Analysis of the Generations Isn’t an Exact Science

[Kinser79]

(07-25-2016, 11:20 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(07-24-2016, 08:41 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: @Tara,

First let me say that you are very much a civic.  In fact one of the most civic people I know and I have adult memories of GIs.  That being said there is a great deal of overlap with the generations and not just due to turning.  I've postulated in the past that social class and siblings (and to a lesser extent cousins) play a part in the manifestation of ones Nomadness, Civicness, Artistness, and Prophetness.  

For example my sister and you share the same birth year yet she is no where near as civic as you are having a clear lean toward civic but having more than a little nomad flavor.  That flavor I would argue is the response of being in a household not only having a late wave Xer older brother but also having contact with core and early Xer cousins.

Add to that social class and it has been my experience that those coming from the working class and working poor seem to have an exaggerated level of Adaptives and Nomads whereas in the more well off classes the opposite is true (Civics and Prophets being exaggerated).

That being said, it is my opinion that the S&H dates are perhaps the best, excluding my  own of course (but that is mostly because I have problems with the Civil War Saeculum rather than the current saeculum).

I do agree with you that people of the same cohort will lean more one way or the other due to how they were raised and what they experienced. Although being poor did not actually make me more of a nomad or adaptive and that is I believe due to the fact i was so sheltered.

Well there are to put it simply  four sources of "flavor" (for lack of a better word) in how one comes out.  There is a fifth one as well which would apply to non-yanks of course, I am speaking naturally from an American perspective only and have little experience with Australians, or Kiwis in particular and little experience with Canadians (though I can speak about the Brits quite a bit more as I'm an anglophile and have been to the UK regularly since I was in my late teens).

Theses flavor sources are, as I view it, as follows:

1.  Family dynamics.  The generation of parents and grandparents coupled with the generation of siblings and other relatives--particularly if the family is less split up.  In my case my maternal grandparents (GIs) headed a large household containing not only my mother and my sister and myself in the same abode but also unmarried boomer uncles, my Silent generation oldest maternal uncle and his wife and children lived next door.  Their kids were obviously the early and core Xers.

Someone who was not raised with that multitude of family influences would obviously come out differently, that said I do think that the presence of older sibilings has a tendency to make cuspers lean more heavily to the preceding generation and the X/Y cusp is usually stated to be between 1980-1984 in the US.

2.  Family rearing style.  In general in my family I and my sister were raised with a benign neglect.  Granted we had what we needed but we certainly could not rely on any adult for consistent direction and as such we went our own ways and developed our own habits.  In large part I distinguished myself in the family by not doing the stupid shit my cousins did--though I did do different stupid shit.

3.  Institutional mode of child rearing at the time of childhood.  This should be self-evident but in case it is not--the mood of and about child rearing that was common in schools, pre-schools and so forth at the time one was a child.  In my case I caught the last end of full Xer mode and my age group were often the "gueneia pigs" as we called ourselves.

4.  Historical events as they happen and at what age they happen.  Obviously VJ day has a different meaning to a 50 year old, and to a 25 year old, and to a 5 year old and a 1 year old would obviously have no clear memory of it.

Suffice it to say 9/11 means something different to Boomers than it does for Xers and lastly Millies.  Homelanders won't remember it at all.

This by no means mean I endorse the 2001 4T start date hypothesis.  I remain convinced that it started some time around 2005.  The Katrina Theory my BF calls it.

Lastly there is nationality.  I can't speak for AUS or NZ but the US and Canada both seem to be about 5-7 years ahead of the UK.  I think a great deal of that has to do with the feeling that their last 4T didn't end until after rationing ended.