Silent Generation
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The name Silent Generation was coined in the November 5, 1951 cover story of Time to refer to the generation coming of age at the time. The phrase gained further currency after William Manchester's comment that the members of this generation were "withdrawn, cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, unadventurous and silent." The name was used by Strauss and Howe in their book Generations as their designation for that generation in the United States of America born from 1925 to 1942. The generation is also known as the Postwar Generation and the Seekers, when it is not neglected altogether and placed by marketers in the same category as the G.I., or "Greatest", Generation. In England they were named the Air Raid Generation as children growing up amidst the crossfire of World War II.
According to Strauss and Howe's interpretation, the typical grandparents were of the Missionary Generation; their parents were of the Lost Generation and G.I. Generation. Their children are Baby Boomers and Generation X (a/k/a 13th Generation); their typical grandchildren are of the Generation Y (a/k/a Millennials.)
The Silent are the generational stuffings of a sandwich between the get-it-done but narcissistic G.I.s and the vocal but self-absorbed Boomers. Well into their rising adulthood, they looked to the G.I.s for role models and pursued what then looked to be a lifetime of refining, humanizing, and ameliorating a G.I.-built world. Come the mid-1960s, the Silent fell under the trance of their free-spirited next-juniors, the Boomers. As songwriters, graduate students, and young attorneys, they mentored the Consciousness Revolution, founding several of the organizations of political dissent the Boom would later radicalize.
The Silent grew up as the suffocated children of war and depression. They came of age too late to be war heroes (they fought in Korean conflict to a tie) and just too early to be youthful free spirits. Instead, this early-marrying Lonely Crowd became the risk-averse technicians, sensitive rock-n-rollers ("Why must I be a teenager in love?") brooding Method actors and civil rights advocates of a post-Crisis era in which conformity seemed a sure ticket to success. Midlife was an anxious "passage" for a generation torn between stolid elders and passionate juniors. Their surge to power coincided with fragmenting families, cultural diversity, institutional complexity, and prolific litigation. In 2003, they are entering elderhood with unprecedented affluence, a hip style, and a reputation for indecision.
David Foot in Boom Bust and Echo takes a very different perspective on this group arguing that those born in the '30s and early '40s are the most successful generation. He argues that because so few people were born during the depression and the war that employment opportunities were abundant and this group quickly rose to the top and became the management and superiors of the great mass of baby boomers that came after them. Using economic indicators he finds that 1938 was the best year to be born in North America, in terms of economic success. The impact of the generation was also great culturally, as the musicians and thinkers such as Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Bob Dylan who shaped the fashions of the younger boomers formed the engine behind the 1960s and 1970s.
Silent celebrities include the following:
- 1925 William F. Buckley, Jr.
- 1925 Gore Vidal
- 1926 Allen Ginsberg (died 1997)
- 1926 Marilyn Monroe (died 1962)
- 1927 Andy Warhol (died 1987)
- 1928 T. Boone Pickens, Jr.
- 1929 Martin Luther King, Jr. (died 1968)
- 1930 Neil Armstrong
- 1930 James A. Baker III
- 1930 Clint Eastwood
- 1930 Ray Charles (died 2004)
- 1930 Steve McQueen (died 1980)
- 1930 Sandra Day O'Connor
- 1931 James Dean (died 1955)
- 1931 James Earl Jones
- 1931 Mickey Mantle (died 1995)
- 1931 Willie Mays
- 1932 Dave Thomas (died 2002)
- 1932 Andrew Young
- 1933 Stanley Milgram (died 1984)
- 1934 Hank Aaron
- 1934 Bill Russell
- 1934 Carl Sagan (died 1996)
- 1935 Elvis Presley (died 1977)
- 1935 Geraldine Ferraro
- 1935 Ken Kesey (died 2001)
- 1935 Woody Allen
- 1935 Phil Donahue
- 1936 Jim Brown
- 1936 Wilt Chamberlain (died 1999)
- 1936 Jim Henson (died 1990)
- 1936 Abbie Hoffman (died 1989)
- 1937 Jack Nicholson
- 1939 Marvin Gaye (died 1984)
- 1940 Tom Brokaw
- 1940 Ted Koppel (immigrant)
- 1940 Patricia Schroeder
- 1941 Dick Cheney
- 1941 Paul Simon
- 1941 Martha Stewart
- 1942 Muhammad Ali
- 1942 Aretha Franklin
- 1942 Joseph Lieberman
- 1942 Jimi Hendrix (died 1970)
- 1942 Barbra Streisand
Prominent non-U.S. peers include Fidel Castro, Anne Frank, Helmut Kohl, Mikhail Gorbachev, Václav Havel, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Dalida (died in 1987), and three of The Beatles—John Lennon (died 1980), Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr.
Cultural endowments of the Silent Generation include:
- Howl (Allen Ginsberg)
- The Other America (Michael Harrington)
- Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, later a movie)
- Unsafe at Any Speed (Ralph Nader)
- Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (TV series, Carl Sagan)
- Heartburn (Nora Ephron)
- Ms. (magazine, Gloria Steinem)
- Playboy (magazine, Hugh Hefner)
- Future Shock (Alvin Toffler)
- Megatrends (John Naisbitt)
- Fatherhood (Bill Cosby)
- Sesame Street (children's television, Joan Ganz Cooney)
The Silent generation has produced America's late 20th century and early 21st century facilitators and technocrats. They produced four decades of Presidential aides:
- Pierre Salinger (for John Fitzgerald Kennedy)
- Bill Moyers (for Lyndon Baines Johnson)
- John Ehrlichman (for Richard Milhous Nixon)
- Richard Cheney (for Gerald Rudolph Ford, George Herbert Walker Bush, and George Walker Bush)
- Stuart Eizenstat (for James Earl Carter)
- James Addison Baker III (for Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush)
- John Henry Sununu (for George Herbert Walker Bush)
And three First Ladies:
But no Presidents.
They achieved a majority on the United States Supreme Court in 1993 with the appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
| Preceded by: G.I. Generation 1901–1924 | Silent Generation 1925–1942 | Succeeded by: Baby Boomers 1943–1960 |