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The thing most people don’t realize about GenX is that we didn’t even have a name for ourselves until most of us were out of high school.
The term “Generation X” was used occasionally in various contexts since the 1950s but it wasn’t until 1991 that Douglas Coupland’s book of that title cemented “Generation X” as our generation’s label.
So while y’all were born into your labels, we lived nameless for decades. Which might be why we’re so often overlooked now.
Some might argue that before ‘GenX’ we were the ‘latch-key generation’ but you have to understand that while we might have identified as ‘latch-key kids’ we didn’t see it as a generational thing because we didn’t see the term as tied to a generation. It felt like ‘latch-key kid’ was a socioeconomic term, not one with an expiration date.
@kfury - Cuspers (early 80s) hate being called millennial.
We're like GenX and Millennial combined.
The end result is that we inadvertently evade classification. A virtually untargetable cohort.
@kfury Even after the GenX label was applied (I can still remember my housemate in 1991 reading a Time magazine article and saying "Well, I guess we're all in Billy Idol's old band now") no one used it until generational labels became an obsession in the late '00s.
It used to be the only generation that actually talked about itself as a generation was the Baby Boom. I've never heard anyone say they were part of the Greatest Generation, and my parents well understood how they were shaped by the Depression and WWII but would have scoffed at collectively identifying as the Silent Generation if the topic had ever come up.
Then the Millennials came along and, no doubt following the lead of their predominantly Bommer parents, completely and totally embraced generational identity. They seemed to truly think it matters in a way that is pretty alien to everyone who is not Millennial or Boomer.
Anyway, I think the better label for my age cohort is the first one I ever heard, way back in the '70s. We're the Baby Bust, with our formative years being shaped by the withdrawal of resources that had been allocated to the preceding Boom.
Even "GenX" is a label that says we're defined not by which generation we are, but by which generations we aren't. "Baby Bust" at least alludes to that in a more honest way.