2020s America as 5 Generations

Neil Howe's Brilliant View of Our Time

In 1990, at age 24, I was working for bestselling author Marilyn Ferguson in Los Angeles when U.S. Senator Al Gore Jr. paid her a visit.  He gave her the advance galleys of a book entitled Generations by his friend Willian Strauss and Strauss’s colleague Neil Howe.  Since her 1980 book had sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, they thought a blurb quote from Marilyn on the back cover of Generations would help sell the book. 

To put it simply, Marilyn gave then a nice quote but wasn’t that impressed.  I thought that other than Marilyn’s book, Generations was the most fascinating thing I’d ever read.

Generations was followed by a book about Gen X, a book about Millennials, and a book about eras or “turnings” in history, including the crisis eras they called “fourth turnings”.  I spent most of the 1990s in D.C., met Strauss and Howe, and for about three years was privileged to be part of their “inner circle” of a dozen of us who exchanged emails about various social, economic, and political data and trends.

And now, two decades later, on July 18th, (with Bill Strauss having passed in 2007), Neil Howe has delivered a fifth book in the lineage: The Fourth Turning Is Here.  It’s indispensable – a must-read – for anyone interested in American society in 2023 and well beyond.

While this is, ostensibly, a book review, I’m going to do my best (while changing the names of two generations and ignoring politics and public policy) to share Neil Howe’s vision with you – or my truncated version of his vision. 

In this first post I’ll outline his vision of America as five generations in 2023.  In a second post I’ll deal with Howe’s vision of the future.

It has its limits, but the generational lens is powerful.  Looking through it, we can see things we can’t see through any other lens.

America – and to some extent, the world – is made up of five generations today: the Folk Generation, Boomers, GenXers, Millennials, and Zoomers.  Together, we five generations are America (and the world) in 2023.  So who are we?

The Folk Generation

12 million Americans

Born 1925 to 1942

Age 81 to 97

Strauss and Howe have always called them the Silent Generation, but I don’t think any generation should be given a negative name, so I call them the Civil Rights Generation or the Empowerment Generation or, most often, the Folk Generation.

We will probably long best remember the Folk Generation for their civil rights leaders – especially Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, Gloria Steinem, and Harvey Milk – and their success at empowering the previously disempowered, including women, racial minorities, gay folks, and people with disabilities.  They set out to create a more open, tolerant, diverse, inclusive society, and they achieved it.

On the other hand, as Howe points out, they left our institutions too complex and refined and process-oriented and they left our society too bogged down in litigation.  In their final years with us, we respect them as our kind, decent, tolerant, and civil grandparents and “late elders” – and it’s sad to watch them part this world one by one.

The Boom Generation

57 million Americans

Born 1943 to 1960

Age 63 to 80

Where do we start?  They have always been a generation of individualists, spiritual seekers, and harsh judges of right and wrong.  First-wave Boomers were the clenched-fist radicals of the Sixties.  In the Seventies, Howe observes, Boomers ushered in the age of health foods, alternative medicine, yoga, and self-empowerment – seeming fads that have each turned into a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Beginning with William Bennett in 1985, Boomers have led America’s Culture Wars, primarily as battles to clean up the world of children and youth.  In our time, Howe notes, Boomers have “focused on issuing unyielding standards of social rectitude to the rising Millennial Generation – aging progressives doing this mostly in colleges, aging evangelicals mostly in churches.”

At their best, Boomers have provided America with conviction and a quest for a common vision of the good life.  At their worst, they have been bitterly confrontational, delivered ultimatums, reveled in visions of catastrophe, broken down our institutions, and sharply divided our society.

Now, as our elders – and they hope we’ll call them wise elders or spiritual elders – Boomers may still have something to teach us about inner vision, conscious living, and self-actualization.

Generation X

85 million Americans

Born 1961 to 1981

Age 42 to 62

Perceptive, pragmatic, and savvy, we Xers have excelled at self-sufficiency, resilience, keen survival instincts, initiative, daring, and bottom-line results.  We were the neglected “latchkey” kids of the 1970s – that “slum of a decade” as John Updike called it, including runaway divorce among Folk-Generation parents that devastated young Xers. 

