Talkin’ about my (not) Boomer generation | The Post
Clip source: Talkin’ about my (not) Boomer generation | The Post
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350445275/talkin-about-my-not-boomer-generation
Talkin’ about my (not) Boomer generation
The 66-year-old’s explanation of how it came about sounds decidedly Jones; somewhere between the optimism of the Boomers and the cynicism of the Xers with a pinch of irony added to the mix, somewhere between The Beatles and The Clash.
"I never really felt like a Boomer," he tells the Sunday Star-Times. "When that whole Gen X Babblepalooza hit in the 1990s, I thought: ‘Oh they finally discovered us.’ But then when I saw how Gen X was being described, I realised that wasn’t me either.
"One night, while living in India, I heard Martin Luther King Jr’s I Have a Dream speech which made me misty-eyed, as it always had. I spent some time thinking about why it still had such emotional power with me, and it clicked in a kind of epiphany that it was because I am a child of the 60s and that it couldn’t just be me. There was a whole generation of us missing between Boomers and Xers.
"That night I decided to return to the States and try to figure out who we were, what birth years our generation was, and to come up with a name for us and try to redraw the generational map and get our generation’s voice finally heard."
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has become a Generation Jones figurehead.Chris Carlson / AP
Global curiosity in Pontell’s sub-group, which includes such luminaries as Brad Pitt (1963), Madonna and Bono (both 1958), has picked up since Kamala Harris (born 1964) won the Democratic nomination to contend the US presidency.
Similarly there was a spike in interest following Barack Obama’s (1961) ascendency back in 2008. In fact, Obama specifically uses the Gen Jones term to describe himself, Pontell says. "He views his mother as a Boomer and himself as Gen Jones."
Closer to home once-were-Boomers 62-year-old film impresario Sir Peter Jackson, former Miss Universe Lorraine Downes (60), broadcaster John Campbell (60), actor Jennifer Ward-Lealand (61), sailor Russell Coutts (62), former PM Sir John Key (63) and writer Elizabeth Knox (65), can also claim Jones membership.
Another reason for the renaissance of the Generation J tag, according to Pontell ("The Beatles, by far"), is that although the term "Baby Boomer" began life as a form of demographic classification, it has since transitioned into being shorthand used to mock those of a certain age.
Brad Pitt - GenJones or Boomer?Joel C Ryan / Invision/AP
Hence being a Boomer these days isn’t, in the parlance, to be cool, with one of the most potent local examples of that being Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick’s "OK Boomer" take down of Todd Muller ‒ actually a Gen Xer ‒ during a debate on climate change back in 2019.
"The whole OK Boomer meme swept much of the western world in part because of increasing resentment from younger generations not given nearly the same opportunities as Boomers," Pontell points out. "There’s an unfortunate ageism inherent in the insult, but I do understand the resentment toward Boomers."
Never felt like a Boomer - Gen Jones creator Jonathan Pontell.
Perhaps, the Star-Times puts it to him, self-proclaimed Jonesers are consciously distancing themselves so as not to be tarred with the same brush?
"I don’t know if we are cooler than any other generation," he says. "But it’s interesting how often I have seen Gen Jones described as cool. Certainly as Boomers have become less popular in recent years, Jonesers have been that much more eager to be seen as cooler and separate from Boomers."
There are quite stark differences ‒ aside from birth date ‒ that distinguish Boomers from their younger siblings, something that’s backed up by qualitative research, which shows Gen Jones really is far closer to Gen X than to Boomers‒ in everything from political inclination to spending habit.
"Our collective personality was formed by our environment, and that environment was dramatically different for Boomers vs Jonesers," says Pontell. "One of the main differences is that Boomer kids were given big expectations which largely came true.
"Joneser kids were given even bigger expectations which largely didn’t come true. It left Gen Jones with a certain pending, unrequited, ‘Jonesin’ quality which has informed our attitudes, values and behaviours."
That sentiment was perfectly summed up by American film director Richard Linklater (born 1960) in a 2023 interview with the New Yorker magazine: "I was born in ’60, graduated in 1979, so I never felt like much of a Boomer. I feel a little offended being lumped in with someone who’s born in 1946. I’m, like, Wow, we grew up in a whole different world. What are you talking about?
"Weren’t you sick of hearing people that were college-age or whatever in the late 60s talking about how great it was?" he said. "It was, like, ‘OK, you guys, no matter what you do, you’ll never top what we did’—you know, Woodstock and all that shit. So I was, like, ‘Yeah, guess what? We don’t need to self-mythologise. We don’t even want to."
Madonna is another who doesn’t fit the Boomer stereotypes.Silvia Izquierdo / AP
Wellington author and musician Nick Bollinger (listened to The Beatles, born 1958) feels similarly. He has written about what he calls the "generation gap" and the very real gulf that exists between the earlier and later-borns in his book Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of The Counterculture in Aotearoa NZ.
