Like it or not, my daughter is growing up a part of Generation Z being defined as the most entrepreneurial, collaborative, and socially conscious group of people yet. It seems like a good thing. Studies say Gen Z are more educated, make healthier choices and are cautious in their spending—the results, perhaps, of growing up in a world defined by digital media, global connection and depleting resources.
I can’t help but feel a little bit jealous and, even defensive, of my own Generation X (roughly, those born between 1965 and 1980). The Baby Boomers labeled us as such due to the challenge of identifying the “X” factor that represented us. They called us cynical, anxious, unfocused slackers. Really, we are the children of the 70’s and 80’s, a group sandwiched between two larger and flashier generations. We got lost in the shuffle. We started out in safe, idyllic childhoods but came of age in an uprooted world.
So what defines Generation X?
Ah, the good ole’ days …
When computers were new and the Internet unheard of—instead, we practiced our penmanship and dusted off volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica for our term papers. (Or, in my case, the lesser known Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia set from which Shop-n-Bag gave away one volume each week.)
Rather than hearing the ding of an email in our inbox, we heard Mom screaming “Telephone!” over the din of our boom box. We went to schools that lacked metal detectors. Instead of weapons or gangs, we feared the neighborhood bully or those few leftover ruler-wielding nuns. If you were lucky you could outrun either of them in your hightop, velcro Reebok sneakers (for which our parents never would have shelled out a hundred bucks).
After school we played outside because we had lots of energy and fresh air was still good for you. We played kick-the-can and tag and Chinese jump rope until it grew dark and Mom had to call us in for dinner. These games required little to no money. Any money saved from a weekly allowance (which we earned through chores or straight A’s) went toward comic books or a trip to the arcade or those wax candies filled with colored liquid.
We didn’t get iPads or cell phones for Christmas. We were thrilled with matchbox cars, Transformers and Cabbage Patch dolls. The big electronic item was Atari or ColecoVision and it was for the whole family to share—the whole neighborhood really. Friends you didn’t even know you had came over to play Frogger, Donkey Kong and Q-Bert.
We had weekend sleepovers where we made up games and told ghost stories and watched The Outsiders and Ghostbusters and The Breakfast Club. Teen Beat was our magazine; Rubik’s Cube our puzzle; the Superheroes our friends. We had Saturday morning cartoons (Bugs Bunny, The Smurfs, Schoolhouse Rock) and ABC Afterschool Specials and Friday Night Videos because only the rich kids had cable.
It was a special treat if Mom and Dad took you to McDonald’s and a movie. At the theaters, we were inspired by Superman, Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones. These were our heroes, and they didn’t need high-powered machine guns or CGI battle scenes to look tough.
We wore Underoos, acid washed jeans, parachute pants, layered socks, jean jackets and side ponytails. We listened to Prince and Madonna and John Cougar and Michael Jackson, usually on the radio, which you tuned with a dial, not a button, and we danced any way we wanted and it was all OK.
We were the last generation to go out trick-or-treating at night without worry of being shot or kidnapped. We thought Russia was the enemy (so we sent Billy Joel over to sway them with music) and nothing really bad ever happened on the homefront. For a brief time, the world seemed pleasant and safe.
Then we grew up.
Mostly, we were expected to go to college and “do something” with our lives, but nobody told us what it was that we should do. Smart mouthing our parents got a slap upside the head. Spanking was the norm, not the exception, and no one considered it child abuse. Now that it is, we wonder, “How should we raise our children?” We didn’t stage protests like the Flower Children. For the most part we remained guardedly optimistic, searching for personal meaning and our place in the world. However, since everyone else thought we had it all, we were expected to do it all, which drove us to therapy and self-help gurus.
We questioned everything from our relationships to our government to our sexuality. We knew we wanted more than our parents’ stable forty-year-job-working-for-The-Man; we wanted meaningful careers and quality time with family. We spent time searching for our identity because the old gender roles were thrown out and someone had to create new ones.
To us, sex meant AIDS and drugs meant addiction. Growing up against a background of Watergate, the Cold War and Iran-Contra, we never experienced political innocence, only a deep mistrust of authority figures and all things Republican. So we armed ourselves with dual shields of cynicism and sarcasm to face the sneers of the Baby Boomers who made us the scapegoats for this new post-modernist world that threatened them.
Closing the Gap
Somehow, we made it through. The world’s challenges brought out our diversity, individualism and resourcefulness. Left with the messes created by previous generations, we developed our own tools to navigate them. Gen Xers may be overeducated and underemployed, but we are also resilient, fiercely independent and adaptable. We are the generation that chose to “work to live, not live to work.” Some now call us Generation X—X for Xtraordinary—for it’s our creative, out-of-the-box thinking that helped define the future.
We are, after all, the parents of this smarter, safer and forward-thinking Generation Z. We must have done something right. So perhaps it’s time we gave ourselves some credit.
What generation are you? What aspects of that make you proud?
