Boomer Nation : The Largest and Richest Generation Ever, and How It Changed America

by Steve Gillon

• ISBN13: 9780743229470
• ISBN10: 0743229479
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-25
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

The Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, form the single largest demographic spike in American history. Never before or since have birth rates shot up and remained so high so long, with some obvious results: when the Boomers were kids, American

Author Biography

Steve Gillon has taught at both Yale University and Oxford University and is currently a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: The Long Boom	p. 1
Cast of Characters	p. 17
The Cult of Youth: 1945-1978
The Boomer Generation	p. 23
The Vietnam Division	p. 44
Growing Pains	p. 73
Finding God	p. 97
The Great Shift: 1978-1992
The Prolonged Adolescence of Donny Deutsch	p. 122
The Way We Wish We Lived Now	p. 140
The New Power Politics	p. 164
The "Second Stage" and Other Struggles for Women	p. 191
The New Fundamentalism	p. 212
Boomer Culture	p. 230
Boomer Nation: 1992-2004
Gaining Control: At What Cost?	p. 248
The New Bosses	p. 267
New Challenges; Lost Opportunities	p. 287
Epilogue: We Are All Boomers Now	p. 311
Notes	p. 319
Index	p. 345
About the Author	p. 369
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

INTRODUCTION: THE LONG BOOM It seems to me," observed a British visitor to America in 1958, "that every other young housewife I see is pregnant." The Baby Boom may have been obvious to everyone by 1958, but it caught most Americans by surprise when it started at the end of World War II. In 1946 the census's experts viewed the upsurge in births as temporary and predicted an increase of only 5 million for the rest of the decade. How wrong they were! In 1948 the nation's mothers gave birth to 4 million babies -- a child was born every eight seconds. By the end of the decade nearly 9 million babies had been born. The census planners had miscalculated by over 50 percent. (By comparison, the pollsters who predicted Tom Dewey's victory over President Harry Truman in 1948 missed by only 5 percent.)And the babies kept coming. In January 1953 General Electric announced that it would award five shares of stock to any employee who had a baby on October 15, the company's seventy-fifth anniversary. The company said it expected about 13 winners. Instead, 189 children were born on that day. By 1959 there were over 50 million children under the age of 14 living in the United States. Together they made up over 30 percent of the population. There were as many children in 1959 as there were people living in the United States in 1881. To keep track of the boom, the Commerce Department established a "census clock" in the lobby of its Washington, D.C., headquarters. Multicolored flashing lights on the clock signaled a birth every 7 1/2 seconds, a death every 20 seconds, the arrival of a new immigrant every 1 1/2 minutes, and the departure of an emigrant every 20 minutes. The result was an increase in population of one person every 11 seconds.The Baby Boom would prove to be the single greatest demographic event in American history -- more significant, even, than the staggering loss of life during the Civil War. Boomers were so disproportionately numerous, so affluent, so blessed by the cold peace of the Cold War (Vietnam notwithstanding) that they would have the motive, means, and opportunity to reshape the nation. How they did so, and what it means for America today, have been grossly misunderstood. The Boomers have been dismissed by many commentators as selfish or self-indulgent, a generation that never had to make the sacrifices of its predecessors in fighting a major war or battling a great depression; a generation that had too much sexual freedom, that invented the "me decade" of the 1970s, and that spent a small fortune on therapy and "self-actualization." But this stereotype is short-sighted and misses other very different trends that have also been Boomer driven -- the explosion of new religious denominations and steady rise in churchgoing; the explosion of charitable giving; the explosion of entrepreneurship -- all of which became most evident in the 1970s and 1980s as the Boomers rose to adulthood. Though they pushed the country toward liberalism when they were young, they pushed it right back to conservatism when they grew older. Beneath all the contradictions, there is a strong signal: they have reshaped an entire culture around their own single cohort.Some saw it coming. Expectations of peace and prosperity were directly tied to the proliferation of future consumers. "Just imagine how much these extra people, these new markets, will absorb -- in food, in clothing, in gadgets, in housing, in services," gushed Sylvia Porter. "Our factories must expand just to keep pace." In 1958 Life magazine called children the "Built-in Recession Cure," concluding that all babies were potential consumers who spearheaded "a brand-new market for food, clothing, and shelter." Signs in the New York City subway read: "Your future is great in a growing America. Every day 11,000 babies are born in America. This means new business, new jobs, new opportunities."There has never been a simple or wholly satisfac