On Generation X, Part I
The defining trait of America's Generation X might be the presence of latchkey kids. Immediately preceding the early 1960s, a generation of mothers stayed home. During Generation X, in contrast, many mothers chose to work in offices. Of course, kids had always been a bit 'free range' in times before. Since the end of child labor, parents had told their children to play outside and not come back until dinner. But Generation X was more free than ever. Mothers no longer patrolled their homes or neighborhoods. Professional daycares had not sprung up. Kids had keys to their houses and the freedom (and responsibility) to care for themselves and their friends.
Normally, I don't see meaningful distinctions between generations. That is, I wouldn't try to single out the times in which people grow up any more than their religions or educational levels or economic situations. Those make some sense to talk about, though. Maybe it's worth thinking about whether there genuinely are lessons to learn from our times and places of origin. Occasionally, we might notice something quite serious to a generational difference, such as the Vietnam War, the killings at Kent State, the presence of latchkey children, or the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Here, in roughly a linear order, are factors I think might define Generation X. I would love to hear different opinions.
1. We raised ourselves as free range kids
As mentioned above, we went outside wandering, drinking through hoses, and meeting strangers in person. Getting lost and finding our way back were factors of our daily lives. Negotiating with other kids to play games was a regular occurrence.
2. We benefited from a civil rights movement
When I was young, grown-ups in the neighborhood got angry about mixed marriages. To them, that meant between Irish (low white) and Italian (colored). The adults stood in groups, berating those unions and the Catholic churches that permitted them. Once, a blonde woman said, "What about the Lovings?" meaning the couple in Virginia. The rest of the group laughed. A man replied, "That's not really a thing." They didn't consider the civil rights movement to be practical.
But they were wrong. It took too long to prove, but it turned out that treating people with equal dignity and equal rights under the law is, in fact, practical.
3. We witnessed assassinations
For sixty years between the killings of Presidents McKinley and Kennedy, Americans didn’t seem to think about eliminating political leaders. Suddenly, after Kennedy, guns became everyone’s solution to differences of opinion. Someone killed Malcolm X. They got the younger Kennedy. Then Martin Luther King. Someone crippled George Wallace. People kept on trying. They wounded Andy Warhol. They murdered Barbara Colby.
Sometimes, as with the plots against Ford, Carter, and Reagan, the shooters didn’t even seem motivated by politics. They simply had easy access to guns and to famous people. Next, a man shot John Lennon. It wasn’t social commentary. It wasn’t personal. Shootings became a form of expression for frustrated people.
4. We grew up naked or nearly so
This one, more than most, probably depends on local circumstances.
In my childhood, we wore very little during the summer. Running around nude was considered normal for babies. Some of us grew up partly in summer camp barracks. We got naked in locker rooms. These thing gave us a different attitude towards our bodies. They gave us a different concept of nudity, too, which wasn’t sexualized. I don’t know for sure if it was healthier or not but I suspect it was.
5. We learned through corporal punishment
While some aspects of society re-started with Generation X, like civil rights and assassinations, some ended with our generation, like being free range kids and receiving corporal punishment.
Beating children had been the main way parents modified behavior for millions of years. When my wife wanted us to join the generational trend of seeking alternatives to spankings, I felt we were taking a risk. And we were. It seemed to pay off. There may be unintended consequences yet from failing to be physical. Raising immoral children doesn't seem to be one of them, though. Our grown kids have good consciences despite a lack of corporal punishment.
6. We made our own meals
They were terrible meals. We made ketchup and cheese sandwiches. We gnawed on warm, mushy apples. We pocketed tangerines and peeled them later, on the playground. Everyone relied on peanut butter and jelly, even the kids who weren’t allowed to spoil their dinner.
I ate hard peaches and crabapples from neighborhood trees. (I threw up, once. You can only eat so many crabapples.) But although most of us didn’t learn much about cooking, we did learn a form of food self-reliance early. There's something to be said for eating plain foods, too. Lots of us were used to doing it.
7. We drew maps
This was a ‘free range’ skill, I suspect. We memorized paths and landmarks. We learned to follow the stream. We buried pirate treasures consisting of our old stuffed animals and cap guns. Then we located the X on our homemade treasure map and dug them up again.
We could glance to the sun and judge our cardinal direction. We knew our mealtimes without a watch. Sometimes we read paper maps. But always, even without them, we found our way home. We found our way around our houses in the dark, too. We hardly thought about it.
8. We didn’t use our safety belts
By the time I was in college, I made a habit of stopping at every car accident I saw to try to help. At an accident in Massachusetts, I met a panicked man marching the other way on the darkened shoulder of the road.
