Generations don't exist. They are media created misnomers to codify and commodify various resistance struggles that flow through our socio-economic histories and divide age groups against each other. Yesterday's hippies are also yesterday's anti-globalization protesters are also yesterday's suffragists are also yesterday's Catalonian anarchists...
I'm from the so-called 'Gen X' generation. Yes, I was a latch-key kid. Yes, my parents really didn't much care for us in the traditional way- largely from the need to work, but also also from the need to fulfill their own professional goals. Further, the parents of Gen Xer's weren't universally from the 'Boomer' generation. Mine were from the 'Silent' generation - yet I was born in 1972 and my siblings in the mid to late 60's. What we share in common culturally certainly informs our outlook on the world, in the exact same way that other generations are impacted by their immediate circumstances. However, any homogenization of hugely disparate groups of people with hugely different socio-economic circumstances is absolutely ludicrous.
Popular political and social movements within specific age groups do not actually define those age groups as a whole. Unfortunately, the commercial success, or failure, of those movements do provide the overarching power structure with the means to define and homogenize and co-opt any threat to the existing order.
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