Generation X generally consists of persons born in the 1960s and
1970s, although the exact dates of birth defining this age demographic are
highly debated. As a phrase, without the current meaning, the term was
coined as the title of a 1964 pulp novel, and was picked up as the name of a
punk rock band featuring the young Billy Idol. It was later popularised by
Douglas Coupland in his book Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture,
who took it from a sociological text by Paul Fussell. It was after the
publication of Coupland's book that the term began being used as a name for
the generation by the media, who introduced Generation X as a group of
flannel-wearing, alienated, undereducated slackers with body piercing who
drank Starbucks coffee and had to work at McJobs.
Beginnings
The generation was traditionally begun at 1965, taking off from the
birth-rate-based Baby Boom span of 1946-1964, but since many notable people
who are normally thought of as clearly Gen-X, such as Courtney Love, Janeane
Garofalo and Eddie Vedder, were born in 1964, this year is often preferred
as the beginning of Generation X. In their book Generations William Strauss
and Neil Howe called this generation the "13th Generation" because the tag,
like this generation, is a little Halloweenish, and it is the thirteenth to
know the flag of the United States (counting back to the peers of Benjamin
Franklin) and set its birth years at 1961 to 1981. This generation is
sometimes also known as the Baby Busters or just Busters; although in
Anthony Brancato's system this generation is to divided into two discrete
groups, the Baby Busters (Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain) and the
Post-Busters (Ani DiFranco and Alanis Morissette). "Baby Busters" was, in
fact, the only name to be used for this generation before Coupland's book
came out. Jonathan Pontell begins the generation at 1966, placing 1965 as
part of Generation Jones. In Europe, the generation is often known as
Generation E, or simply known as the Nineties Generation, along the lines of
such other European generation names as "Generation of 1968" and "Generation
of 1914". In France, the term G??ation Bof is in use, with "bof" being a
French word for "Whatever", the defining Gen-X saying. In Iran, they are
called the Burnt Generation.
This generation's parents are the Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation.
Generation X's typical grandparents are the G.I. Generation. Generation X's
children will be or have been born in the 1990s and the following few
decades, including Generation Y and the following generation. Assuming
generations have a 22-year average length, this means Generation X's
children will be born from 1982 to 2025. Its typical grandchildren will be
born from 2026 to about 2048. (What is meant by typical is that a
generation's grandchildren will be born at a bell-curve rate and those years
are the top of the bell curve.)
Generation X consists of far fewer people than the
baby boom generation and has had correspondingly less impact on popular
culture, but it came into its own during the late 1980s and early 1990s. A
fashion for grunge music exemplified by the band Nirvana expressed the
frustrations of a generation forever doomed to live in the shadow of its
elders. As is common in generational shifts, Gen-X thinking has significant
overtones of cynicism against things held dear to the previous generation.
Outlook
Some have suggested that Generation Xers are proud to not be from the baby
boom generation and actively rebel against the idealism the baby boomers
advocated in the
1960s.
Some would also argue that it is not merely the idealism of the 1960s which
Generation Xers are rejecting, but a deeper cynicism of the fact that such
'idealism', inevitably doomed in its gratuitous naïveté, so quickly gave way
to an era unequivocally focused on commercial and industrial progress; a
period which incubated many of the problems facing their, and coming,
generations. They fantasize about how the 1960s and 1970s supposedly offered
Boomers easy sex without consequence while resenting the lasting damage done
by an era in which they now realize they were the babies adults were trying
so much not to have.
Other people born in the described time period reject the labels as not
particularly useful, as they see few unifying events and attitudes
connecting them together, and point to social class, geography, and other
factors having far more influence than chronology. The fuzzy boundaries of
Generations X and
Y and the lack of defining events give some credence to this argument;
though perhaps, more obviously, such facts underwrite the very problem
central to the definition of Generation X, and alluded to in the title
itself - namely a crisis of identity.
The problem may be that this generation lacks a core. While Boomers
couldn't escape their generational center, Xers struggle to find one.
Generation X is the most immigrant generation born in the twentieth century.
Generation X has survived a hurried childhood of divorce, latchkeys, open
classrooms,
devil-child movies, and a shift from G to R ratings. They came of age
curtailing the earlier rise in youth crime and fall in SAT test scores --
yet heard themselves denounced as so wild and stupid as to put The
Nation At Risk. As young adults, maneuvering through a sexual barricade
of AIDS
and blighted courtship rituals, they date and marry cautiously. In jobs,
they embrace risk and prefer free agency to loyal corporatism. Politically,
they lean toward pragmatism and nonaffiliation and would rather volunteer
than vote. Widely criticized, they inhabit a
Reality Bites economy of declining young-adult living standards.