Stay Young

... and a good day to you. I'm at a bit of an impasse with the "freshman year" portion as I await the DVD of Slacker I've ordered to show up. So I'll jump back to the prologue section. You've seen a good portion of the introduction before, so here's my segue into the 1990 Time article "Proceed With Caution" that preceded and prefigured some of the stereotyping.]

As the 1980s came to a close, the world was undergoing a sea change that futurist Francis Fukyama would call “the end of history.” In one of the most stunning events of the century, the Berlin Wall was torn down -- from the inside, and peacefully -- in 1989. Communist totalitarianism was crumbling in Eastern Europe and within the Soviet Union, rendering the previous 45 years of Cold War rhetoric all but irrelevant. Back in the U.S., the lingering clouds over the Iran-Contra scandal had already begun to undo the Reagan legacy, even as his successor George H.W. Bush had already forced to concede an election promise and raise taxes. It was a time when the British rock band Jesus Jones could look at the world’s whirlwind and credibly sing in their hit song “Right Here, Right Now”: “I saw the decade in (end?)/When it seemed the world could change at the blink of an eye.”

Against this backdrop, journalists watched as all their old storylines dissolved before their eyes. A new world emerged, waiting to be tackled. New storylines shimmered, waiting to be written. Somewhere in here, Time magazine wondered if perhaps it was time to take a look at the mostly ignored generation that followed the Baby Boomers -- who had spent the past four decades in the spotlight as the most studied, analyzed and iconic generation ever. In the process, perhaps, Time started the process toward finding a new conflict, a generational one to replace the diminishing east-vs.-west ideological one.

The groundbreaking piece, titled “Proceed With Caution,” appeared in the July 16, 1990 edition of Time. Two young reporters -- 23-year-old Sophronia Scott and 24-year-old David Gross -- tried to introduce readers to their generation in a seven-page spread. But the first few sentences may have cemented the stereotype that media observers everywhere would pick up more than a year later:

They have trouble making decisions. They would rather hike in the Himalayas than climb a corporate ladder. They have no heroes, no anthems, no style to call their own. They crave entertainment, but their attention span is as short as one zap of a TV dial. … They possess only a hazy sense of their own identity but a monumental preoccupation with all the problems the preceding generation will leave for them to fix.

Their view of the cohort, then billed merely as “the twentysomething generation,” only covered those aged 18 to 29, which they estimated as 48 million Americans. While this represents a slimmer slice than the now more accepted boundaries of 1961 and 1981 births, the assumptions fall within the same areas. The article said that the new generation “virtually reared themselves” while “TV provided the surrogate parenting.” This was a group that “grew up in a time of drugs, divorce and economic strain.”

Because of their smaller numbers and unproven track record, twentysomethings “were hardly recognized as a social force or even noticed much at all” and were “poorly understood by everyone from scholars to marketers.” But the Time writers explained why that was likely to change: As they were just beginning to make a dent in the job market, “they have suddenly become far more intriguing,” Gross and Scott wrote. “America needs them. Today’s young adults are so scarce that their numbers could result in severe labor shortages in the coming decade.”

Gross and Scott laid out the blueprint for what would become the familiar perceptions of their generation: They were torn between wanting good jobs and doing good deeds, they do not want to disappear into their work like their parents, they yearn for a simple and uncomplicated life, they did not appear to be in any hurry to grow up, and they did not expect to live as well as earlier generations. According to the article, heads of households under 25 were the only age group to see a drop in income (10 percent) in the 1980s, and 75 percent of young males aged 18 to 24 were living with their parents (“the largest proportion since the Great Depression,” the writers added helpfully).

Time estimated that 40 percent of those in their 20s were products of divorce, and an even larger number were latchkey kids left to fend for themselves after school as their parents or parent worked. (“Ronald Reagan was around longer than some of my friends’ fathers,” quips University of Michigan graduate Rachel Stevens, 21.) As a result of their tumultuous upbringings, twentysomethings were in no hurry to make the same mistakes of rushing into marriages and having children before they are ready. (“I don’t want my kids to go through what my parents put me through,” said 20-year-old Kansas City resident Mara Brock.) They even dated less, with the article’s authors alluding to a 1950s-style approach to relationships in the age of AIDS. (“Not getting hurt is a big priority with me,” said Rick Bruno, 22 and preparing to enter Yale Medical School.)

“Welcome to the era of hedged bets and lowered expectations,” the authors wrote in explaining how their cohort sought more fulfilling work instead of a fast-track that did not promise much room for climbing the corporate ladder because of downsizing and a large boomer work force. They were the best-educated generation on record, but high-school degrees were no longer the ticket. “A person under 30 with a college degree will earn four times as much money as someone without it,” the authors explained, except that rising tuition rates and cutbacks on education aid made it harder for students to attain the prized sheepskin.

This was a generation that had lost faith in its parents, in the idealized (and, in their minds, failed) ambitions of the 1960s and in prominent institutions. While 58 percent of those surveyed said they had heroes, agreement on who they may be proved hard to find. The most named possible contemporary role models included Ronald Reagan, named by 8 percent; Mikhail Gorbachev, 7 percent; Jesse Jackson, 6 percent; and then-President George Bush, 5 percent. There were, respondents said, no larger-than-life icons like John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. around to galvanize their generation’s ambitions. (“It seems there were all these great people in the ‘60s,” lamented 18-year-old Kasi Davidson of Cody, Wyoming. “Now there is nobody.”)

What the authors -- and twentysomethings -- saw as one shortfall in the 1990s was an inability of the generation to develop its own youth culture. (This would, of course, change within a couple of years.) “People in their 20s have been handed down everyone else’s music, clothes and styles, leaving little room for their own imaginations,” the authors wrote. “What young adults have managed to come up with is … almost always a bland imitation of the past.”

But Gross and Scott did not entirely leave their generation out to dry. They concluded with a shred of hope and hardiness similar to what Xer writers would pick up in their generation’s defense a few years later:

Maybe the twentysomething generation does have trouble making a decision or a statement. Maybe they are just a little too cynical when it comes to the world. But their realism may help them keep shuffling along with their good intentions, no matter what life throws at them. That resignation leaves them no illusions to shatter, no false expectations to deflate. In the long run, even with their fits and starts, they may accomplish more of their goals than past generations did.

In short, let’s consider Jenn X a typical member of the generation. As she prepares to attend college in 1991, the year her generation starts receiving attention, chances are very good that her parents have divorced, and that her upbringing involved spending quite a bit of time home alone with TV as a babysitter. Unlike women of previous generations who approached college as an opportunity to attain an “Mrs. degree” (find a husband), she knows a real degree is required to earn any reasonable standard of living. But tuition costs are rising, and she will likely have to shoulder debt to make it through college and compete for jobs that are few and far between -- and she will see her way up the ladder blocked by both traditional chauvinistic attitudes and the high number of more-experienced boomers already in the work force. Is it any wonder she would feel some resentment toward her elders?