Chapter 2
DEFINING THE GENERATIONS

No doubt you've come across many of the descriptions used for the various generations. Baby Boomers, Echo Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, Silent Generation, Me Generation—these terms appear all over the place in the media, and everyone has some sense of what they mean. But most of us would have a hard time defining them precisely, and the lack of standardized definitions can make it difficult to have productive conversations that help bridge divides among different age groups. So let's start by defining our terms.

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY

When describing generations, most people tend to focus on dates—that is, birth years. The usual practice is to lump into one generation everyone who was born between year X and year Y. Sure, that's a convenient way to draw the lines. The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, for example, specifically chooses “equal 20‐year age spans” when defining post–World War II generations because those groups align both “with typically published age groups” and “with levels of annual births.”2 But going by the calendar alone doesn't yield an accurate picture, because a generation is defined by much more than its birth dates.

Broadly speaking, a generation can be characterized as “an identifiable group that shares birth years, age, location, and significant life events at critical developmental stages.”3 The Pew Research Center, a social‐science research organization that specializes in demographic research, points out that “a generation typically refers to groups of people born over a 15–20 year span” but adds that definitions of generations are ideally based on “a range of factors, including demographics, attitudes, historical events, popular culture, and prevailing consensus among researchers.”4 The Pew researchers go on to highlight three critical factors to consider when differentiating among multiple age groups:5

1. Life cycle effect (or age effect): “When a life cycle effect is at play, differences between younger and older people are largely due to their respective positions in the life cycle.” This one is pretty easy to understand. Just think back to when you were a teenager (when you still lived at home and weren't responsible for many—or any!—bills) and compare that with what your life is like now (when you have a mortgage, a career, or a family—or all three!). No doubt you've experienced some shifts in your attitudes based on your stage of life. Childhood, adulthood, parenthood, retirement—each of those phases has distinct concerns and outlooks.
2. Period effect: This manifests “when events and circumstances…as well as broader social forces…simultaneously impact everyone, regardless of age.” The Great Recession of 2007–2009 is one example of such an event that touched all segments of the population. Similarly, desegregation and the civil rights movement of the 1960s also yielded society‐wide effects.
3. Cohort effect: This results from “unique historical circumstances that members of an age cohort experience, particularly during a time when they are in the process of forming opinions.” The Pew researchers highlight two types of cohort effects: those that “may be the result of a period effect an older generation experienced that subsequent generations did not” (for example, people who were alive on 9/11 experienced a cohort effect that people born after 9/11 did not) and those that “have an outsize effect on members of one generation” (for example, people who were in adolescence or young adulthood—two formative periods in life—during the Vietnam War experienced it differently from people who were much older or much younger than them at that time).

As you can see, when defining a generation, so much more data than birth dates must be considered! In addition to the birth dates and the three effects described earlier, other factors (such as ethnicity, religion, and marital status, to name just a few) can play a role, too. But this chapter isn't intended to provide a comprehensive analysis of generational factors and definitions (I'll leave that to the demographic researchers and other experts!). My goal here is to provide an overview of the frameworks used to define generations—and a sense of how tricky it can be to come up with rigid definitions—so the rest of this book launches from a starting point that's accessible to all readers.

So with all of that in mind, let's talk about the different generations found in today's workplace!

THE BIG THREE—AND A NEWCOMER

First off, I'm going to set some parameters. It's true that there are some pre–Baby Boomers (e.g., the Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation) collecting paychecks these days. But those folks are so few in number that most discussions about the generations in today's workplace usually omit them. I'm going to follow that trend myself and focus on the generations that make up the bulk of today's workers: Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, Millennials, and Generation Zers.6

As far as birth dates go, only the Baby Boomers have numbers that are pretty much universally accepted: 1946–1964. In fact, theirs is the only generation that's officially defined by the US Census Bureau, as one journalist found out when he called that office.7 If you ask anyone about dates for other generations, you'll get plenty of different responses. They're usually not far off from each other, though, and tend to vary by only a few years—further proof of my earlier “everyone has some sense of what they mean” statement.

In my own research on how generations are defined, I've found that the Pew Research Center's birth date ranges tend to fall pretty much in the middle of the many variations out there. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, the Pew folks have a proven track record as experts on demographics. I have a lot of confidence in what they say on this subject, so I'm going to follow their lead and use their dates here.

Baby Boomers (1946–1964)

Unlike other generations, the generation of the Baby Boomers has tidy start and end dates. The start of the post–World War II baby boom and the introduction of the birth control pill (which prompted a sudden decline in birth rates) serve as convenient bookends for this group, which currently numbers about 76 million people.8

The Baby Boomers came of age during a period marked by significant civil unrest and heightened concern about international affairs, particularly the growth of communism throughout the world. The Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, setting the stage for the Cold War, the panic that Senator Joseph McCarthy unleashed during the 1950s over supposed communist sympathizers, the overnight construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and the US–Soviet conflict over Cuba that culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. (The Cold War wasn't completely bad, though—after all, it drove space exploration, which in addition to the great achievement of landing people on the moon also resulted in the development of the satellite communications technologies that we all depend on today!)

Halfway around the world, Mao Zedong's Communist Party seized control of China in 1949. A few years later, violence in Vietnam escalated as the north (backed by the Soviet Union and China) sought to reunify the country under communist rule. What began as a primarily regional conflict eventually involved the United States and early Baby Boomers, who were drafted to fight in the war there. That war cost thousands of young Americans their lives, permanently injured thousands more, and divided the nation. Many experts point to the Vietnam War as one of the most formative influences on this generation.

This generation had to contend with more than just conflict abroad, though. The Baby Boomers grew up amid dramatic social change—often fueled by conflict—domestically, too. The sexual revolution (whose start coincided with the official end of the Baby Boomers' birth years) and the civil rights movement compelled people to reconsider how they related to each other, and amid these rapidly changing political and social realities, many Baby Boomers rebelled against their more conventional parents.

War, uncertainty, and economic mobility were some of the main forces that shaped this generation. The formative years of the Baby Boomers were also marked by the assassinations of several political and social leaders: President John F. Kennedy (1963), civil rights activist and leader Martin Luther King Jr. (1968), and Senator Bobby Kennedy (1968).

Turmoil and promise are two hallmarks of this generation's life experiences. As young adults they were shaped by war and social upheaval and in their later years experienced the highest divorce rates and second marriages in recorded history. At the same time, though, most of the generation continued to pursue the so‐called American Dream—and this pursuit (and their success at it) gave them a reputation for materialism and greediness that led to this group also being known as the Me...