“She’s hanging upside down!” He pointed behind him. I thought he may have been the first bystander on the scene. “I don’t see how we can get her out.”
As I continued, I approached a turned-over sedan. It was resting with its roof on the grass between a guard rail and a strand of trees. Inside, I could see a woman looking anxious. I didn’t see how she could have done this to her car but I didn’t think much more about it, either. Obviously, she had made it happen somehow. I saved most of my amazement for the seatbelt.
It was bewildering that she'd worn one. No one ever did. For Generation X, it wasn't an option in the older cars when we were children. Seat belts came with new models, of course, but no one used them. They weren’t available yet in school buses or public transit. Yet here was a woman who had worn hers and she was lucky, maybe, that she did. She hadn't been thrown when her car turned over. After I talked with her, I realized she was feeling sick from hanging upside down. So there were problems with the system. Still, she decided not to try to get out of the belt until the emergency crew arrived to give us advice.
9. We were the second generation who didn't know where our food was coming from
We mostly didn’t grow up with local butcher shops, vegetable gardens, bakers, fish vendors, fruit stalls, or local specialty stores. They were all fading, economically. Instead, supermarkets popped up to replace them. The supermarkets effectively moved all the little vendors inside and gave them a big, protected place to partially exist.
Thanks to newish methods of freezing and canning, we didn’t have to worry so much about what was in season, either. Instead of meat or vegetables produced locally, we got perishable items from farther away. True, the food we ate got worse and worse. But it happened slowly. We hardly noticed. When we did, not enough of us cared. Perhaps in a few cases, we did care enough (for instance, I heard twenty-five years of complaints about tomatoes), but we discovered we had no power to change the system. Too many people were too willing to buy apples or tomatoes that looked good, even though they tasted terrible. And so our system produced more and more items that looked good but nutritionally and gastronomically were just colored cardboard.
10. Slowly, our rivers stopped catching fire
When I roamed the forests as a seven year old, I came across old tires, broken barrels, washing machines, smashed beer bottles, and abandoned cars. Sometimes I played in the abandoned cars. I found plenty of big trash in Piney Branch Creek. By the time I was eleven, grown-ups had cleaned up the creek. They made the open containers of chemicals disappear. They reduced the open sewage, too.
The Clean Water Act of 1972 regulated industrial pollution and water processing. People took it seriously. It was the law. Besides, we wanted to breathe. We scrubbed industrial smokestacks to clear the air. Governments stopped dumping radioactive waste into oceans and bays. Our cities sent men to gather up the old appliances left in our parks. They even hauled away some of the abandoned cars. We lived our childhoods during this turning point.
Normally, I don't see meaningful distinctions between generations. That is, I wouldn't try to single out the times in which people grow up any more than their religions or educational levels or economic situations. Those make some sense to talk about, though. Maybe it's worth thinking about whether there genuinely are lessons to learn from our times and places of origin. Occasionally, we might notice something quite serious to a generational difference, such as the Vietnam War, the killings at Kent State, the presence of latchkey children, or the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Here, in roughly a linear order, are factors I think might define Generation X. I would love to hear different opinions.
1. We raised ourselves as free range kids
As mentioned above, we went outside wandering, drinking through hoses, and meeting strangers in person. Getting lost and finding our way back were factors of our daily lives. Negotiating with other kids to play games was a regular occurrence.
2. We benefited from a civil rights movement
When I was young, grown-ups in the neighborhood got angry about mixed marriages. To them, that meant between Irish (low white) and Italian (colored). The adults stood in groups, berating those unions and the Catholic churches that permitted them. Once, a blonde woman said, "What about the Lovings?" meaning the couple in Virginia. The rest of the group laughed. A man replied, "That's not really a thing." They didn't consider the civil rights movement to be practical.
But they were wrong. It took too long to prove, but it turned out that treating people with equal dignity and equal rights under the law is, in fact, practical.
3. We witnessed assassinations
For sixty years between the killings of Presidents McKinley and Kennedy, Americans didn’t seem to think about eliminating political leaders. Suddenly, after Kennedy, guns became everyone’s solution to differences of opinion. Someone killed Malcolm X. They got the younger Kennedy. Then Martin Luther King. Someone crippled George Wallace. People kept on trying. They wounded Andy Warhol. They murdered Barbara Colby.
Sometimes, as with the plots against Ford, Carter, and Reagan, the shooters didn’t even seem motivated by politics. They simply had easy access to guns and to famous people. Next, a man shot John Lennon. It wasn’t social commentary. It wasn’t personal. Shootings became a form of expression for frustrated people.
4. We grew up naked or nearly so
This one, more than most, probably depends on local circumstances.
