The OMG Generation

to: Kate Zernike at THE NEW YORK TIMES
March 8, 2009
Dear Ms. Zernike,

I thoroughly enjoyed your “Generation OMG” piece. You are so insightful when you compare the parent’s generation (be they from the 1930’s or later) to the their children’s. It is fascinating to see the destinctions in the younger generations play out in their development and subscequent outlook towards the future. I would love to see a graph of the influences of parental sociological traits play out in the characteristics of their offspring A book that encompasses all of this subject in detail would be very interesting. Perhaps there is one?

My parents were teenagers during the Great Depression and became successful writers (in my father’s case for the NY Times!) shunning the material values of the 1950’s. I was born in 1951 and into this wild bohemian household and have been an artist and a teacher. My husband is a doctor. Our son is a freshman at in college and grew up in an affluent environment of private schools and video games. Together we represent the Boomers and the Bubble generations. He is a fairly typical example, I think, of his generation. They are high consumers, risk takers and somewhat more conscious of the world as a whole. They are aware of politics and human rights but most don’t envision a life of public service. They are still young.

The world is changing in a massive way, however, imploding in on itself. Perhaps it it the Y2K effect that didn’t happen in the year 2000, and is coming now with the onset of the tremendous changes in communication and technology.

Our college and highschool aged children will see that the comfort they were raised in is not a given. They are likely to have a difficult time finding jobs in whatever career they choose, even if the economy improves, because of the shear number of them. Some are already working to forge a place in the job market to come.

Our children will live and work in a global society, rather than a world of super powers and the almighty USA. This will mean new ways of making money, what to spend it on or how to save it. Their families, if they have them, will be structured differently. The parents will probably both be working and the children will be out into society earlier. We used to say that the “nuclear” family was the future. It is now the past. This is not to say that the future will be better or worse for them than it has been for us. It is just evolution.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth Brady
Pasadena, California