And so we learned to rely on ourselves and we ended with our stance of skepticism and Punk and Grunge alienation. You can see it even now in our comedians.  “This generation’s most celebrated humorists,” Howe observes, “(from Conan O’Brien and Tina Fey to Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Dave Chapelle) come across as rough-edged and grumpy, full of snark and vitriol.” 

On the positive side, we became a generation of tech-savvy MBAs who used digital technologies to boost workplace productivity and revolutionize the world economy.  As Howe notes, Dell, Andreesen, Page, Brin, Bezos, Thiel, and Musk are all Xers.

In 2023, we are almost perfectly aligned as the midlife generation.  We’re gritty – having been knocked down by the Great Recession and then the pandemic – and we’re paying off debt and saving up, even as one in ten of us relies entirely on gig work and half of us say of our retirement we’ll “just figure it out when we get there”.

In midlife, we Xers are trying to tune out what doesn’t matter and focus on the tasks and relationships that really do.  And many of us are, usually for the first time, assuming responsibilities in our communities.

Most of all, we Xers are super-protective parents – always there, always knowing where our child is, always looking out for danger.  We’re still burning about being neglected in the Seventies and Eighties, and we’re obsessively determined to give our kids hands-on care.

The Millennial Generation

102 million Americans

Born 1982 to 2005?

Age 18? to 41

As Howe points out, we can’t yet clarify the dividing birthyears between Millennials and Zoomers.  Time will tell.  But the best guesses at the moment are 2005 as the last birthyear of the Millennials and 2006 as the first birthyear of the Zoomers.

Boomers didn’t want another generation like us Xers, so beginning around 1983 Boomer parents kicked off sweeping changes with their “Baby on Board” signs in back car windows. 

It’s been pretty much the same improved treatment for Millennials ever since.  Rubber-padded playgrounds, Amber alerts, Megan laws, zero tolerance for crime and drugs and bullying and bad behavior at school, and much higher academic standards and expectations.

Writes Howe, “No youth generation in American history has willingly subjected itself to so many tests and exams – nor has any trusted in the ethic of meritocracy so utterly.  Millennial high school students by the mid-2010s were bearing roughly twice the average daily homework load as late-wave Xers were in the 1990s.”

Millennials have a propensity for community and volunteering, and they’ve flocked to social media where everyone keeps track of everyone in real time.  Their culture has been surprisingly wholesome.  They are the children of The Lion King, Finding Nemo, Barney & Friends, Blue’s Clues, and Dora the Explorer.  They are the youth of poppy choreographed boy bands followed by Taylor Swift, Drake, Ariana Grande, and Bruno Mars.

But then, after they followed the rules, remained friendly and upbeat, and got their credentials to be “career ready”, there came the Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession.  And they just began to financially recover from that for about three years in the late 2010s when the pandemic struck.

Amazingly, Millennials blame themselves more than the twists of fate in our national and global economic history.  About 55 percent of Millennials say they’re ashamed of their personal financial situation.  So they are doubling down, working even harder, making even more of an effort to achieve the American Dream. 

Half of twentysomethings live with their parents and most of the rest rent, often in “group living” situations with friends.  Home ownership (other than what are called “tiny houses”) seems out of reach.

Millennials are burning out from hard work and suffering from perfectionist-based anxiety.  All while hearing us older folks stereotype them as “snowflakes”. 

Millennials are strongly pro-marriage and pro-family, but, as Howe puts it, “a record share of them continue to avoid marriage because they feel they aren’t prepared for it, can’t afford it, don’t dare risk it, can’t find a reliable partner – or all of the above.”

No wonder Millennials think our current system is broken – fundamentally – and needs to be overhauled or even replaced.  Even as they strive to fit in socially with their honest, friendly, orderly, and competent cooperation-and-team approach to daily life and relationships. 

The Zoomer Generation

75 million Americans

Born 2006? to 202_?

Age 0 to 17?

