My generation finally has its own name - Generation Jones

[Cynthia Prentice]

I was born in 1963...technically a Baby Boomer...yet nothing on the Boomer checklist has ever resonated with me. Finally, my generation has its own designation...Generation Jones. Born in the early 60's I am caught in the middle between the Boomers and Gen X'rs. On one occasion I heard my generation described as the Reagan Generation. That resonated with me as Reagan became president the year I graduated high school. His 8 year presidency spanned the years from my high school graduation to the birth of my first child in 1989. But Jones is more generic...more symbolic of my lost generation. My generation is cynical, yearning, flexible, changeable...and we have a name.

"The children of Boomers are today's Gen-Xers. The children of Gen Jonesers are part of an as yet unnamed Generation. What will their appellation be? How will they change the world and how will the world change them? We'll just have to wait and see." My Gen Jonser child graduated from collage this past weekend....I can't wait to see where life takes her.



So You Think You're A Boomer? Think Again

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/debra-ollivier/gen-jones_b_1149703.html

Hardly indeed. Like many Gen Jonesers I was born in 1960, when nearly half the population of the United States was under eighteen years of age. I was too young for Woodstock and Civil Rights protests. I was a toddler when JFK was shot. I didn't take LSD and "turn on, tune in, drop out." Vietnam raged but my peers were far from getting drafted. I remember the slogans -- Make Love, Not War. Question Authority. Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty - but the reigning popular icon of my day was the Happy Face button, not the Flower Power decal.

In fact, my formative years were less about Vietnam and Watergate and more about Iran Contra and the death of John Lennon. More about pop culture than counterculture. I was shaked and baked in the Reagan era, with disco, the Brady Bunch, and The Beginning of The End of Everything: Oil reserves, ice caps, polar bears, clean air, unpolluted oceans, terror-free air flight -- the list of things on the brink of demise seemed to mount every year. When the seventies veered into the go-go "me" decade of the eighties, the mechanisms that currently threaten to bring down Social Security and Medicare already had a vice grip on our culture.




I am wondering what generational names others find best defines their generation.

[David Lyons]

Cynthia,

I was born in 1964, so I am with you on the resonating scale. However, instead of Generation Jones, why don't we just call ourselves the Normal Generation. We aren't hippies or freaks, we are the sane ones.

[Hal Paul]

Yeah, I never identified with the Boomers and have kind of resented being grouped with them. My dad was serving in Viet Nam before I was born; the draft ended before I was ten; hippies were strange grownups who needed haircuts, wore funny clothes and smelled bad because they needed a bath, and the first time I recall hearing of the Chicago 8 or Timothy Leary was in a high school history class.

While I'm included in this generation moniker I still think I may not quite fit this new group, my wife, brother and most of my friends are still Gen Xers even though that group lost 1965 to the Joneses. Most of my social peers born in the later 60's also don't identify with their Gen X moniker either. As to the rational for the name Jones, the term jonesin' was either a flash in the pan or vernacular that predated my experience, it certainly wasn't common use anywhere I lived, I also don't like it since it originated as a term referencing an addict's craving for a fix.

By the way, I think our kids are being called the Millennial Generation (http://www.eagleton.rutgers.edu/programs/yppp/documents/MilleniumGenFS.pdf), at least that's the age range

[John Kennedy]

When I first heard about the 'Jones Generation' I had a couple of thoughts:

Mother Jones, the counterculture periodical.

The term 'jonesing' which means a craving .

[John Kennedy]

After consulting that fount of all kowledge (GOOGLE) I learned more about the label. One source characterized Generation Jones as the later boomers who didn't make it to Woodstock (maybe that accounts for the craving).

[Cynthia Prentice]

After consulting that fount of all kowledge (GOOGLE) I learned more about the label. One source characterized Generation Jones as the later boomers who didn't make it to Woodstock (maybe that accounts for the craving).

When my generation hears the word Woodstock we usually think of a certain beagle's bird buddy.

[Hal Paul]

After consulting that fount of all kowledge (GOOGLE) I learned more about the label. One source characterized Generation Jones as the later boomers who didn't make it to Woodstock (maybe that accounts for the craving).

This is what the article says about the name:


among other things, the slang term 'jonesin' that we popularized as teenagers, which connotes intense craving or yearning.

The problem is "Jones" is more commonly associated with "keeping up with the Jones' " than anything associated with my generation. I also challenge the "we popularized as teenagers," I don't know anyone I went to high school or college with who used it.

[Cynthia Prentice]

This is what the article says about the name:



The problem is "Jones" is more commonly associated with "keeping up with the Jones' " than anything associated with my generation. I also challenge the "we popularized as teenagers," I don't know anyone I went to high school or college with who used it.

