Sunday, January 15th, 2006
William Strauss & Neil Howe are probably the best known proponents of generational theory in the United States, if not the world. Their reputation began with the publication of their first book, Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069, in 1991, fifteen years ago.
13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? came out in 1993. The Fourth Turning was first published in 1996. Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation hit the bookshops in 2000.
Before teaming up with Howe, William Strauss co-wrote Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation, with Lawrence Baskir in 1978. Neil Howe wrote On Borrowed Time: How the Growth in Entitlement Spending Threatens America’s Future
in 1989 with Peter Peterson.
Arthur Scheslinger Jr, a historian and political activist, is credited by Strauss and Howe as pioneering the cycle approach to American History. His work on generational cycles appeared in essays before being published together in the 1986 book, The Cycles of American History, since reprinted in 1999.
Strauss and Howe use the generation theories developed by Jos� Ortega y Gasset and Juli�n Mar�as, Spanish philosophers who wrote on history as a system. Marias died only last month at the age of 91. See Ortega’s book of essays, History as a System. They credit Anthony Esler, author of The Human Venture, with keeping generational theory alive for twenty years.
Age Bracket Fallacy
Strauss and Howe cite Gail Sheehy’s 1976 book, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, together with Daniel Levinson’s 1978 book, The Seasons of a Man’s Life“, as examples of a cohort-group biography - a ‘persuasive rendering of the collective personality of American men and women now in their fifties’ (read mid sixties in 2005). These authors, as Matilda Riley pointed out in an essay in Graubard’s 1978 book, Generations, were promoting the fallacy of age reification, in which one generation projects its life experience on to another. Gail Sheehy responded in 1996 by publishing New Passages, which took into account the impact of history on young adulthood in the 1990s.
Generations as Trains in Motion
Strauss and Howe attempt to follow each generation as a train in motion rather than as a station. This they do by tracing the development of cohorts from childhood through to death, marking the distinctive events which influence each group. They say that each generation has a different experience of the life cycle. For this reason the authors provide the biography of each generation from the Puritans through to the Millennials.
Social Moments
Strauss and Howe focus on the impact of social moments - critical events which could be secular crises or spiritual awakenings. A social moment is an era, typically lasting about a decade, when people perceive that historic events are radically altering their social environment. Secular crises are when society focuses on reordering the outer world of institutions and public behavior. Spiritual awakenings are when society focuses on changing the inner world of values and private behavior. During social moments dominant generations are entering rising adulthood and elderhood, while recessive generations are entering youth and midlife.
Four Generation Cycle
However, through their research into generations through history, they come to the conclusion that generations come in cycles. “Just as history produces generations, so too do generations produce history.” The authors label the four generational types Idealist, Reactive, Civic and Adaptive, always recurring in a fixed order. Strauss and Howe suggest that the passage of four generations completes a full generational cycle over four 22-year phases of life, roughly ninety years.
1. A dominant, inner-fixated IDEALIST generation grows up as increasingly indulged youths after a secular crisis. It comes of age inspiring a spiritual awakening, fragments into narcissistic rising adults, cultivates principle as moralistic midlifers, and emerges as visionary elders guiding the next secular crisis.
2. A recessive REACTIVE generation grows up as an underprotected and criticized youths during a spiritual awakening, matures into risk-taking alienated rising adults, mellows into pragmatic midlife leaders during a secular crisis, and maintains respect (but less influence) as reclusive elders.
3. A dominant, outer-fixated CIVIC generation grows up as increasingly protected youths after a spiritual awkaening, comes of age overcoming a secular crisis, unites into a heroic and achieving cadre of rising adults, sustains that image while building institutions as powerful midlifers, and emerges as busy elders attacked by the next spiritual awakening.
4. A recessive ADAPTIVE generation grows up as overprotected and suffocated youths during a secular crisis, matures into risk-averse, conformist adults, produces indecisive midlife arbitrator-leaders during a spiritual awakening, and maintains influence (but less respect) as sensitive elders.
Strauss and Howe name the four generations reading their book in 1991 as:
GI - elders, born 1901 - 1924 (now age 81-104)
SILENT - midlifers, born 1925-1942 (now age 63-80)
BOOMER - rising adults, born 1943 - 1960 (now age 45-62)
13ER - youths, born 1961 - 1981 (now age 24 - 44)
They mark the passing of the previous generations:
MISSIONARY - born 1860 - 1882
LOST - born 1883 - 1900
They anticipate the emergence of a new generation:
MILLENNIALS - children, born 1982 - 2003 (now 3-23)
Strauss and Howe Online
These web sites provide a chance to engage with the authors.
