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Silent Generation

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For the album, see The Silent Generation (album).
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Social generations of the Western world

The Silent Generation is the demographic cohort following the Greatest Generation and preceding the baby boomers. The cohort is defined as individuals born between 1928 and 1945.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

The name was originally applied to people in the United States and Canada but has been applied to those in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South America as well. It includes most of those who fought during the Korean War. In the United States, the generation was comparatively small because the financial insecurity of the 1930s and the war in the early 1940s caused people to have fewer children.[9] They are noted as forming the leadership of the civil rights movement as well as comprising the "silent majority".[10][citation needed]

Terminology

Time magazine first used the term "Silent Generation" in a November 5, 1951 article titled "The Younger Generation", although the term appears to precede the publication.[11] A reason later proposed for this perceived silence is that as young adults during the McCarthy Era, many members of the Silent Generation felt it was unwise to speak out.[12]

The cohort has been named the "Lucky Few" in the 2008 book The Lucky Few: Between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom,[13][14] by Elwood D. Carlson PhD, the Charles B. Nam Professor in Sociology of Population at Florida State University.[15] Australia's McCrindle Research uses the name Builders to describe the Australian members of this generation, born between 1925 and 1945, and coming of age to become the generation "who literally and metaphorically built [the] nation after the austerity years post-Depression and World War II".[16][17][18]

Date and age range definitions

The Pew Research Center uses 1928 to 1945 as birth years for this cohort.[19][20] According to this definition, the oldest member of the Silent Generation is 95–96 years old and the youngest is, or is turning, 78–79 years old in 2024.

Resolution Foundation, in a report titled Cross Countries: International comparisons of international trends, uses 1926 to 1945 as birth dates for the Silent Generation.[21]

Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe use 1925–1942 as birth years.[22][9]

Characteristics

The Silent Generation were children of The Great Depression whose parents, having revelled in the highs of the Roaring Twenties, now faced great economic hardship and struggled to provide for their families. Before reaching their teens they shared with their parents the horrors of World War II but through children's eyes. Many lost their fathers or older siblings who were killed in the war. They saw the fall of Nazism and the catastrophic devastation capable of the nuclear bomb. When the Silent Generation began coming of age after World War II, they were faced with a devastated social order within which they would spend their early adulthood and a new enemy in Communism via the betrayal of post-war agreements and rise of the Soviet Union. Unlike the previous generation who had fought for “changing the system,” the Silent Generation were about “working within the system.” They did this by keeping their heads down and working hard, thus earning themselves the "silent" label. Their attitudes leaned toward not being risk takers and playing it safe. Fortune magazine's story on the “College Class of ‘49” was subtitled “Taking No Chances."

From their childhood experiences during the Depression and the insistence from their parents to be frugal, they tend to be thrifty and even miserly. They prefer to maximize the property's lifespan, i.e. "get their money's worth." This can lead to hoarding in the guise of "not being wasteful.”[23][24]

As with their own parents, Silents tended to marry and have children young. American Silents are noted as being the youngest of all American generations in marrying and raising families. As young parents, this generation gave birth primarily to the Baby Boomers while younger members of the generation and older members who held off raising a family until later in life gave birth to Generation X. Whereas divorce in the eyes of the previous generation was considered an ultimate sin, the Silents were the generation that reformed marriage laws to option for divorce and lessen the stigma. This led to a wave of divorces among Silent Generation couples thereafter in the United States.[25]

As a birth cohort, they never rose in protest as a unified political entity.[26] Because "following the rules" had proven to be successful for Silents and had led to incredible and stable wealth creation, it was common that their Boomer and Gen X children would become estranged from them due to their diametrically opposite rebellious nature, vocal social concerns, and economic hardship unknown to the Silents, creating a different generational consciousness. For example, the Boomer children were instrumental in bringing about the Counterculture of the 1960s, and the rise of Left wing, liberal views considered anti-establishment, those of which went directly against the "work within the system" methodology that the Silents worshipped. Gen X children grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s with the threat of nuclear war hanging over them and a resultant bleak view of the future, contributing to their generational disaffection, in contrast to the optimistic outlook of their Silent Generation parents.[27]

The style of parenting known to the Silents and the generations before them originated in the late 1800s.[28] Representative of this was the idea that "children should be seen but not heard." These ideas were ultimately challenged following the 1946 publication of the book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock which influenced some Boomers' views on parenting and family values when they became parents themselves.[29] These conflicting views, seen as overly permissive by the Silents, further estranged those Boomers from their parents and, amongst other things, gave rise in the mid 1960s to the term Generation Gap to describe initially the conflict of cultural values between the Silents and their Boomer (and later Gen X) children.[30][31]

Demographics

Data is from the Pew Research Center.[32] Cohort sizes greater than the number born are due to immigration.

