Baby boomer Totally Explained

Everything about Baby Boomers totally explained

Baby boomer is a North American-English term used to describe a person who was born between 1946 and 1964. Following World War II, these countries experienced an unusual spike in birth rates, a phenomenon commonly known as the baby boom. The term is iconic and more properly capitalized as Baby Boomers. The terms "baby boomer" and "baby boom" along with others (for example, "goomies" or "goomers") are also used in countries with demographics that didn't mirror the sustained growth in American families over the same interval.
   If the gross number of births were the indicator, births began to decline from the peak in 1957 (4,300,000), but fluctuated or didn't decline by much more than 40,000 (1959-1960) to 60,000 (1962-1963) until a sharp decline from 1964 (4,027,490) to 1965 (3,760,358). This sharp decline resulted from millions of women using birth control pills, which were introduced in 1960 in the U.S., and widely used by 1964. This makes 1955 a good year to mark the end of the baby boom in the U.S. However, it's important to note that 1964 is a nationwide average. Although it's true that 1946 marks the beginning of the boom nationwide, the end of the boom (the year of baseline birthrates returning to pre-war levels) on a state-by-state basis varied a great deal spanning throughout the 1960s.
   While 1945-1955 reflect the post-World War II demographic boom in births, there's a growing consensus among generational experts that two distinct cultural generations occupy these years. The conceptualization that has gained the most public acceptance is that of a 1942-1953 Baby Boom Generation, followed by a 1954-1965 Generation Jones. Boomers and Jonesers had dramatically different formative experiences which gave rise to dramatically different collective personalities. Other monikers have been sometimes used to describe the younger cohort, like "Trailing Edge Boomers", "Late Boomers", and "Shadow Boomers", but the moniker "Generation Jones" has achieved far more popularity than any of these other terms, and is the only moniker for this cohort that's commonly used in the media.
   In his book Boomer Nation, Steve Gillon states that the baby boom began in 1946 and ends in 1960, but he breaks Baby Boomers into two groups: Boomers, born between 1945 and 1957; and Shadow Boomers born between 1958 and 1964. Further, in Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, author Brent Green defines Leading-Edge Boomers as those born between 1946 and 1955. This group is a self-defining generational cohort or unit because its members all reached their late teen years during the height of the Vietnam War era, the defining historical event of this coming-of-age period. Green describes the second half of the demographic baby boom, born from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s as either Trailing-Edge Boomers or Generation Jones. In some cases the term Shadow Boomer is incorrectly applied to the children of the Baby Boomers; this group is more accurately referred to as Echo Boomers..
   It can be argued that the defining event of early Baby Boomers was the Vietnam War and the protest over the draft, which ended in 1973. Since anyone born after 1955 wasn't subject to the draft, this argues for the ten years including 1946 to 1955 as defining the baby boomers. This would fit the thirtysomething demographic covered by the TV show of the same name which aired from 1987-1991. The cultural disaffinities of those born after 1955 (thereby missing the draft and being too young to be part of the 1960s) could be captured by the Gen X of Douglas Coupland in his book . The term "X" has itself been transformed to cover a later cohort.
   In the United States, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling is generally recognized as the nation's first baby boomer. She was born in Philadelphia on January 1, 1946, at 12:00:01 a.m. Casey-Kirschling applied for Social Security benefits on 15 October 2007, signaling the start of an expected avalanche of applications from the post World War II war generation. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a former teacher from New Jersey, applied for benefits over the Internet at an event attended by Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue.(External Link

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United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the pattern of birth rates were more likely to decrease within 6 months. There was a sharp post-World War II peak in 1947, when more babies were born than in any year since the post-World War I peak in 1920. There was then a decline, followed by a broader but lower peak in the 1960s. Thus British Baby Boomers are younger than their American counterparts and hadn't risen to such prominence when the term was coined. The two peaks can clearly be seen in the age structure of England and Wales.

Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union, members of the upswing in births born after World War II are called the Sputnik Generation after the Soviet-satellite launched in 1957. There was also competition on birth rate after the war. This was one of the many aspects of the Cold War.

