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The year of the soldier. Declared Time magazine's person of the year, cheered and comforted by the media and the populace at large, the American soldier hasn't received so much adulation since returning home from the rubble of Germany and Japan over fifty years ago. Americans may not agree on the policies that place our soldiers in a particular place at a particular time, but in general they believe we should "support our troops." The myth-making surrounding the story of Millennial private Jessica Lynch demonstrates a profound need to idolize soldiers as heroes and to portray their battlefield struggles in simple, morally unambiguous terms. Stephen Hunter at washingtonpost.com sees this trend in the recent spate of war movies, where organized violence is depicted in colorful detail using computer graphics, recreating the mythology of past conflicts. Contrast these movies with the sort of violent entertainment that was popular twenty or thirty years ago. Vigilante movies pitted tough guys against sleazy criminals; slasher flicks featured teenagers stalked by psychotic serial killers. Though voyeuristic and explicit, these movies were always about individuals hurting other individuals. Their replacement at the box office by the "battle piece" suggests a growing acceptance of violence at the group level: war. Posted by Steve Barrera at 12:10 PM
Teens and "issues." Fox News reports on a poll of teens and touts their conservative streak. The final statement - "The same studies show teens are still more liberal than adults on issues like same-sex marriage and the environment. " - seems like it is meant to continue: "but they'll turn around eventually." Yeah, right! Millennials are apparently pro-life and pro-prayer, which should make the red zone happy - but also pro-gay and pro-Green, which should make the blue zone happy. But the culture warriors will, no doubt, always be disheartened when teens embrace the wrong zone's values. Posted by Steve Barrera at 3:06 PM
Permaparenting. A recent article by Pamela Paul at Psychology Today discusses the fate of parents of adult children living at home. The article is sort of about Boomer "helicopter parenting" and sort of about Gen-Xers delaying maturity. "Parents used to let go when their children reached age 18," says David Anderegg, professor of psychology at Bennington College in Vermont and author of Worried All the Time: Overparenting in the Age of Anxiety. "The idea was, if you can go to jail, I'm no longer responsible for you." But that changed during the 1990s...This statement from the article suggests that children were emancipated at eighteen for all of history, until Boomer parents came along. It's more the case that the idea that offspring should just grow up and move out accompanied the coming of age of Boomers and Xers. That might change with Millennials. Paul's article cautions that parents of adult children are denying themselves a certain degree of independence and self-fulfillment - a worry that would have resonated with the narcissistic culture of the 1970s, but seems less relevant in the 2000s. Posted by Steve Barrera at 2:27 PM |
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| Lost | 104+ |
| G.I. | 80-104 |
| Silent | 62-80 |
| Boomer | 44-62 |
| Gen-X | 23-44 |
| Millennial | ?-23 |
| Homeland | ? |
| High | 1946-1964 |
| Awakening | 1964-1984 |
| Unraveling | 1984-? |
| Crisis | ?- |
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Where noted, background information on generations theory is copyright 1996 Broadway Books. All other content on this web site is copyright 2002-2005 Generation Watch and Steve Barrera. All rights reserved. |