Baby Boomers and Generation X
45
even more cause for disillusion. Between 1965 and 1977, the divorce rate
doubled. More than 40% of today’s young adults had spent time in a single
parent home by age 16. Did the psychic toll produce latch-key basket cases or
self rehant survivors? Undoubtedly, both. In their coupling habits, Gen X is
the “youngest copulating and oldest marrying generation ever recorded,” note
Strauss and Howe. Since 1970 the average marriage age has crept up from 23
to 27 for men and 21 to 25 for women. For many, it signals caution bom of
pain. “If I marry, I will never get divorced,” says Angel Gambino, a University
of Oregon law students whose parents split when she was three. Next year she
plans to move back with her mother and sister, following another trend. Whether
for economic or emotional reasons, 30% of men and women in their 20s hve
with their parents. “For me, Gambino says, “the American Dream is a stable
family.” (Homblower 58)
Bridgers mock Boomers’ bewaihng of “moral apathy and decline.” After all,
the Boomers and former generations are the ones who got us here. Minority groups
who were so influential in the Sixties have lost their luster. The inner cities, once
seen as positioning themselves on solid moral and economic ground, have become
filled with dmgs, violence, and death. Meanwhile the institutions which also got
us here seem to have escaped the consequences of their actions, while Bridgers are
asked to foot the bill socially and financially. As Howe and Strauss point out.
Boomer teens who got in trouble heard pohtical leaders call for social services;
Bridgers who get in trouble hear calls for boot camp, prisons, and swift executions.
Boomers got us into this mess and now complain that they wanted pumpkins when
they planted watermelon seeds. It’s as though the national conscience finally decided
to do something about the giant collective Boomer ego, but after taking aim and
winding up with a club to bash them for all the damage they did, America swung
late, missed, and hit the next bunch of saps to come walking by — the Bridgers. It
should not be surprising that Bridgers are skeptical of the authority which has
done very httle good for them and lots of harm:
They fume when they hear Boomers taking credit for things Boomers
didn’t do (civil rights, rock n’ roll, stopping the Vietnam War) and for
supposedly having been so much more creative, idealistic, morally
conscious, and generally better than 13ers. When they watch Boomer
films wallow in self-absorption over “what we did” in the ‘60s. When
they hear fortyish professors lecture them for being sexist, racist, amoral
morons. Through it all, today’s young adults sometimes wonder: Can't
those boomers see how they look to us? The 13er image of the protoBoomer is an ugly mosaic built out of the worst figments of each Boomer
phase of hfe. The klutzy naivete of vintage Mouseketeer preteens blends