John Leo
The good-news generation
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | 0urs is a four-generation family. I am a "silent" or a "mature," born before 1946 ("duty, tradition, loyalty," are the watchwords to professional generation watchers, who like to find three nouns for each group). My esteemed spouse is a baby boomer ("individuality, tolerance, self-absorption"), our first two daughters are generation X-ers ("diversity, savvy, pragmatism") and our youngest daughter is a "millennial," a member of the cohort born between 1977 and 1994. One of the best researchers and generation-watchers, Ann Clurman of the Yankelovich Partners, suggests "authenticity, authorship, and autonomy" as the three nouns for the emerging millennials, also known as generation Y or the "echo boomers."
The comic overtones of
dividing and labeling
everyone this way are
hard to miss, but there
is some sense to it,
too. The sharp break
between the silents
and the boomers,
obvious to all, has
fueled the search for
clean dividing lines
between the
generations that came
after.
Now the focus is
almost entirely on
millennials, 78 million strong and the largest birth cohort in American history.
Speaking at the American Magazine Conference last week in the Palm
Springs, Calif., area, Clurman described millennials this way: They are family
oriented, viscerally pluralistic, deeply committed to authenticity and
truth-telling, heavily stressed, and living in a no-boundaries world where they
make short-term decisions and expect paradoxical outcomes. (The sense of
paradox means that every choice results in some good consequences, some
bad: Air bags save lives but kill people, too.)
By pluralistic, Clurman means that distinctions of race, ethnicity, and gender are of little interest to millennials — they tend to overlook differences and treat everyone the same. Part of the fallout is that opposition to gay marriage, strong among older Americans, is low among millennials. Authenticity and integrity are prime values. Millennials want very much to succeed in life, says Clurman, but "integrity trumps success." (Enron should have hired millennial executives.)
Yankelovich and other researchers have been picking up a renewed
emphasis on family for years. The yearning for a good marriage is a dominant
value among millennials, Clurman says, and 30 percent of those surveyed
say they want three or more children. Indeed, one research company,
Packaged Facts and Silver Stork, recently predicted a 17 percent increase in
the U.S. birthrate over the next 10 years.
Clurman says that as a group, boomer parents are spending a lot of time
getting close to their millennial children. These are better relationships than
the gen X-ers had with boomer parents, or than boomers had with their own
mothers and fathers. According to Gallup, more than 90 percent of teens say
they are very close to their parents. In 1974, over 40 percent of boomers said
they would be better off without their parents. J. Walker Smith, president of
Yankelovich, says the drive toward reconnection with family and community
was showing up in the data even before 9/11 and is exceptionally strong
today.
Getting real. Brandchannel.com, an online marketing site run by Interbrand,
issued a gen Y report last week that echoes Yankelovich. Gen Y is not
turning out to be the edgy, cynical, ironic cohort many expected, the report
said. In addition to millennials' closeness to their parents, statistics on
sexual activity, violence, and suicide rates are down, and concern with
religion and community are up. Evidence on drinking and drugs is more
mixed, but smoking, drinking, and drug use among eighth, 10th, and 12th
graders fell simultaneously in 2002 for the first time. The millennial affection
for the authentic over the glitzy marketing product is marked by the rise of
Avril Lavigne, "an ordinary looking, midriff-free, nondancing singer hailed as
the anti-Britney," reports Brandchannel.com. Yankelovich makes the same
point about Lavigne. Smith says the millennials will watch over-the-top
cultural products like reality TV and the movie Kill Bill, but they stand apart
from them and look around for more genuine, less exploitative material.
Millennials are apt to trust parents,
teachers, and police. Apparently they are
likely to trust presidents, too. A Harvard poll
released last week reported that President
Bush has a 61 percent favorability rate
among American college students. This
may not mean much. The millennials are
not a very politically active generation. But
they are clearly able to resist programming
by their professors, 90 percent of whom seem convinced that Bush is either
Hitler or a moron. The millennials are a very interesting generation. Now if
they could just walk one block without carrying a bottle of water and making
four phone calls . . . .
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