Life Course Associates
Fourth Turning
Millennials Rising
Tags: Generational Theory, Sociologists, Strauss & Howe
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Monday, May 23rd, 2005
A Generation Alone, a primer on Generation X, by Bill Mahedy and Janet Lea Bernardi, was published in 1994 by InterVarsity Press. This was one of the first books to address generational change from a Christian perspective.
In 1994 William P. Mahedy was a college chaplain and young adult pastor for the Episcopal Church in San Diego. He had a background working as a chaplain with Vietnam Veterans. Janet Lea Bernardi was coordinator of campus & young adult ministries for Episcopal Church in San Diego, with a background in biochemistry and continuing medical research at the University of California. If anybody knows what they’re doing now, let me know! All I know is that Bill is a retired military chaplain living in San Diego.
Post Traumatic Generational Stress
In A Generation Alone, Bill draws on his experience as a veteran of the Vietnam war to examine the effects of generational trauma, including spiritual numbness and distorted images of God. One comment caught my attention. Many, because of shattered self-esteem, understand sin and guilt not in their classical Biblical sense but as a personal judgment on them by others.
Post traumatic stress disorder is an enduring condition resulting from stressful incidents beyond the normal range of human experiences. These could include combat, terrorism, genocide, torture, rape, violence, and devastating natural disasters. Generational cohorts coming of age in the middle of war experiences would be marked by brittleness, a survivor mentality, with serious moral and religious questions. During crisis, Mahedy tells us, the only priority is survival. Dealing with emotional responses � sorrow, grief, guilt, anger � is buried or repressed. In the wake of the crisis survivors may experience disturbing dreams, flashbacks, sleep disorders, violent behaviour, depression and emotional numbing. They may have feelings of detachment from others find themselves unable to feel loving towards others.
Trauma survivors are forced to engage with questions of meaning that others may never even consider. �Why did God allow this?� �What did I do to deserve this?� Evil becomes real and personal. Youthful illusions of omnipotence are shattered. Vulnerability becomes a permanent feature of consciousness.
Mahedy makes the connection between his work with Vietnam veterans and the members of Generation X he encounters on campus. He sees widespread problems with students struggling to develop a sense of stability and self-image. Young adults content with constant feelings of emptiness, depression, suicidal thinking, fear of the future, and lack of hope.
A key to the generational angst, Bernardi observes, is the experience of �aloneness�, resulting from abandonment and alienation. The alienated may seem fully engaged with others, but somehow portray a flatness of spirit in their relationships. This generation, the authors say, has grown up without their parents� moral guidance and concern for spiritual wellbeing. The parental divorce rate is double that faced by the Boomers at the same age.
Generation X and its place in history, its destiny
Mahedy and Bernardi observe that Generation X in the United States was raised on the rubble of a “New Jerusalem” � the American dream of prosperity as ‘divine right’. This was the first wave to reach adulthood in the post-industrial or information age.
The authors provide a critique of Strauss and Howe’s theory of generational cycles in which Gen X (or 13th Gen) has developed as a reactive cohort responding to idealist Boomers. The Millennials, according to Strauss and Howe, are the new civic generation. The theory is that the Millennials will benefit from both the Xers desire to give better parenting than they received, and from Boomers conversion from narcissists into concerned midlife parents.
The authors point out that the Strauss and Howe theories have not taken into account the unprecedented rapidly accelerating pace of global, multicultural, interdependent technological civilisation. There is no evidence that the Boomers have undergone conversion from narcissism, immorality, self interest or greed. The social and moral pathology inflicted on Gen X is progressive � worse in younger cohorts. Mahedy and Bernardi wonder if Gen Xers will have enough emotional capacity to spend energy on parenting?
Another major factor changing the generational cycle is the monumental move from modernism to postmodernism. Science has been altered by twentieth century quantum physics. Political, economic and social systems are becoming more complex. The �global village� is now a reality.
Gen Xers cannot expect to achieve the economic success attained by parents, largely because of the broad changes in economy. Both parents need to work to support their family. There is a widening gap between rich and poor. The industrial system is downsizing and decentralising. Moral decay, linked with selfishness, is being revealed in the dominant American preoccupation with wealth and image.
Xers had the capacity to be prophets of hope to a struggling society. They were strengthened by both their embrace of suffering and their sense of humility and aloneness. Young Christians have the opportunity to �go beyond Constantine� � to find ways of being church without the Christendom position of privilege. They would need to find alternatives to privatised atheist secularism on one hand and enforced fundamentalism on the other.
Mahedy and Bernardi provide sweeping generalisations on Generation X, largely based on their observations of young adults they are encountering on University campus. In addition, Mahedy’s lenses are clearly affected by his work with the survivors of Vietnam. Their observations have been backed up by my colleagues in youth ministry who have remarked on how difficult it is to find psychologically healthy volunteers. Discipleship of young adults has needed to focus on recovery before moving towards mobilisation.
Tags: Spirituality, Strauss & Howe
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