Post 50fiftyyear-of-the-boomerBoomer

I May Be 50, But Don't Call Me A Boomer

I May Be 50, But Don't Call Me A Boomer
Shelley Emling
By 

Guest Writer

12 May 1970, Washington, DC, USA --- WASHINGTON-5/12/70-: Legend on placards reflect the views of bearers as hundreds of thousands of angry young Americans descend on nation's capitol to protest U.S. involvement in Indochina May 9th. They came also to protest the slaying of four Kent State University students by Ohio national guardsmen earlier in the week. --- Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS
12 May 1970, Washington, DC, USA --- WASHINGTON-5/12/70-: Legend on placards reflect the views of bearers as hundreds of thousands of angry young Americans descend on nation's capitol to protest U.S. involvement in Indochina May 9th. They came also to protest the slaying of four Kent State University students by Ohio national guardsmen earlier in the week. --- Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

There is no baby boom generation.

Oh, sure, there was a baby boom: a neatly defined, pig-in-the-python bulge from 1946 to 1964. But the kind of broadly shared cultural experiences that could bind together people across that whole span? That just didn’t happen.

This year the youngest of the baby boomers — the youngest, mind you — turn 50. I hit that milestone a few months back. But we aren’t what people usually have in mind when they talk about boomers. They mean the early boomers, the postwar cohort, most of them now in their 60s —not us later boomers, labeled “Generation Jones” by the writer Jonathan Pontell.

Read more on The New York Times

Related

fiftyyear-of-the-boomerBoomerpost 50
|
Submit a tip

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot