In general, baby boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values; however, many commentators have disputed the extent of that rejection, noting the widespread continuity of values with older and younger generations. In Europe and North America boomers are widely associated with privilege, as many grew up in a time of affluence. As a group, they were the healthiest, and wealthiest generation to that time, and amongst the first to grow up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time.

One of the features of Boomers was that they tended to think of themselves as a special generation, very different from those that had come before them. In the 1960s, as the relatively large numbers of young people became teenagers and young adults, they, and those around them, created a very specific rhetoric around their cohort, and the change they were bringing about. This rhetoric had an important impact in the self perceptions of the boomers, as well as their tendency to define the world in terms of generations.

The baby boom has been described variously as a “shockwave” and as “the pig in the python.” By the sheer force of its numbers, the boomers were a demographic bulge which remodeled society as they passed through it.

Characteristics

The baby boomer generation is seen here as the widest bulge.

Size and economic impact

This cohort shares characteristics like higher rates of participation in higher education than previous generations and an assumption of lifelong prosperity and entitlement developed during their childhood in the 1950s.

The spending wave theory suggests that an economic slowdown would occur due to the start of Baby Boomer retirement during the late 2000s.

Cultural identity

Boomers grew up at a time of dramatic social change. In the United States, that social change marked the generation with a strong cultural cleavage, between the proponents of social change and the more conservative. Some analysts believe this cleavage has played out politically since the time of the Vietnam War, to some extent defining the political landscape and division in the country.

In 1993, Time magazine reported on the religious affiliations of baby boomers, stating that about 42% of baby boomers were dropouts from formal religion, a third had never strayed from church, and one-fourth of boomers were returning to religious practice. The boomers returning to religion were “usually less tied to tradition and less dependable as church members than the loyalists. They are also more liberal, which deepens rifts over issues like abortion and homosexuality.”

Boomers across the world are said to have come of age at about the same time. Thus, Britain was undergoing Beatlemania 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”; American boomers in Canada had just found a new home and escaped the draft; Canadian Boomers were organizing support for Pierre Trudeau. It is precisely because of these experiences that many believe those born in the second half of the birth boom belong to another generation, as events that defined their coming of age have little in common with leading or core boomers.

The boomers found that their music, most notably rock and roll, was another expression of their generational identity. Transistor radios were personal devices that allowed teenagers to listen to The Beatles and The Motown Sound.

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 Boom Generation (this particular study used the years 1946-1955 for this Boomer cohort, although the exact birth years are currently controversial[citation needed]), the results were:

  • Memorable events: assassination of JFK, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr., political unrest, walk on the moon, risk of the draft into the Vietnam War, anti-war protests, social experimentation, sexual freedom, Roe V. Wade, Stonewall Riots, drug experimentation, civil rights movement, environmental movement, women’s movement, protests and riots, Woodstock and similar music festivals, mainstream rock from the Beatles to Jimi Hendrix experimentation with various intoxicating recreational substances
    • Key characteristics: experimental, individualism, free spirited, social cause oriented

Aging and end of life issues

As of 1998, it was reported that as a generation boomers had tended to avoid discussions and planning for their demise and avoided much long term planning. However, beginning at least as early as that year, there has been a growing dialogue on how to manage aging and end of life issues as the generation ages. In particular, a number of commentators have argued that Baby Boomers are in a state of denial regarding their own aging and death and are leaving an undue economic burden on their children for their retirement and care. Research on memory loss has indicated that the Baby Boom generation has been confronted with increasing loss of memory due to the agitated life they lead, which requires that attention is put on many different things at a time. Since older generations were not faced with this rapid life style, and newer generations have lived with this society all their lives, it is said that the Baby Boom generation was the most damaged one in terms of memory loss due to age.

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