It was too damn hot to wear black in the San Joaquin Valley, but yeah -- sitting "on the swings [being] sad about meaningless things together." A short tally: 1. girls. 2. macho football players. 3. the prospect of nuclear holocaust. So not completely meaningless.
Taking the 89 to hang out at Great Northern Mall. Or the 75 to downtown Cleveland just for the hell of it. All by ourselves. We’d go to Tribe games at age 15 and smuggle in a 6 pack. Had an entire section of the stadium all to ourselves. Our parents never knew….
Can verify having an entire section to ourselves. Once watched a guy in right field upper deck turn over a series of chairs until it formed an F. Then painstakingly created a U. Two innings later, a C. Then ... security came. And he was cheered like the hero he was.
Joe, I so enjoyed your piece. I am usually very sceptical about these marketing driven categorization of generations, because I think that we have probably all been more uptight in our 30s/40s than we are in our 50s, for example, because life can get really exhausting during these years.
Having said that, reading your article, I realized that we probably also brought our daughter up on a Gen X diet: amongst other things, my ex-husband instilled the love of „weird music on real records“, soccer, hiking and Star Wars in her, while I added the love for books, art, great food and doing embarrassing things, such as picking her up from school in my convertible, with the roof down and the stereo going at full force (yeah I know, total cringe..). But above all, we fed her on a continuous diet of sarcasm and making fun of stuff, so she grew up to be a young woman with an incredible sense of humour. Perhaps it’s this wicked sense of humour that sets our „X-tribe“ apart.
"But above all, we fed her on a continuous diet of sarcasm and making fun of stuff, so she grew up to be a young woman with an incredible sense of humour. Perhaps it’s this wicked sense of humour that sets our 'X-tribe' apart."
yes quite great! Only two of my three milenial kids had cellphones the last two years of school because they were in clubs and needed to be able to call for a ride home when the office closed. My two boys never wanted a facebook page and my daughter asked me to help her delete hers cause she didn't like it. My boys do discord because people actually talk to each other in conversations. We would have paper hat sessions at the dining table😁 board games and any other spontaneous stuff. I think it has worked out quite well. Go gen X!
Pop culture isn't a unifying characteristic of Gen X, not even in the US. I can say that the universal experience of lack of supervision is. To be fair our recollection of how unsupervised we were may be a little generous. I grew up rural and there were adults around, but they weren't hovering over us. Yes we got into some stuff, and usually and adult would yell at us before begrudgingly driving us to the ER.
To that end I believe that taking a step back and letting your kids make little mistakes is the way to build that same self reliance. As they enter their mid to late teenage years MAKE them do things on their own. Schedule an appointment, send them to the grocery store for items, make them pump gas or drive on long car trips. You want to raise independent adults, not kids who are perpetually dependent on their parents.
I'm not grateful for much. It has been a hard life and still is. But every day, I thank all the gods and goddesses that ever were or ever might be, that I was born as Generation X and not a moment later.
Man I love this. I did something similar with my kids who are now adults. Instead of letting them watch the current sitcoms, we took them back to the 80s and 90s and introduced them to The Cosby Show, Different World, Fresh Prince and 80s movies like Stars Wars and Back to the Future.
As kids in the city, they played outside until their friends got phones. Fortunately as adults, they move like their parents now.
One thing I realized is that Gen Z really needs us (Gen X). We learned alot of what we needed as kids with very little supervision turning us into adults that scare the other generations. They have adults or hidden entities (social media) mediating everything for them. I run programs for Gen Z and I see it.
Six television stations, no cell phones, no internet, and the ability to leave home at 10 am, come back at 8pm, and have my parents have NO idea if I'd even left the house.
...Okay that last one is dubiously good.
But it was safe enough even in the not so good neighborhood I grew up in during the '80s and '90s that I could rollerblade around it or walk around with friends and still be safe.
I regret that, as the "baby" of four kids, I got halfway spoiled rotten... but I DID get the Gen X experience for the first half of my childhood at least. So it's better than nothing.
Gen X is a solid generation because the kids got either bad parenting or no parenting, so they learned how to do it all themselves and they also learned to keep their @#%$ to themselves and get the job done.