When the first of the Boomers were tuning in and dropping out Bollinger was still reading his Janet and John.
"New Zealand in the [early 60s] was a very grey, conservative society. But at the same time, there was full employment, there were things like free tertiary education.
"That Baby Boom generation were generally the first in their families to go to university. They were paid to go, basically, and they had the opportunity to go and expand their thinking and question everything. They challenged the status quo on every front."
By the time Bollinger left high school at the end of 1974 Robert Muldoon was about to become PM, "Think Big" was looming, and mortgages were somewhere north of 12%, not that many school-leavers at the time had grand designs on owning a home.
At the same time, the craziness of the 60s - yes, the sex, drugs and rock and roll - were beginning to lose their shine. Expanding your consciousness became a euphemism for going too far.
But while Bollinger’s older contemporaries were preaching peace and love and being outrageous, the younger ones were looking askance at the fallout.
"Basically we stepped into a world that was ceasing to be the land of milk and honey. There was a series of economic shocks. Suddenly unemployment started going up.
"There was a sort of souring if you like. There was a point where our end of the generation started to go, actually, hang on a minute. These people, they had a lot of privilege, a lot of opportunities, which are now drying up, and they didn't exactly create a great path for the next generation.
"We felt the whole system was screwed. I think that was a direct response to what our end of the generation saw as the failures of the Boomers, and it forced [us] to be a bit more realistic."
Pontell agrees, referencing again an inherent selfishness that led the younger demographic to question their own supposed Boomer credentials. "People view Boomers as people who were very lucky throughout their life-cycle, presented with fortuitous opportunities at every point ‒ when entering the job market, housing market ‒ and then instead of being gracious in helping younger generations, they instead seemed to pull the ladder up with them, negating opportunities for those behind. Many people see Boomers as fundamentally selfish, and I wouldn’t argue against that."
Pontell is not OK with being called a Boomer. He argues the only reason the Jonesers were lumped in with Boomers was because their parents and the next lot of parents happened to have a lot of kids.
"Generational personalities stem from shared formative experiences, not head-counts. No generation before or since the so-called Baby Boom ‘generation’ has ever been determined by birth rates.
"Demographers simply were pointing to a demographic bulge in birth charts from 1946 to 1964. They weren’t saying that was a generation... It just became a thing. It never made sense, and still doesn’t."
Early Baby Boomer Paul Spoonley recognises his privileged upbringing.David Unwin / The Post
Sociologist and Distinguished Emeritus Professor at Massey University Paul Spoonley (Beatles, born 1951) is OK with being an early Boomer, or in his own words, a "leading-edge Boomer," given he had benefited from the welfare state and New Zealand’s post-war affluence.
"My education was not only free; I was paid to go to university. Access to housing was relatively straight-forward and when we bought our first house at the end of the 1970s, the cost of the house was double my annual salary which is very different from the experience of more recent generations."
He is sympathetic to the early-later generational split, but sees few major differences in the cultural attitudes or social and economic circumstances of Boomers. If a division was needed, Spoonley suggests a more pertinent one would be a "cusp generation", confined to those born in the years 1960-1964.
"The important difference comes as this cusp generation has different experiences as they reach adulthood, especially in relation to getting a job and then moving through the labour market. There is good evidence to show that getting into the labour market during a downturn, such as the 1990s, has life-long impacts on promotion or salary."
He also has reservations about the relevance of the American-centric evolution of Generation Jones to Kiwis.
"The description and comments are, in many ways, particular to the USA. If we look at Gen Jonesers in a New Zealand context, they began to arrive at adulthood during an interesting political period, firstly very traditional and centrist in Muldoon and then through the radical years of the Third Labour Government.
"Given the social and gender liberalism and inclusiveness of these years in New Zealand, this country is a stark contrast to the Reagan years in the USA. I am sceptical about major differences – in the New Zealand situation."
The sociologist has a bob each way when it comes to the influence Baby Boomers have had on society. Mercenary? Self-absorbed? Possibly, possibly not. They fought for women’s rights and gay rights, and for social equality.
"[They] are now at the core of volunteering in New Zealand, they financially support a wide range of social and welfare organisations and they are very generous in supporting their Gen X and Z children and grandchildren," Spoonley said.
"Just look at the Bank of Mum and Dad and the role played in helping getting their adult children into housing. But there are also questions.
"Why hasn’t New Zealand moved to increase the age of superannuation eligibility or means-test superannuation? Why is there little enthusiasm for a capital gains tax? At least part of the answer is that Baby Boomers are reluctant to change on these matters and the political parties are very aware of this reluctance."
Which brings us back to Chlöe Swarbrick. Her "OK Boomer" comment, she later explained, was off-the-cuff, but symbolic of the "collective exhaustion of multiple generations set to inherit ever-amplifying problems in an ever-diminishing window of time."
There’s plenty of Jonesers who would agree with that.
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