Preach It, Brother

I agree with New York Times reporter Richard Pérez-Peña, that the range for the baby boom generation, 1946 to 1964, covers two distinct generations:

There is no baby boom generation.

Oh, sure, there was a baby boom: a neatly defined, pig-in-the-python bulge from 1946 to 1964. But the kind of broadly shared cultural experiences that could bind together people across that whole span? That just didn’t happen.

This year the youngest of the baby boomers — the youngest, mind you — turn 50. I hit that milestone a few months back. But we aren’t what people usually have in mind when they talk about boomers. They mean the early boomers, the postwar cohort, most of them now in their 60s —not us later boomers, labeled “Generation Jones” by the writer Jonathan Pontell.

I never had to worry about being drafted and sent to Vietnam.

I wasn't a part of the job market until after the post war economic dynamism, along with the great compression between rich and poor, had ended.

I do not remember the Kennedy assassination.

I do not remember when the Beatles came to the US.

I do not remember the civil rights protests.

When I entered college, it was Punk and New Wave, not folksong inspired protest songs.

I have never felt any kinship with the generational experiences of the early Boomers.

I would also note that my experience is somewhat atypical, I was born in 1962, and lived in Alaska from 1963-1969, so I missed the 60s even from the perspective as a child.

Alaska was much more isolated than it is now.  It didn't even get direct dialed long distance until after we left the state.