Posted on 09/07/2004 8:49:33 AM PDT by qam1
Frankly, the real reason for it is that our average IQ is higher than the baby boomers'. Just don't say that too loud.
Wow....this is the first time I've ever seen my birth year (1965) included in Gen X!!! 1965 had always been the year without a generation.
Everything I've ever seen has the boomers ending in 1964, but the earliest I had ever seen Gen X starting was 1966 -- usually it was 1967 though. The period between Kennedy and the Summer of Love (1967) was usually a fairly undefined period lost in limbo -- which is fine with me!
I don't fit into either generation, and neither does anyone else in my peer group that I know. Still, it's good to know that Gen X has somehow managed to learn from the mistakes of Baby Boomer parents.
The whole Benjamin Spock/Peace-Love/Groovy thing just didn't cut it. I'm glad to see that the MTV generation isn't letting their own mind-numbing hogwash influence the way they raise their kids!
Maybe there's hope after all.....
Please don't paint all boomers with the same brush. I am a boomer (DOB: 1951). I was raised in a small town, watched "The Mickey Mouse Club", "Captain Kangaroo" and "Howdy Doody" and went to church every Sunday. My parents told my brother and I that if we got into trouble at school, we would get it twice-over when we got home. We definitely knew our parameters. I got a job when I was 16 and worked my way through college. My husband was raised the same. I was a stay-at-home mom to my daughter. We raised her the same way we were raised - with love, discipline and respect for other people. Guess I missed out on all of the hippie, free love, me-first stuff. Now we are two middle-aged, conservative, hard-working Republicans looking foward to our retirement!
A better case can be made for those alive during the Rev. War, WBTS, Great Depression, WWII, and so on.
What a load of crap.
I was starving for direction. The one time she actually put her foot down and said, "There is no way in hell that you are going to do THAT" I was so relieved that I wanted to cry. Thank you for giving me your strength! Thank you for stopping me and giving me direction! Sheesh, woman! I was just a dumb, confused kid!
With my own kids, I'm there 24 hours a day. When we talk I listen, then guide them to truth. I whup their butts when they cross the line and it's a very narrow line. My parenting techniques are the exact opposite of my mom's. So far the results have been good. They're confident where I was timid and they're not as fearful in general. They both have told me that they are never worried because they know their father and I will be there for them and they feel protected. They're better educated and friendlier than I was at their age. We'll see more after things have unfolded in a few years. The proof is in the pudding.
Not that it matters, but that trust nobody over thirty quote was by Jack Weinberg who was not a "baby boomer" at all. Weinberg was born around 1941. He made that quote in 1965 when I was 6 or 7. I'm not going to take the blame for that quote, nor should all the people I know in my age group who have always been solid conservative Americans. In this country, we've always idealized individualism. This judgment of generations strikes me as something out of Old World socialism and struggles between classes. In America the only class or generation that matters is the one you see in the mirror. That's what we all have to answer for.
I just think to myself, "there goes YOUR Social Security, bub." They are completely intolerant of children.
What do you account for the difference in your children, if you were to hazard a guess? I'm just curious since I would assume you offered a similar upbringing to them all.
Yeah, I know a number of people like that too. Shame isn't it?
You sound almost as angry as I am! Nothin' like a good dose of productive rage.
LOL--just giving that little gift back to the poster I was responding too;-) I'm not angry--baby is asleep, my son has been home from preschool for alittle while and we are about to leave to pick up my first grader--I'm home with them all--life is good:-)
I've got a new complaint...
Add me to your PING list, please?
*sigh* I remember those days! I was just starting to get the hang of the whole "mama" gig. My son was still cute and wasn't starting his snake cage on fire with the heat lamp yet. (I just put that one out about an hour ago. lol!) My daughter didn't have boobs or an hour-glass figure.
This is a good time, too. No more car seats or strollers. Heck, they can run me into the ground. No more spoon-feedings. They're old enough to cook their own dinner and young enough to still want to. They're still cute and say the darndest things. Only now their humor's more sophisticated. They still love hugs and cuddling on the couch. Yes, life is good.
I'm sure that plays a part in many cases, but I am far more conservative than my late grandmother (born in 1909!) so one hasta be careful with those generalizations.
And I have nearly the opposite experience. Most older people tend to have a more tolerant attitude toward children than the 30somethings.
Heck I have a 6yo and have no tolerance for noisy obnoxious kids in stores including my own......there is nothing cute about an obnoxious child, ever.
It is very much a shame........the children suffer so terribly IMO.
I know a gal in her 20s, she has a 4yo and a 5yo who spend their weekends with their fatherS. 2 different fathers.
It's very difficult explaining that to my daughter who is used to mommy and daddy together.
"Baby Boomers are a very strange anomaly. They are the Worst Generation (apologies to the many fine people who don't fit the stereotype)."
They tend to be a pain, I agree. But, it's pretty simple, really. The anomaly has its origin in a simple fact: they were the first generation to practice in grade school, middle school, and high school scurrying under their desks kissing their rear ends good bye b/c of a white hot fire ball that the depression era folks kindly invented. Their parents never had to practice that when they went to school during the last 'innocent' age.
(Don't get me wrong; a very, very large number of Japanese and Americans would have gotten killed but for the reality of the bomb - C. LeMay was burning down the whole country quite nicely ... but it was still looking like a million US soldiers would be required as an invasion force.)
Indeed, the boomers showed us xers that despite the bomb, self centeredness is simply a gross feature of character and hurts kids. I spend a good bit more time w/ mine, than my boomer parents did w/ me. But, I had the benefit of seeing how the boomers practiced dealing w/ the bomb in their psyches. I suspect, strongly, that if I had been a young person faced w/ daily nuclear holocaust propaganda .... and I had been in the first gen to experience .... well, I think I would have done a lot of drugs and been cursed w/ a lot more self centeredness than I struggle with....
I decided to ignore that one - I was too irate when I read it to post something that probably would not have survived the mods!!!!
We're each of us shaped by the situation around us, thats for sure.
But I see generational differences not so much as a result of those forces than as a factor of whats inside us. Some of the most liberal people I've ever known were members of the "Greatest Generation" while me, a boomer, is just to the left of Ghengis Khan. Heck, the Greatest Generation gave us the welfare state. You simply cannot generalize.
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