In researching the Baby Boom and its effects, I was somewhat surprised to learn that, having been born in 1944, I come myself from the ‘Silent Generation’.
According to the Wikipedia entry, the term covers those born between 1925 and 1945, who are characterized as ‘grave and fatalistic, conventional, possessing confused morals, expecting disappointment but desiring faith, and for women, desiring both a career and a family’ ... ‘It does not issue manifestoes, make speeches or carry posters’.
‘They grew up as the suffocated children of war and depression. They came of age too late to be war heroes and just too early to be youthful free spirits’.
Apparently, In England they were named the 'Air Raid Generation' as children growing up amidst the crossfire of World War II (like my sister who is eight years older and has vivid and unsettling memories of Anderson Shelters and Land Mines).
However, I have always perceived, rightly or wrongly, a distinction between the attitudes of my peers and those of the cohort that is ten or so years older. This is probably not surprising as 1944 and 1945 were years with very low birth rates in countries like the USA, the UK, and Australia / New Zealand. And we hit our straps as adults being uniquely poised to take advantage of economic opportunities, thanks to the reduced competition.
In my own case, my affinity with the emerging Baby Boomers was strengthened by my spell 1967-1970 as a graduate student in Canberra. In fact the booming population of young adults onwards from the mid-1960s presaged an enormous expansion in tertiary education and a big demand for young university lecturers worldwide.
The latter were not unaware that their position gave them opportunities to lead both within and ‘agin’ the traditional university teaching and administrative structures (for example, I agitated for the provision of more informal, non-Hall of Residence accommodation at the Australian National University and the resulting ‘Toad Hall’ still stands).
And it was easy to test boundaries and feel moral vindication by demonstrating in Canberra about such issues as the Springbok Rugby Tours of Australia, Aboriginal Rights and the Viet Nam War. Quite how prepared I really was at that time to stand up for small ‘l’ liberal principles, was fortunately largely untested – and I still feel a frisson of guilt about protesting about Viet Nam when I was outside the Australian balloting system for the Conscription Draft.
But many more respectably accomplished ‘revolutionary’ leaders in the civil rights movement came from the Silent Generation, along with a wide assortment of artists and writers who fundamentally changed the arts in the USA and the UK. The Beat Poets, for example, were members of the Silent Generation, as were Martin Luther King and Gloria Steinem.
Most rock stars of the 60s were of the Silent Generation, not the Boomers as some believe Even if the cut-off for the Silent Generation was 1943, it would still contain bands such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, as well as rock stars such as Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin in the Silent Generation.
Elvis Presley was also of this generation, as were some of the most famous movie stars of all time such as Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean.
Certainly, the ‘grave and fatalistic’ side to my character was enhanced by the fact that my father had been killed in the RAF in 1943, some 8 months before I was born in 1944.
As the ‘son of a dead hero’, I accepted that I had heavy obligations to succeed.
On the other hand, with my family having also having lost my grandfather in the Merchant Navy in 1918, I had little expectation of surviving to old age – and was therefore determined to live determinedly and somewhat dangerously – hence an early life with its share of travel, adventure, romantic entanglements - and 'confused morals'.
It struck me though recently that we could do better than using the term the ‘Silent Generation’ - particularly for the UK.
Above all, my generation was the ‘Hundred Acre Wood Generation’ of Pooh Bear and his friends. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner (1928). A.A. Milne also included a poem about the bear in the children’s verse book When We Were Very Young (1924) and many more in Now We Are Six (1927). All four volumes were charmingly illustrated by E. H. Shepard.
As little children, we looked back, having listened intently to our parents, to lazy, sunny summers temporarily oblivious to the gathering storm. We wanted like Christopher Milne to spend a whole glorious month in the unspoiled natural beauty of the Ashdown Forest in the spring and two months in the summer, tramping with our stuffed animals to the clump of pines in the Hundred Acre Wood.
And when I re-read the stories to my 5 and 7 year old sons, I can see that having had my spell as a ‘Tigger’ – latterly un-bounced, I must do my best to avoid declining too far, and becoming a grumpy old man in the shadow of my favorite character:
He ‘stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things.
Sometimes he thought sadly to himself “Why?” and sometimes he thought “Wherefore?” and sometimes he thought - ”Inasmuch as which?” And sometimes, he didn’t quite know what he was thinking about.
So when Winnie-the-Pooh came stumping along, Eeyore was very glad to be able to stop thinking for a little, in order to say “How do you do?” in a gloomy manner to him.
“And how are you?” said Winnie the Pooh.
Eeyore shook his head from side to side. “Not very how”, he said. “I don’t seem to have felt at all how for a long time”.
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