Can Generational Boundaries Shift Over Time?

[Anthony '58]

(06-05-2020, 07:40 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-04-2020, 08:56 AM)Anthony Wrote: And no, I'm not talking about the one my fellow old-timers might think - at least not primarily anyway.

First and foremost, I'm talking about the Silent-Boomer boundary: Maybe the original start of the Boomers at 1946 was either right all along, or at least is right now?  The 1943-45 group seems to have crossed over to the Silent side, thus joining what I have dubbed the "Cold War Bloody Shirt Generation" - a generation whose power is greatly enhanced by the Electoral College (one square mile, one vote), Citizens United (one dollar, one vote), blatant gerrymandering, the grotesque malapportionment of the House (where California, with 66 times Wyoming's population as of 2010, has only 53 times as many House seats as Wyoming), lifetime felony disenfranchisement, including of totally nonviolent, victimless drug offenders, nearly all of whom are young, poor and/or of color, the holding of elections on a workday (greatly depressing turnout  among mostly poorer younger workers while having no effect at all on the turnout of mostly affluent retirees), and "voter ID" laws, which are poll taxes in everything but name - and are using that power to block everything from meaningful health care and tax reform to combating excessive use of force by white police officers (I refuse to say "police brutality" because that is every bit as blatant a dog whistle as any one the right has ever come up with).

Another generational boundary that needs to be reassessed is the G.I.-Silent boundary: Essentially every (male) 1925, 1926, and even 1927 cohort wore a military uniform during WW2.  Therefore, combined with the above proposed change, that makes the Silent as having been born from 1928 through 1945, all inclusive.

Third, it has become almost universally agreed upon that 1981 and not 1982 is the first Millennial cohort.

And finally - so as not to disappoint my fellow old-timers!   - Marvin Harris, in his 1981 bestseller Why Nothing Works: The Anthropology Of Daily Life - correctly pointed out that the first year of the 11-year baby bust was 1958 (and this was repeated by Michael Lind in his 1996 bestseller Up From Conservatism: Why The Right Is Wrong For America).

I'm good with your Silent/Boomer argument, since I always felt that the individuals I met in those low-birth years were not Boomers.  As a '47 cohort, many of my friend's older siblings were in that camp, and did not share the same chemistry with us as their slightly younger siblings.  I'm less in agreement on the GI/Silent boundary.  I divide those two by service in WW-II (GIs obviously) and Korea (almost Silent to a man).  I'm OK with adding the '25 cohorts to the GIs, but that's about it.

When Congressman John Dingell (D-Michigan), a 1926 cohort, left the House in 2015, he was widely reported to be one of the last two World War II veterans in Congress (the other, Texas Congressman Ralph Hall, a 1923 cohort, departed the House concomitantly).