Australia

The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines the Baby Boomers as “those who were born in Australia or overseas during the years 1946 to 1964”. In fact the fertility rate began its rapid rise in 1946, peaking in 1961 and by 1965 it had dropped just below the 1946 level.

Characteristics

Size and economic impact

There is much debate that the 76 million American children born between 1945 and 1964 represent a cohort that's significant on account of its size. As of 2008, the term baby boomer is generally applied to anyone between the ages of 44 and 63. Boomers comprise nearly 28% of the adult US population. In 2004, the UK baby boomers held 80% of the UK's wealth and bought 80% of all top of the range cars, 80% of cruises and 50% of skincare products.
   In addition to the size of the group, Steve Gillon has suggested that one thing that sets the baby boomers apart from other generational groups is the fact that "almost from the time they were conceived, Boomers were dissected, analyzed, and pitched to by modern marketers, who reinforced a sense of generational distinctiveness." or Time article of February 9 1948. The effect of the baby boom continued to be analyzed and exploited throughout the 1950s and 60s.
   Boomers have often found difficulty managing their time and money due to an issue that other generations have not had a problem with. Because the Baby Boomer's generation has found that their parents are living longer, their children are seeking a better and longer college education, and they themselves are having children later in life, the boomers have become "sandwiched" between generations. The "sandwich generation", coined in the 1980s, refers to baby boomers who must care for both elderly parents and young children at the same time.
   The age wave theory suggests an impending economic slowdown when the boomers start retiring during 2007-2009.

Cultural identity

The baby boomers were the first group to be raised with televisions in the home, and television has been identified as "the institution that solidified the sense of generational identity more than any other."
It is jokingly said that, whatever year they were born, boomers were coming of age at the same time across the world; so that Britain was undergoing Beatlemania (which in fact occurred before the peak of the British baby boom in 1966) while people in the United States were driving over to Woodstock, organizing against the Vietnam War, or fighting and dying in the same war; boomers in Italy were dressing in mod clothes and "buying the world a Coke"; boomers in India were seeking new philosophical discoveries; American boomers in Canada had just found a new home after escaping the draft south of the border; Canadian Boomers were organizing support for Pierre Trudeau;. It is precisely these experiences why many believe that trailing boomers (those born in the 1960s) belong to another cohort, as events that defined their coming of age have nothing in common with leading or core boomers (which Daniel Yankelovich and other demographers made perfectly clear).
In the 1985 study of US generational cohorts by Schuman and Scott, a broad sample of adults was asked, "What world events over the past 50 years were especially important to them?" For the baby boomers the results were:

Baby Boomer cohort #1 (born from 1946 to 1954)
- Memorable events: assassinations of JFK, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, political unrest, walk on the moon, Vietnam War, anti-war protests, social experimentation, sexual freedom, civil rights movement, environmental movement, women's movement, protests and riots, experimentation with various intoxicating recreational substances
- Key characteristics: experimental, individualism, free spirited, social cause oriented
Baby Boomer cohort #2 (born from 1955 to 1964)
- Memorable events: Watergate, Nixon resigns, the Cold War, the oil embargo, raging inflation, gasoline shortages
- Key characteristics: less optimistic, distrust of government, general cynicism

Presidents & Prime Ministers	Iconic Technology	TV & Movies	Celebrities	Social Markers/Landmark Events	Leaders & Role Models	Trends in Fashion	Scientific Breakthroughs & Discoveries
John F. Kennedy	TV	Easy Rider	Robert Redford	Vietnam War, 1965-1973	Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1968	Mini and maxi skirts	Proposal of the Big Bang theory is put forward, 1948
Richard Nixon	Audio Cassette	The Graduate	Michael Cain	Neil Armstrong, 1969	Superman	The bikini	The first man-made satellite to orbit the earth is launched, 1957
Robert Menzies, Australia	Colour	Jaws	Paul Hogan	Cyclone Tracy, 1974	Fred Hollows, 1929-1993	Bell-bottoms	The American space probe Mariner 4 reaches Mars, 1964

Values, attitudes and lifestyle

Values

Political strands of modern liberalism (Vietnam-war pacifism, racial and social diversity and environmentalism/organic foods) and conservatism (Free trade/global economics, corporate advancement and "less government")

Work ethic

Questioning

Participation

Informality

Enthusiasm for causes

Rebellion against 1950s-era parental and political authority was "good" for them and had positive outcomes, but the current situation in the late 20th century called for more authority.