In my childhood, we wore very little during the summer. Running around nude was considered normal for babies. Some of us grew up partly in summer camp barracks. We got naked in locker rooms. These thing gave us a different attitude towards our bodies. They gave us a different concept of nudity, too, which wasn’t sexualized. I don’t know for sure if it was healthier or not but I suspect it was.
5. We learned through corporal punishment
While some aspects of society re-started with Generation X, like civil rights and assassinations, some ended with our generation, like being free range kids and receiving corporal punishment.
Beating children had been the main way parents modified behavior for millions of years. When my wife wanted us to join the generational trend of seeking alternatives to spankings, I felt we were taking a risk. And we were. It seemed to pay off. There may be unintended consequences yet from failing to be physical. Raising immoral children doesn't seem to be one of them, though. Our grown kids have good consciences despite a lack of corporal punishment.
6. We made our own meals
They were terrible meals. We made ketchup and cheese sandwiches. We gnawed on warm, mushy apples. We pocketed tangerines and peeled them later, on the playground. Everyone relied on peanut butter and jelly, even the kids who weren’t allowed to spoil their dinner.
I ate hard peaches and crabapples from neighborhood trees. (I threw up, once. You can only eat so many crabapples.) But although most of us didn’t learn much about cooking, we did learn a form of food self-reliance early. There's something to be said for eating plain foods, too. Lots of us were used to doing it.
7. We drew maps
This was a ‘free range’ skill, I suspect. We memorized paths and landmarks. We learned to follow the stream. We buried pirate treasures consisting of our old stuffed animals and cap guns. Then we located the X on our homemade treasure map and dug them up again.
We could glance to the sun and judge our cardinal direction. We knew our mealtimes without a watch. Sometimes we read paper maps. But always, even without them, we found our way home. We found our way around our houses in the dark, too. We hardly thought about it.
8. We didn’t use our safety belts
By the time I was in college, I made a habit of stopping at every car accident I saw to try to help. At an accident in Massachusetts, I met a panicked man marching the other way on the darkened shoulder of the road.
“She’s hanging upside down!” He pointed behind him. I thought he may have been the first bystander on the scene. “I don’t see how we can get her out.”
As I continued, I approached a turned-over sedan. It was resting with its roof on the grass between a guard rail and a strand of trees. Inside, I could see a woman looking anxious. I didn’t see how she could have done this to her car but I didn’t think much more about it, either. Obviously, she had made it happen somehow. I saved most of my amazement for the seatbelt.
It was bewildering that she'd worn one. No one ever did. For Generation X, it wasn't an option in the older cars when we were children. Seat belts came with new models, of course, but no one used them. They weren’t available yet in school buses or public transit. Yet here was a woman who had worn hers and she was lucky, maybe, that she did. She hadn't been thrown when her car turned over. After I talked with her, I realized she was feeling sick from hanging upside down. So there were problems with the system. Still, she decided not to try to get out of the belt until the emergency crew arrived to give us advice.
9. We were the second generation who didn't know where our food was coming from
We mostly didn’t grow up with local butcher shops, vegetable gardens, bakers, fish vendors, fruit stalls, or local specialty stores. They were all fading, economically. Instead, supermarkets popped up to replace them. The supermarkets effectively moved all the little vendors inside and gave them a big, protected place to partially exist.
Thanks to newish methods of freezing and canning, we didn’t have to worry so much about what was in season, either. Instead of meat or vegetables produced locally, we got perishable items from farther away. True, the food we ate got worse and worse. But it happened slowly. We hardly noticed. When we did, not enough of us cared. Perhaps in a few cases, we did care enough (for instance, I heard twenty-five years of complaints about tomatoes), but we discovered we had no power to change the system. Too many people were too willing to buy apples or tomatoes that looked good, even though they tasted terrible. And so our system produced more and more items that looked good but nutritionally and gastronomically were just colored cardboard.
10. Slowly, our rivers stopped catching fire
When I roamed the forests as a seven year old, I came across old tires, broken barrels, washing machines, smashed beer bottles, and abandoned cars. Sometimes I played in the abandoned cars. I found plenty of big trash in Piney Branch Creek. By the time I was eleven, grown-ups had cleaned up the creek. They made the open containers of chemicals disappear. They reduced the open sewage, too.
The Clean Water Act of 1972 regulated industrial pollution and water processing. People took it seriously. It was the law. Besides, we wanted to breathe. We scrubbed industrial smokestacks to clear the air. Governments stopped dumping radioactive waste into oceans and bays. Our cities sent men to gather up the old appliances left in our parks. They even hauled away some of the abandoned cars. We lived our childhoods during this turning point.
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