Summarizing America’s Eight Generations
Hemingrebels, GI-Gens, Safe-Builders, Boomers, Xers, Millennials, Centennials, Alphas…they all have a story to tell!
Most people who know me can attest to how much I value intergenerational solidarity. Whether you’re older or younger or middle-aged, I believe that forward-thinking people from every single historical era have something to teach us. By that same token, every generation has its members who’ve made glaring mistakes…and the rest of us are stuck cleaning up those messes.
But there will be plenty of time to explore the conflicts and dynamics amongst generational cohorts in future articles of mine. Today, I want to break down for everyone the eight major American generations who have been profiled and examined by historians and sociologists. Being mindful of where they came from and what they dealt with can give us better insight as to where we’re headed in the modern day.
We should also keep in mind how generational boundaries aren’t rigidly fixed. Each generation spans approximately fifteen years, but many people are born on the “cusp” of two adjacent generations — also referred to as “microgenerations.”
I encourage you, dear readers, to embrace some of the alternative nicknames that can be used to describe these…