Attitudes

It’s not ‘our relationship’, it’s ‘my relationship’

If you're unhappy in a relationship, exit it

Job status and symbols are important

You only live once so enjoy it

Put yourself first after a life-time of hard work

Organize life around work not work around life

You have to work your way to the top

Free love and free (easy) divorce

Lifestyle

Working longer, retiring later

The wealthiest living generation

Consumption and lifestyle take precedence

Location and friends of prime importance

Spending the kids’ inheritance on traveling and leisure activities

Living alone and loving it

Many doing the sea change and tree change for increased quality of life

Many downsizing and reverse mortgaging to release capital

Fear of dependence – extremely independent

Health, Retirement and Death

At some point, Baby Boomers will have a large impact on the health care industry (Funerals/Hospice/Cemeteries), but as a generation, they've tended to avoid discussions and planning for their demise and avoided much long term planning.
   Baby Boomers often experience high anxiety about aging and death, and live in denial of these realities of life. Many don't believe these events have to be a reality of life.
   Journalist Jeff Chang wrote in his book Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, "Boomers seem to have had great difficulty imagining what could come after themselves."
   One book, written by Colorado doctor Terry Grossman, titled "The Baby Boomers' Guide to Living Forever", proposes how Baby Boomers might avoid death. On page 3 of the book, Grossman writes, unironically, "As an official member of the Baby Boomer Generation, I really and truly don't believe that it was intended for us to die. Death, if and when it occurs, clearly will represent a mistake of some kind."
   The humor publication The Onion published a satirical article celebrating the anticipated large-scale deaths of Baby Boomers in the upcoming years, quoting one fictional expert as saying the Boomers are "the most odious generation America has ever produced."
   James Love of BoomerDeathCounter.com claims that a Baby Boomer will die every 49.5 seconds in the USA during the year 2008.

Negligence of future generations by the Baby Boomer Generation

Starting in the mid-1980s, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, increased spending on personal lifestyle was attributed to "Yuppies," who were, by definition, 20-30 years old, and therefore overlapped with some baby boomers. The typical (?) over-spender, however, was born in the sixties, not the late forties or during the fifties, as most boomers were. The average boomer, contrary to popular myth, was and is content with a 1300-1500 square foot house, whereas Gen Xer's (those born after 1963, according to most sociologists) grew up expecting far more square footage. This may be due to the fact that during the baby boom, typical family size in America was still closer to 4 children per couple, rather than 2 children per couple, as in the late 1960s. The typical home sold in post-war America had 4 bedrooms, and six occupants, so that children were expected to share rooms. By 1990, the notion that offspring might be expected to share rooms was obsolete and the so-called "Me Generation" was born. Since the "Me Generation" is primarily Gen-X (but overlaps the last part of the Baby Boom), some sociologists want to call 1960 the last year of the "Baby Boom." Statistically, there's reason to do this.

Impact on history and culture

The Baby Boomers have been, like the older, successful child, the favourite generation of whom much has been written and said. When the Baby Boomers were young, there was much hope surrounding their potential that ‘Time’ magazine gave its Man of the Year Award in 1967 to the Baby Boomers. As Claire Raines points out in ‘Beyond Generation X’, “never before in history had youth been so idealized as they were at this moment.” When Generation X came along it had much to live up to and to some degree has always lived in the shadow of the Boomers, more than often criticized (‘slackers’, ‘whiners’ and ‘the doom generation’) than not.
One of the contributions made by the Boomer generation appears to be the expansion of individual freedom. Boomers often are associated with the civil rights movement, the feminist cause in the 1970s, gay rights, handicapped rights, and the right to privacy.Further Information

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