cohorts and generations

Daisy, 65, has always found it easier to accept being a Baby Boomer rather than a War Baby – which she strictly is – but recent aggression against the 'big generation' has caused her to re-think what being a Baby Boomer means.

"Baby boomer is a term describing a massive COHORT of children born in the immediate post-war period to parents whose family aspirations were delayed by WWII," explains Daisy. "It's a term similar to War Babies, describing a cohort of babies born between 1939-45 (so strictly speaking, anyone born in 1945, like I am, is a War Baby not a Baby Boomer, but being on the cusp of any cohort – age, weight, height, IQ or postcode – is always going to be troublesome)."

"To use cohort terminology to describe a generation is misleading because Baby Boomer men could still be fathering children in old age," laughs Daisy. "I know a man, born 1949, who married and became a dad for the first time at 56 in 2005. His wife is 24."

"So, children of Baby Boomers are still being born, forty-five years after the first lot were born in 1960 (to young mothers of 16 born 1946)," explains Daisy. "In generational terms, then, the children of the Baby Boomers – the next generation – range in age from 5 to 50. How silly is this?"

"If people use the term Baby Boomer to describe a generation, then their children would be the next generation on a family tree chart wouldn't they?" asks Daisy. "And generations are supposed to have something in common, aren't they?"

"I have trouble enough finding anything in common with my own cohort, the war babies, without trying to find something in common with children of my parent's age cohort – my generational ‘equals’ – who, when you think of Rupert Murdoch, may be the same age as my grandchildren."

"Perhaps 30 was a reasonable time span for a generation when women, without birth control, continued to produce babies up until 50," says Daisy, "and once upon a time it was probably a useful yardstick for governments to use to determine infrastructure, but when the term 'generation' is used colloquially to describe shared values it is meaningless and annoying."

"From now on, I am going to call myself a War Baby," laughs Daisy. "It is a clearly defined cohort, even if I have less in common with someone born in 1939, six years older, than I do with someone born in 1951 in the next cohort, six years younger."

"With the current perception of the Baby Boomers as a 'generation' spanning thirty years from 1946," says Daisy, "my children, born in the 1960s, are in the same 'generation' as the one I've always considered myself to belong to – and that’s ridiculous.”

"It was easier to call myself a Baby Boomer," explains Daisy, "because my parents started off with me a bit early in 1945, and 3 children later finished their family in 1949."

"I think most parents who started off families after the war, stopped having children well before 1955," says Daisy. "Most babies born from 1950 onwards came from a new cohort of parents – the Depression Babies of 1929-35."

"So, can everyone please start talking cohorts rather than generations?" pleads Daisy. “My cohort was lucky if they could afford a scooter to get them from A to B in the 60s, very different from the later Boomers who aspired to having a car in the 70s, and tail-end Boomers who were getting from A to B by flying and had forgotten what legs are for!”

redefining the boomers

Isobel is a retired early Boomer, born 1946, and she loathes being lumped in with mid and late Boomers believing that the difference between 1940s Boomers, 1950s Boomers and 1960s Boomers is so distinct that they should be given special categories over and above their demographic hump.

"We're more than a demographic hump," laughs Isobel. "I realize that the traditional notion of a generation covers 30 years, but now that Gen X (1965+) and Gen Y (1980+) are so much in the news, and in our faces, and have forced a fifteen year generation between themselves, it's ridiculous to call everyone born from 1946 to 1964 a Boomer."

"If we are to accept a fifteen year generation, then the generation before Gen X should start at 1950."

"At 62 I have absolutely nothing in common with a late Boomer of 44 -- and vice versa," says Isobel. "I believe that the Boomers, en masse, are so different -- for reasons I'll explain later -- that they should be split into three distinct waves."

"How about: Early Boomers for those born in the 1940s, Mid Boomers or Boom-Boomers for those born in the 1950s, and Late Boomers or Boom-Boom Boomers for those born in the 1960s?"

"Growing up in the 1950s the idea of distinct generations was alien to me -- and everyone else -- because back then families were huge (it was common to have as much as twenty years separating first and last children) and the age range of parents was massive."

"WW2 disrupted everybody's lives," explains Isobel. "After the war you not only had young parents starting a family but also older couples resuming their families as well as older couples marrying for the first time after their plans were disrupted by the war."

"At school, my friends had mothers born from 1900 to 1930 and fathers born much earlier," says Isobel. "That's a thirty year age range for parents -- you don't see that these days -- and everything in the early 1950s was still overshadowed by the previous war years."

"The early Boomers cannot be lumped into an homogenous blob with mid and late Boomers because those of us born in the 1940s were strongly influenced by the particularly diverse ages of our parents; the war years that preceded our birth; the miserable post-war period; and the music and culture that went with it."

"If the first seven years of our life determine our values for the rest of our lives, then by 1953 -- when I was seven -- I had a very different experience of life to that of a Boom-Boomer born in 1953 who turned seven in 1960, and a Boom-Boom-Boomer born in 1960 who turned seven in 1967."

"In terms of musical influence, that's Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and the Beatles respectively dominating the first seven years of our lives."

"Had it not been for the pill, introduced in the 1960s, the Baby Boom would have continued for decades," laughs Isobel. "And had it not been for the women's lib movement that went with it, women would still be second class citizens -- and we have the pre-Boomer generation, our courageous mothers, to thank for our freedoms."

"Yes, definitely, something did happen to define the post-ww2 generations," says Isobel. "It wasn't just the pill and women's lib -- it was also television."

"My generation, the early boomers, weren't parked in front of a television in childhood -- we read books, played board games and ran wild on the streets -- and I believe we are mentally richer and far more independent minded than mid and late Boomers because of this experience."

"In this respect, the early boomers are more like earlier generations," explains Isobel. “We weren't raised as infants to accept without question what a man in a box tells us."

"By the 1960s, with the pill, the large families and the huge age ranges of parents died out – and with this came affluence and the generational wars."

"If Gen X are the Pill babies and Gen Y are the Internet babies, then the mid and late Boomers are the TV babies."

"My generation, those born immediately after WWII, are postwar pre-TV babies and defy description really," sighs Isobel. "All I know is that we are nothing like mid and late Boomers and I resent the Boomer term being used to define us."