Getting to "No" Again

As both regular readers may remember, yesterday I posted on the Boomer Generation's self-made child-rearing crisis, as skewered by my friend Sparky.

Today, The Barely Attentive Mother, another real-life friend, weighs in on the issue from a slightly different perspective - the apparent traditional backlash in parental attitudes among Gen-Xers. BAM quotes the following suggested explanation for this from an article in the Oregonian with a considerable amount of skepticism:

Gen-Xers grew up in the aftermath of a time of much social upheaval, in an era of rapidly increasing divorce rates and mothers rapidly re-entering the work force," says Chung. "Some of them want to raise their families different from the way they grew up."

She goes on to suggest that the real reason Gen-Xers might be becoming more attentive parents is a disillusionment with the culture of material greed pursued by their elders and their own consequent refocusing of values.

Maybe, but from a personal perspective I think there is room for multiple explanations, including one both theOregonian and BAM might have overlooked: The article defines Gen-Xers as those born between 1965 and 1979. As it happens, I was born in 1965. My parents, now in the neighborhood of 70, were emphatically not Boomers, but rather of the generation just preceeding them. As such, they held on to the more traditional way of doing things right through the storm of the Boomers' Social Revolution - My mother was always home when we were young, my father's medical practice was one that always saw him home for dinner, and divorce was considered a social pathology, not an acceptable lifestyle alternative. Values such as hard work, prudence, delayed gratification and self-discipline were hammered into us.

I believe that there is a fair-sized chunk of older Gen-Xers who fit this model, never having been directly subject to the Boomer approach to begin with but rather looking on as horrified spectators. I often refer to such people as the "Reagan Youth" - those born between 1965 and, say, 1970 to pre-Boomer parents and who came of political age during the first flower of Reaganism. At least speaking for myself (and for the Butcher's Wife, for that matter), now that we are parents we seek to emulate our folks' way of doing things, not to run away from it. (N.B., of course we do some things differently, but these are variations on the theme, not rejection of the entire model.)

As for younger Gen-Xers seeking to be more sober fathers and mothers than their Boomer parents, I don't think there really is a difference between the bases of their rejection suggested by the Oregonian and BAM. The social upheaval and out of control consumerism witnessed in our society over the past 30-odd years are both phenomena that arise out of the common root of undisciplined narcissism, which, a I said, I believe to be the defining characteristic of the Boomer generation. In this, the Gen-Xers are simply rejecting two sides of the same hippie.

Either way, I am encouraged.