Millennials and especially Gen Z call Gen X the "FAFO Generation", because if you mess with a Gen X'er they WILL figure out how to beat you at your own game... or already know how from past experience.
No kids ourselves, but our friends have kids and talk about all these "parenting types" and it sound exhausting! How about you just keep your kids alive and teach them to not be shitty? It sounds like you got the right idea, it sounds like you give your kids a lot of fun but also what they need to become fully functioning people in the world. Thank you for this refreshing perspective.
This is one of my favorite things I’ve read on Substack (been here for almost 2 years) and I don’t even have kids. But if I did, I’d take parenting advice from you!
Cut their video gaming teeth with NES and Game Boy Advance games, then go to 16 bit, and up the generations of games so their understand the roots of videogames.
Show them the movies in the '80s our parents showed us, like Terminator 2, Alien, Aliens, and all those other great movies (And TV shows like the '90s Batman and such) that modern parents balk at while the episode of Spongebob makes a "Don't Drop the Soap" joke in a "kid's cartoon".
I am on the cusp between X and Millennial (1980) and I fully consider myself a late model Gen X. I don't think that our childhood was a series of OSHA violations. I think that OSHA is the result of our childhood.
Welcome to the "X'ennial" club. (I was born in '82.) I get those same sorts of feelings, alongside a realization that half of me doesn't know HOW to quit... and the other half of me doesn't want to start.
I have been told that, should I master those two halves of me, the world will be at my fingertips.
It was too damn hot to wear black in the San Joaquin Valley, but yeah -- sitting "on the swings [being] sad about meaningless things together." A short tally: 1. girls. 2. macho football players. 3. the prospect of nuclear holocaust. So not completely meaningless.
And our daughter has no social media presence #solidarityx
You won parenting. Ha ha. Congrats.
Taking the 89 to hang out at Great Northern Mall. Or the 75 to downtown Cleveland just for the hell of it. All by ourselves. We’d go to Tribe games at age 15 and smuggle in a 6 pack. Had an entire section of the stadium all to ourselves. Our parents never knew….
Can verify having an entire section to ourselves. Once watched a guy in right field upper deck turn over a series of chairs until it formed an F. Then painstakingly created a U. Two innings later, a C. Then ... security came. And he was cheered like the hero he was.
Gen x is responsible for all this!?!?!?
Maybe you guys need to learn, not teach…
Boomers and millennials are arguing over how to save the world from Gen c!
You guys have like ZERO social responsibility.
What happened to you guys?
Could we change the “X” to something else? When retard-musk realizes this, he might say we belong under his trademark, therefore owning our asses.
Joe, I so enjoyed your piece. I am usually very sceptical about these marketing driven categorization of generations, because I think that we have probably all been more uptight in our 30s/40s than we are in our 50s, for example, because life can get really exhausting during these years.
Having said that, reading your article, I realized that we probably also brought our daughter up on a Gen X diet: amongst other things, my ex-husband instilled the love of „weird music on real records“, soccer, hiking and Star Wars in her, while I added the love for books, art, great food and doing embarrassing things, such as picking her up from school in my convertible, with the roof down and the stereo going at full force (yeah I know, total cringe..). But above all, we fed her on a continuous diet of sarcasm and making fun of stuff, so she grew up to be a young woman with an incredible sense of humour. Perhaps it’s this wicked sense of humour that sets our „X-tribe“ apart.
"But above all, we fed her on a continuous diet of sarcasm and making fun of stuff, so she grew up to be a young woman with an incredible sense of humour. Perhaps it’s this wicked sense of humour that sets our 'X-tribe' apart."
Correct.
This is our life force.
yes quite great! Only two of my three milenial kids had cellphones the last two years of school because they were in clubs and needed to be able to call for a ride home when the office closed. My two boys never wanted a facebook page and my daughter asked me to help her delete hers cause she didn't like it. My boys do discord because people actually talk to each other in conversations. We would have paper hat sessions at the dining table😁 board games and any other spontaneous stuff. I think it has worked out quite well. Go gen X!