Howe calls this generation the Homeland Generation, but that’s a name more appropriate to their post-911 infancies and unlikely to catch on.  GenZ or Zoomers have caught on for now (until they do something historical together out there in 2030s and get a more fitting name).

What does Howe see?  They are a bit self-conscious and even awkward, but Zoomer youth are well-rounded, earnest, respectful of achievers, agreeable, and “super-nice”.  They are “super-coached” and “super-focused” on meeting high standards.

They never knew the years 1983 to 2007 – the quarter-century (except for the one-generational Xer depression from 1989 to 1993) of the soaring Dow.  That kind of prosperous flourishing is almost beyond their imaginations. 

“They understood the adult mood perfectly,” Howe observes: “It’s a dangerous world out there, beset by sudden poverty, homelessness, armed violence, and rage in high places.  The lessons?  Stay close to home, follow the rules, and don’t upset older people who are doing their best to take care of you.”

While most Zoomers will be raised by Millennial parents, in 2023 the parents of America’s teens are mostly GenXers.  Xer parents, feeling neglected in our own youth, are spending every hour with their kids that they can, and making sure there is never a moment when a trusted adult doesn’t know where they are. 

Howe spells out what’s happening in America’s homes:  “Xers today view child-rearing as . . . a practical means of making your child totally safe, never afraid, decently behaved, and sensitive to the needs of others.”  Quality time was Boomer hypocrisy.  You gotta be there.  And when you’re not, you keep up 24/7 oversight and control. 

Zoomers have thus grown up with baby monitors, bedroom videocams, GPS trackers in their backpacks, ID screening at school, text check-ins throughout their day, and wristbands at public events.  Schools even ban “rough-and-tumble” recess activities.

Zoomer kids, Howe informs us, “encounter a veritable floodtide of rules as soon as they set foot on school property: rules on talking, on touching, on playing, on running; rules on what you may and may not say; jot-and-tittle rules about how assignments must be completed; draconian regulations on scanning for personal possessions (omg, don’t get caught with an aspirin or a butter knife!).”  And, with dress codes and school uniforms, rules about how to dress themselves.

They also get “social and emotional learning” (SEL), which sounds warm and fuzzy but actually teaches them to regulate their emotions, resist their impulses, and exercise self-control.  All to keep adults and their peers happy.  (Even their blockbuster films – Frozen, Inside Out, and Encanto – are about managing feelings.)

Zoomers study for multiple-choice tests in kindergarten and abide by complex “expectations matrices” of do’s and don’ts in third grade.  By high school, they are doing everything they can to avoid “youthful indiscretions” and develop perfect qualifications for the best college and career opportunities.

Almost all the social indicators are positive.  (Fentanyl is much more of a problem for older generations than for Zoomers.)  They are well-behaved, support their peers, ostracize bullies, and rebel only on TikTok videos from the safety of their bedrooms. 

Zoomers are surprisingly responsible, sensitive, ethical, and kind, but the Zoomer world is not quite a paradise.  The main downside of all this is that they are highly stressed.  They are flocking to therapists, dropping into anxiety and depression, and going on psych meds.  Just as problematic is that they may be so over-sheltered that they end up docile and disabled by neurosis. 

Howe gives us a warning: “Their parents’ snowplow parenting style may have been excessive . . . robbing kids of their need to experience agency, risk, and failure.  All those ‘unboxing’ videos, nonstop crib monitors, scheduled play-dates, overcoached ball games, homework tutors, and deluxe fidget toys (even “fidgeting” now needs a dedicated device) come at a psychic cost . . . Among friends or in the classroom, they worry a lot about being judged or saying something ‘wrong.’  An athletic few train in club sports so compliantly that repetitive stress injuries are now epidemic.”    

Despite it all, Howe tells us, the role of Zoomers, ultimately, may be to give back a heart to what is, in the 2020s, far too heartless a world. 

In my estimation, no one sees American society in 2023 more clearly than Neil Howe.  The Fourth Turning Is Here gives us the most insightful vision we have into our own time.  In my second post, I’ll take a view through Howe’s lens into the future.

The Fourth Turning Is Here by Neil Howe