See also

References

  1. ^ "More work, more sleep: New study offers glimpse of daily life as a millennial". 2019-10-28. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  2. ^ "From the silent generation to 'snowflakes': why you need friends of all ages". 2019-10-18. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  3. ^ "More bad news for the survival of the Republican Party". 2019-10-18. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  4. ^ "The Disappearing of Generation X". 2019-02-09. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  5. ^ "Is It Time to 'Pass the Torch?' The Generational Dilemma of the 2020 Democratic Primary". 2019-07-30. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  6. ^ "Millennials and Generation Z Have a Big Problem With Traditional Health Care in the U.S." 2019-02-13. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  7. ^ "Generation X Alone in Fully Recovering From Great Recession". 2019-07-24. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  8. ^ "Young Republicans trending more liberal than older conservatives: Poll". 2019-01-17. Retrieved 22 December 2019.
  9. ^ a b "The Silent Generation, "The Lucky Few" (Part 3 of 7)". Forbes. 30 July 2014. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  10. ^ McLaughlin, Dan (16 February 2016). "Closing The Book On The Silent Generation". National Review. Retrieved 15 April 2018.
  11. ^ "The Younger Generation". Time. 5 November 1951. Retrieved 3 March 2020. The most startling fact about the younger generation is its silence. With some rare exceptions, youth is nowhere near the rostrum. By comparison with the Flaming Youth of their fathers & mothers, today's younger generation is a still, small flame. It does not issue manifestoes, make speeches or carry posters. It has been called the "Silent Generation."
  12. ^ Handbook to Life in America, Volume 8 Rodney P. Carlisle Infobase Publishing, 2009, p. 22
  13. ^ Carlson, Elwood (2008). The Lucky Few: Between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom. Springer Science + Business Media B.V. ISBN 978-1-4020-8540-6.
  14. ^ Carlson, Elwood (2008). The Lucky Few: Between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boom. Berlin: Springer Science and Business Media. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-4020-8540-6.
  15. ^ Carlson, Elwood D. "FSU Faculty Bio". Florida State University. Archived from the original on 10 December 2012. Retrieved 29 November 2012.
  16. ^ Generations Defined. Mark McCrindle Archived 2016-06-16 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ^ McCrindle, Mark. "The ABC of XYZ Understanding the Global Generations" (PDF). McCrindle Research. Retrieved 25 May 2018.
  18. ^ "Generations defined: 50 years of change over 5 generations". McCrindle Research. 2012-08-22. Retrieved 30 August 2018.
  19. ^ "Generations and Age". Pew Research. 1 March 2018. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  20. ^ "Definitions - Pew Research Center". www.pewresearch.org. Archived from the original on 2017-02-16. Retrieved 2016-09-25.
  21. ^ Rahman, Fahmida (February 2018). "Cross Countries: International comparisons of intergenerational trends" (PDF). Resolution Foundation. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  22. ^ Strauss, William (2009). The Fourth Turning. Three Rivers Press. ASIN B001RKFU4I.
  23. ^ https://www.thebalancecareers.com/workplace-characteristics-silent-generation-2164692
  24. ^ https://www.alexisabramson.com/the-silent-generation-characteristics-and-facts-you-need-to-know/
  25. ^ http://www.rocketswag.com/elderly/generation/silent-generation/Divorce-In-The-Silent-Generation.html
  26. ^ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/silent-generation-it-over/
  27. ^ http://www.catapultmagazine.com/my-generation/article/generation-x-the-cold-war-and-faith/
  28. ^ https://howtoadult.com/childrearing-practices-1800s-8084427.html
  29. ^ https://www.fatherly.com/love-money/baby-boomer-parents/
  30. ^ https://www.dictionary.com/browse/generation-gap
  31. ^ Furlong, Andy (2013). Youth Studies: An Introduction. New York: Routledge. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-415-56479-3.
  32. ^ Fry, Richard (April 28, 2020). "Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America's largest generation". Pew Research Center. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
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