Been following the discussion of "Grups" over at Reihan's place. In case you've missed it -- what, you haven't bookmarked the new American Scene? -- the moniker Grups comes from "Star Trek," via one of those buzzy New York magazine pieces, this one about grown-ups who won't grow up. Excerpt:
This is an obituary for the generation gap. It is a story about 40-year-old men and women who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old. It’s not about a fad but about a phenomenon that looks to be permanent. It’s about the hedge-fund guy in Park Slope with the chunky square glasses, brown rock T-shirt, slight paunch, expensive jeans, Puma sneakers, and shoulder-slung messenger bag, with two kids squirming over his lap like itchy chimps at the Tea Lounge on Sunday morning. It’s about the mom in the low-slung Sevens and ankle boots and vaguely Berlin-art-scene blouse with the $800 stroller and the TV-screen-size Olsen-twins sunglasses perched on her head walking through Bryant Park listening to Death Cab for Cutie on her Nano.
You really have to read the whole piece. My first reaction was: this is a coastal thing that I'm glad I've avoided. Nobody in Dallas lives like this -- well, almost nobody -- though I saw hipsters like this constantly in NYC. But on second thought, the larger point about the collapsing of generational boundaries is a lot more applicable. That is, even dads like me who don't take my children to hipster bars, and who doesn't want to force my children into Mini-Me categories, relate to our children in significantly different way from the way our parents related to us.
This is true on a number of levels. Julie said to me last night, "Think about it: what you wear on the weekends in the summer is exactly what the boys wear: t-shirts, shorts and sandals." I admitted that I'd only seen my dad in shorts once in my life, and I think he'd chop his feet off before he'd put on a pair of sandals. Even though our beliefs are as conservative as our parents' in most respects, and in some ways more conservative, Julie and I are generally far less formal in our style. I hadn't really thought about it till I read the Grups article.
It's not like we're trying to be our kids' best friends -- in fact, we pretty strongly believe that dads and moms should be dads and moms, not bestest buddies with their children. Even so, our lives as grown-ups are more entwined with our children than our parents were. That's not to say our folks weren't dedicated to us. It's just ... different, in ways I find hard to articulate for some reason.
I think it has something to do with the fact that Julie and I take a more direct interest in what the kids are thinking and talking about, and invite them into our world, more than our parents did. For my mom and dad, the Adult World was its own sphere, and the Kids World was too. Me, I want to know what my boys are into, in part because I want to be a responsible parent, but also because I'm genuinely curious. It never occurred to my folks to pay attention to the music I was listening to. Matthew has gotten himself into Beethoven, and has in the past week or so been sitting in his bedroom blasting the Ninth Symphony as loud as his mother will let him. I don't know much about classical music, though I have a fair amount of it on my CD shelf at home. Somehow he got into the Beethoven stash, and I've been trying to talk to him about what he likes about Beethoven ("It's halfway between ordered and not ordered," he explained, which is a good basis from which to talk about music in general).
It happens that the music we listen to at the house and in the minivan together is stuff that mom and dad like, but that is also suitable for the kids. And the kids music we listen too -- the great Dan Zanes (though we're currently on DZ burnout), They Might Be Giants -- is stuff that pleases everyone. Simply paying attention to Matthew's musical tastes, and introducing him to things that I think he might like, has been fun for me, in part because it's given us both a window into each other's worlds. But he's definitely got his own strong tastes, and I respect that, and want to help him develop them, even if they aren't my tastes (his school project last fall was, I kid you not, about design modernism; this boy, who walked into a local Design Within Reach and told his clueless dad who designed what, is the Anti-Crunchy; says my own father, "Serves you right.").
Point is, I really do see in so many parents of my generation (I'm 40) a far more porous boundary between adulthood and childhood. The Grups in the New York article are pretty ridiculous, granted, but they're just at the extreme end of a generational trend, I'm thinking. It will be interesting to see what happens when these kids try to rebel. It was easy for me to stick it to my dad with my music ("Why do they call 'em the Thompson Twins when there's three of 'em? What the hell is a Talking Head? Boy George? You call that thing a boy? You must be on drugs." Etc.). But what are Matthew and Lucas going to do if they grew up in a house in which they pretty much shared musical interests with their parents?
(Matthew will probably run away to become a lodger at Virginia Postrel's house, and tell her, "My dad just doesn't understand me. He's an enemy of the future!")
I dunno, maybe we're stuck in this culture with the whole generation gap stereotype based on the Boomers waging Armageddon with their parents. Maybe it's not fated that an unbridgeable gap always and everywhere exists between the generations. That'd be a good thing, right? But if so, is there something important lost if a parent is seen by his children as being too familiar, in terms of style, with them? What do you think?
