Baby Boomers and Generation X
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adults are committing 90 percent of the intoxicated motor damage; those between
the ages of 21 and 34 account for more than half of all fatal drunken traffic mishaps
(Males 202). What becomes evident to Bridgers when the facts are shown, is the
difference between the rhetoric of Boomers and the reality of their actions.
There was an interesting, less-trumped statistic in the Lewinsky surveys to
Bridgers. While Bridgers were wilhng to forgive Clinton his adultery and his lying
about it, many of them expressed serious reservations about his using his friends
and abusing those friendships in the process. His betrayal broke a more sacred
contract: above all else Bridgers value their personal relationships, even more than
success. As one friend of mine put it, “My job and success show what I have done;
my relationships with my family and friends show who I am. The second is infinitely
more important than the first!” Part of this response indicates a generation whose
inunediate ties to home are hampered by parental absence and smaller family size,
which leads them to value relationships made even more than those inherited. In a
post-war generation like the Boomers where each baby was a treasure to be had,
the kids grew up with a strong sense of self and individuality. While this might
have been a positive thing, it also led to an estrangement from community in practice.
The opposite holds true for the Bridgers who, forced to grow up much more
independently, would clamp on to community relationships like drowning men
when good ones arose.
Books like Welcome to the Jungle and 13*^ Generation take a look at the
development of this phenomenon. A strong Malthusian movement during the sixties
focused on Malthus and overpopulation, resulting in support for contraceptives.
Concurrently the women’s rights movement successfully shifted public attitudes
on issues such as the right to abortion and women’s desire to leave the home and
enter the workplace. General opinion reflected a devaluing of children and families
and a strong emphasis on individual freedoms. One manifestation of this change
was the creation of the bad-baby horror film. Beginning in 1962 with Children o f
the Com, audiences flocked to see such movies as The Exorcist, The Omen Trilogy,
Rosemary *s Baby, Demon Seed, all the way up through the early ‘80s. It is not
coincidental that just as the first Bridgers would have been reaching the age to see
such movies that the demand and hence the production of this genre died. As the
demographics shifted to a younger generation, movie production centered around
successful teenagers developing strong relationships in movies like Secret o f My
Success and St. Elmo's Fire.
Bridgers were bom into a world where children were seen as the enemies to
the progress of Boomers. Michael Males divides the Baby Boomers into three
distinct groups: (1) So-called adults who, admitting their self-indulgences, decided
to postpone adulthood until late middle-age and wisely chose not to have kids; (2)
a minority who, having had kids, rearranged their lifestyles more or less radically