Generation gaps

The latest issue of The Lutheran has a cover story about baby boomers. (It also has the really, really awesome Luther College ad on page 31. Go Norse!) Now, I have nothing against baby boomers. My parents are baby boomers. They are one of the best-defined generations in the US. I do, however, have a problem with one of the sentences in the article. It reads "These men and women are in a 20-year stretch of life that is filled with transitions."

I do not dispute the accuracy of that statement. I do, however, dispute the implication that this is a new, strange experience unique to the baby boomer generation. Because, honestly, what stretch of life does not have transitions? My generation is in a stretch of life that is filled with transitions/ We are graduating from college and/or graduate school, starting careers, careers, dating and/or getting married, having children, living on our own for the first time, living with someone outside our family for the first time, moving, buying houses, setting up our lives. People in their 30s and 40s are establishing their careers, raising familis - and I defy anyone to say that life with children is not full of transitions - and dealing with any number of physical, mental, and social changes. Not to mention the not-recession that the US is in right now - do you think it's easy fighting for a job at the age of 30/40-something? Children's lives are in a perpetual state of transition. Nearly every day something changes - they just aren't as aware of it until they look back when they're older. And those that are left in my grandfather's generation are dealing with more rapid physical and/or mental changes, the probability of no longer being able to live without assistance, and transitions in their societal role. There is no type of life where you can just sit back and expect things to remain constant. And as someone who is not of the baby boomer generation and yet is experiencing major life changes, I resent the implication that the baby boomers are unique in their transitional status.

I also am not entirely happy with the thought that these transitions are new to the baby boomer generation. Did my grandparents' generation not have to deal with at least some of these same transitions? I bet they did.