I agree with you 100%...never heard the phrase before and Jones is more commonly associated with "keeping up with the Jones.' " If I had to pick a title I would go with the Reagan generation...not that everyone identified themselves as Republicans but just that his presidency covered me from the time that I graduated until I had my first child. If you throw in George Bush's presidency you are looking at twelve years. By the time Bill Clinton was elected I was explaining elections to my four year old daughter. That is quite a time span.

I looked back in my senior memory scrapbook and this is what I had written about what was going on in the world during my senior year 1980-1981

Iran Crisis - "Hostages"

Polish Union Uprising - Solidarity

Eruption of Mt. St. Helens

Russian invasion of Afghanistan

Summer Olympics canceled

'Free the Hostages' - Super Bowl yellow ribbons (hostages taken during overthrow of American Embassy in Iran Nov. 4, 1979)

Ronald Reagan 40th President U.S.A.

Hostages free - (as soon as Carter was no longer president and Reagan had finished his inaugural address the hostages were freed - prisoners 444 days)

Space Shuttle - April "81

[Hal Paul]

I agree with you 100%...never heard the phrase before and Jones is more commonly associated with "keeping up with the Jones.' " If I had to pick a title I would go with the Reagan generation...

Yes Reagan Generation works better, although I think that generation could be extended to people born in 67 or 68 based on the common experiences that we shared in the '80s.

[Hans Deventer]

After consulting that fount of all kowledge (GOOGLE) I learned more about the label. One source characterized Generation Jones as the later boomers who didn't make it to Woodstock (maybe that accounts for the craving).

Yes. I've felt for a long time I was born too late. Would have loved to have been part of the 60's, but before I realized what had happened, it was all over. And now, with the rising of the retirement age, the feeling is only getting stronger. Looks like I'll have to work till I have no health left.

The boomers got all the fun and most of them retired early. We get to face the economic crisis and will end up having company sponsored funerals.

[Hans Deventer]

Yes Reagan Generation works better, although I think that generation could be extended to people born in 67 or 68 based on the common experiences that we shared in the '80s.

Doesn't work for me, a more international phrase be better in my very humble opinion.

[Cynthia Prentice]

Doesn't work for me, a more international phrase be better in my very humble opinion.

We should come up with our own name....I'm thinking...

[Sarah Smith]

I'm one of those boomers who got to retire early. UMM--NOBODY HANDED TO US. We lived on considerably less than we made and saved.

My kids will probably not be able to retire at all. Not because they spent their money supporting me, but because they do not make any attempt at saving.

At their ages we had almost half our retirement saved. They have acrylic nails, dinners out, highlighted hair, and Starbucks.

Each generation has its own perks, responsibilities, and sins, but boomers have not ruined the world of the younger set.

[Hal Paul]

Doesn't work for me, a more international phrase be better in my very humble opinion.

Fair enough, Generation Jones should go too, I don't see it having much international appeal since it's based on an American slang term.

[Billy Cox]

I was born in 1963...technically a Baby Boomer...yet nothing on the Boomer checklist has ever resonated with me. Finally, my generation has its own designation...Generation Jones. Born in the early 60's I am caught in the middle between the Boomers and Gen X'rs. On one occasion I heard my generation described as the Reagan Generation. That resonated with me as Reagan became president the year I graduated high school. His 8 year presidency spanned the years from my high school graduation to the birth of my first child in 1989. But Jones is more generic...more symbolic of my lost generation. My generation is cynical, yearning, flexible, changeable...and we have a name.

Generational classification is a relic of a simpler and less diverse time. I think that the baby boom that occurred immediately after WWII was a statistically significant event that had reverberations throughout American society - especially in terms of consumption, product development and pop culture. It's all interesting, but we have taken it much too far; to the point of pseudo-sociology.

Most other generational observations (including the Pre-WWII 'builder' designation) are derivative of the post-war baby boom and have little or no value beyond their relationship to that event.

Saying that so-and-so is cynical because they were born in 1964 is just as silly as saying that so-and-so is indecisive because they are a Gemini.

[David Lyons]

When my generation hears the word Woodstock we usually think of a certain beagle's bird buddy.

Woodstock is on my shirt right now, with Snoopy (as Joe Cool) riding a Harley! Really! It has the words: Christmas Cruisin'. My wife gave it to me as an early Christmas present. I wore Snoopy stuff all the time as a kid.

[David Lyons]

Generational classification is a relic of a simpler and less diverse time. I think that the baby boom that occurred immediately after WWII was a statistically significant event that had reverberations throughout American society - especially in terms of consumption, product development and pop culture. It's all interesting, but we have taken it much too far; to the point of pseudo-sociology.

Most other generational observations (including the Pre-WWII 'builder' designation) are derivative of the post-war baby boom and have little or no value beyond their relationship to that event.

Saying that so-and-so is cynical because they were born in 1964 is just as silly as saying that so-and-so is indecisive because they are a Gemini.

You are absolutely correct! Let's leave the generation naming for those in the far distant future, if it is helpful for them to understand us then.