Outstanding work.
Pop culture isn't a unifying characteristic of Gen X, not even in the US. I can say that the universal experience of lack of supervision is. To be fair our recollection of how unsupervised we were may be a little generous. I grew up rural and there were adults around, but they weren't hovering over us. Yes we got into some stuff, and usually and adult would yell at us before begrudgingly driving us to the ER.
To that end I believe that taking a step back and letting your kids make little mistakes is the way to build that same self reliance. As they enter their mid to late teenage years MAKE them do things on their own. Schedule an appointment, send them to the grocery store for items, make them pump gas or drive on long car trips. You want to raise independent adults, not kids who are perpetually dependent on their parents.
I'm not grateful for much. It has been a hard life and still is. But every day, I thank all the gods and goddesses that ever were or ever might be, that I was born as Generation X and not a moment later.
Man I love this. I did something similar with my kids who are now adults. Instead of letting them watch the current sitcoms, we took them back to the 80s and 90s and introduced them to The Cosby Show, Different World, Fresh Prince and 80s movies like Stars Wars and Back to the Future.
As kids in the city, they played outside until their friends got phones. Fortunately as adults, they move like their parents now.
One thing I realized is that Gen Z really needs us (Gen X). We learned alot of what we needed as kids with very little supervision turning us into adults that scare the other generations. They have adults or hidden entities (social media) mediating everything for them. I run programs for Gen Z and I see it.
“Too young he was, yes, but watch we did.”
I see what you did there! (Yoda FTW)
See, you did, yes.
I'll stop now.
Six television stations, no cell phones, no internet, and the ability to leave home at 10 am, come back at 8pm, and have my parents have NO idea if I'd even left the house.
...Okay that last one is dubiously good.
But it was safe enough even in the not so good neighborhood I grew up in during the '80s and '90s that I could rollerblade around it or walk around with friends and still be safe.
I regret that, as the "baby" of four kids, I got halfway spoiled rotten... but I DID get the Gen X experience for the first half of my childhood at least. So it's better than nothing.
Gen X is a solid generation because the kids got either bad parenting or no parenting, so they learned how to do it all themselves and they also learned to keep their @#%$ to themselves and get the job done.
Millennials and especially Gen Z call Gen X the "FAFO Generation", because if you mess with a Gen X'er they WILL figure out how to beat you at your own game... or already know how from past experience.
You know the whole this whole generational conflict thing was designed to divide us into isolated groups so we’ll stayed pitted against each other…
No kids ourselves, but our friends have kids and talk about all these "parenting types" and it sound exhausting! How about you just keep your kids alive and teach them to not be shitty? It sounds like you got the right idea, it sounds like you give your kids a lot of fun but also what they need to become fully functioning people in the world. Thank you for this refreshing perspective.
I like to say, we're raising adults, not kids. And I like the movie Goonies. The outcome was inevitable.
This is one of my favorite things I’ve read on Substack (been here for almost 2 years) and I don’t even have kids. But if I did, I’d take parenting advice from you!
Raise ‘em on Bugs Bunny & Wyle E Coyote so they learn to appreciate the finer things.
Cut their video gaming teeth with NES and Game Boy Advance games, then go to 16 bit, and up the generations of games so their understand the roots of videogames.
Show them the movies in the '80s our parents showed us, like Terminator 2, Alien, Aliens, and all those other great movies (And TV shows like the '90s Batman and such) that modern parents balk at while the episode of Spongebob makes a "Don't Drop the Soap" joke in a "kid's cartoon".
I am on the cusp between X and Millennial (1980) and I fully consider myself a late model Gen X. I don't think that our childhood was a series of OSHA violations. I think that OSHA is the result of our childhood.
Welcome to the "X'ennial" club. (I was born in '82.) I get those same sorts of feelings, alongside a realization that half of me doesn't know HOW to quit... and the other half of me doesn't want to start.
I have been told that, should I master those two halves of me, the world will be at my fingertips.
Bah. Why bother about getting those two halves together? Sounds like unnecessary work.
Because if I go full force at the important things and know not to start things that are unimportant or distractions, I can accomplish more.