The Generation Gap

When Sheri declared in a HimPlus17 post last week that I belonged to the Sesame Street generation, I considered it the end of a long-running debate. Finally (imagine me doing the Kirk Gibson fist-pump) she’s surrendered the notion that I’m a Baby Boomer!

Though many demographers – and my boomer wife – have assigned me boomer status by virtue of my birth in the last months of 1964, I’ve never identified with the “Where-were-you-when-JFK-was-shot” or “Make-Love-Not-War” crowd. Though I appreciate much of what the boomers wrought in this country, I’ve sometimes found myself resenting their omnipresence and cultural self-obsession. That’s why I prefer the generational divisions made by demographers Neil Howe and William Strauss who assign Gen X (my generation of choice) the birth years of 1961-1981. As Sheri noted last week, she’s Woodstock; I’m Sesame Street.

There is something tribal about generational identification, with accompanying tribal loyalties and myopias. I want Sheri and me to be different generations because it’s more interesting that way – we get to challenge each other’s generational assumptions. Anyone with parents knows that generation gaps can lead to fights. Generation gaps might even be as challenging as accomodating different religions

or politics or ethnicities or national heritages. Negotiating that gap is part of the fun of a HimPlus affair. Aside from the pop culture exchanges (she wanted me to see Midnight Cowboy and Chinatown; I showed her MTV and her first glimpse of a music video), there are ways we view the world differently that might be idiosyncratic, but that might also be generational. I worry more about unemployment and inflation;

she has a JFK-esque belief that anything is possible; she likes to watch the nightly news; I have a sense that change comes slowly, requires patience and is more likely to happen locally than globally or even nationally.

I thought about this after reading a Washington Post article about a woman who consults with Boomer and Gen X business managers who can’t figure out the Millennials they’ve hired. Millennials are so different, this consultant argues, that Boomers and Gen Xers need a guide to work with them. So I wonder: what about love? What’s different in the world views of a Gen X woman and her Millennial man? What attitudes and assumptions would come into conflict? What would the couple have to negotiate?

If you are from those generations, we’d love to hear. You’ll be each other’s consultants.