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Hmmm. I am a boomer (57) though an unconventional one (always been both conservative & green)-- proto crunchy? My stepson (his dad died when he was three) is 29. We NEVER had any generation gap, though (because?) we, including my wife are countercultural conservatives. We all are serious about strenuous outdoor activities (touches or has on all three of our professions at times), fond of animals, serious about conservation, scientifically literate, classically educated, like both popular and classical music. Two of us write, a different two play music. And so on. We raised Jack with serious standards and values AND a lot of freedom, and never had any serious rebellion times. Main difference is that I dress a bit more formally than my son-- no sandals in rural New Mexico!-- and that I am Catholic at the bone if at odds with most I see in the po-mo church, while Jack and his wife are Orthodox converts like you.
In short, despite greater age, sounds like you are raising your kids pretty much the way we did!
Of course (re Crunchy- the Theory) it is necessary to be consciously wary of the mainstream-- use some modern tools perhaps, but not mindlessly absorb modern premises.
Derb wrote something today as a lament but it could be a standard to hew to:
"I am more and more at odds with the world. It isn’t just a matter of disagreement about principles or taste. There are ever-expanding zones of early-21st-century life that I just don’t get. I suppose someone looking from the outside would say that this is just the effect of advancing age working on an innately contrary and antisocial personality."
What he said!
Erin, I think most historians have tried to delineate generations in such a way as to make each one about 20 years long. I don’t fully understand the justification for this, but in an era of rapid change as we’ve had in the 20th century, I’d say that doesn’t make a lot of sense. People born even 10 years apart may have drastically different critical events in their lifetimes. I agree with the author of the article you cited. It would seem that baby boomers should only be those who were old enough to have been somewhat actively involved in the events of the Sixties. It’s also significant that, as this author says, “the children who came into the world in 1958 were denied any memory of a time when the civic institutions of Western Society truly worked as intended.” That childhood memory of the pre-Sixties society seems critical.
I like the idea of dividing generations by around 10-12 year spans, as this author does, distinguishing boomers from Baby Busters, then making Gen X start in the late ‘60s, and then starting a new generation around 1980 (thus meaning that those born in the ‘80s would be distinguished from their predecessors by lack of firsthand memory of the Cold War). Granted, then the term “generation” is probably inaccurate. But you’re right, it would be better than pretending that people born over such long spans of time are shaped by the same events.
Strong agreement with Erin & John. Distrust of the whole "generation" paradigm aside, surely if there's anything sociologically useful about the boomer delineation it involves the experience of "the '50s" and "the '60s" (quotes indicate the phenomena weren't really that contiguous with the decades). I was born in 1948. I don't feel that much in common, as far as cultural experience & transition go, with people born in the '60s.
I was born in 1962. By some measures I am considered a young Boomer; by others I am considered an older member of GenX (e.g., I belong to the GenX group in Mensa, which sets the GenX parameters at 1961-1981). I have never felt much like a member of either generation, to be honest. As someone on the "cusp", so to speak, I relate to some of both generations' cultural markers, but not really to the bulk of either one's. My parents were both born in the 30s, so they are of the Silent Generation -- the relatively small generation between the WWII "Greatest" Generation and the Boomers. And when I was growing up I always identified more with my parents than with my peers. So I've never really felt that I belong to any of the "generations" defined by demographers, and have always been somewhat on the outside looking in with regards to all these generation discussions, comparisons, disputes, etc.
It's funny that I remember Apollo 7 in 1968, because we discussed it in first grade, and I remember watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on TV in 1969. But I have no memory of any of the political events of 1968. (My parents generally didn't discuss politics or current events, at the dinner table or anywhere else.) In addition, I vividly remember my First Communion on May 2, 1970; but I have no contemporary memory of the Kent State shootings two days later, even though I grew up 15 miles away.
New in the late 60s was talking heads and was really boring for a kid, so I took little interest in it, though I do remember when Vietnam was a regular part of the evening news. In some ways, Watergate was the first "current event" in which I took any interest, in part because I was working on a Boy Scout merit badge in Citizenship at the time. I remember watching the news reports about the fall of Saigon in 1975. I remember watching Nixon's resignation and Ford's inauguration on TV in 1974.
But the first presidential administration in which I really took any interest was Carter's, and the first presidential election in which I was old enough (barely) to vote was in 1980. So I consider myself to have come of age politically in the 80s more than in the 70s. I really do feel as if, in many ways, I fall between the stools of the Boomers and GenX, sharing some formative experiences with both but not really a part of either.
In many ways, my tastes are those of my parents. I'm probably one of the few people in their 40s who schedules his Saturday evenings around the Lawrence Welk reruns on PBS. ;-)
All I take from the original article is that rock music is now for people of all ages, and that summer casual wear in cities now includes shorts and sandals. Not sure what that has to do with growing up, which as I see it involves jobs and responsibility. Chunky eyeglasses don't enter into it one way or another, although middle aged people probably benefit from the fact that glasses are fashionable right now.
Regarding sandals, though... I hope that all responsible adults who choose to wear them will keep their feet in decent condition. There are things that nobody wants to look at, and a lot of them are flip-flopping around our major cities.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.