economic realm. DotNets, in contrast, are often described as being coddled and cared for as children, and as entering adulthood during a period of widespread economic prosperity and possibility, only to have the rug pulled out from under them. While both descriptions may be as much perception as reality, they set the scene for how each age group is perceived, represented, and affected by larger social and cultural forces and in so doing play a role in shaping each cohort’s self-identity.

Understanding these social influences lends insight into the character of each individual generation—and our society more broadly. Indeed, just as differences between youth and their elders indicate changes in our society writ large, the experiences that have shaped these generations provide a window to view broad nationwide trends.

Excerpted from "Coming of Age in a Post-Boomer World," from A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen, by Cliff Zukin and Scott Keeter and Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. Copyright © 2006 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Used by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.