Where did the term "Baby Boomers" come from?

Question

I am not clear on what it means

Answer 1

It refers to people born during the "Baby Boom". When world war II ended in 1945, returning servicemen and their families got on with life in a big way. The world had changed, and the economy was still very strong with all the wartime infusion.

Starting in June of 1946 this started to be evident with the birth of many many babies. Economists use various cutoff dates for the boom, usually in the mid 1950's sometimes later.

Those of us born between 1928 and 1946 are "depression babies" but you don't hear that much any more.

Because of the enormous numbers of them, the Baby Boomers have had a big impact on society and the economy.

Answer 2

I'm a baby boomer, this is the years from the late 1940s to 1950s.
There were a lot of women an men having a lot of sex which caused an over population of children, so this is call the baby boomers

Answer 3

A generation of kids born in the years following WW2. There was alot of kids born at that time, a boom of kids...now called baby boomers.

Answer 4

The Baby Boomers are the generation conceived after World War 2, in which we lost so many soldiers, and after which our economy was so weak, that the public perception was: "go forth - have babies!" It certainly worked. Its an enormous generation, comprised of everyone born between roughly 1945 and 1954.

Answer 5

it refers to the period after WWII, from 1946 - 1964 when there was a huge surge in the birth rate. (I'm a "boomer", born in 1963). We account for a huge percentage of the population in this country.

Answer 6

I cant stand it. I cant stand the moves that make the time period of use. i do not comprehend the adult women and men those who run round and performance sex with fairly a lot absolutely everyone and unprotected for that count number. They get pregnant and then we've the my babies daddy or my babies momma. that's degrading to themselves and the babies they're generating. i understand some those who extremely have as a lot as ten babies with 10 diverse babies mommas and babies with their spouse. They tell me i do not comprehend because i'm white. What? I comprehend that you do not look to understand a thanks to hide it up and shortage self administration. I propose they even communicate about the illegitimate babies as their "street babies". i do not comprehend it. thanks to grant the subsequent technology of offended babies.

Answer 7

It refers to a generation of people born in the post WWII period when the birth rate was significantly higher than at other times in history.

Answer 8

It's people born between approximately 1945 to 1965. It represents almost 75% of the population. There's a lot us us old farts around.

Answer 9

afeter WW II all the troops came home and had lots of kids with their wives

Answer 10

Baby boomer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A baby boomer is someone who was born during the period of increased birth rates when economic prosperity rose in many countries following World War II. In the United States, the term is iconic and more properly capitalized as Baby Boomers and commonly applied to people with birth years after World War II (WW II) and before the Vietnam War, thus possibly comprising more than one generation. The Baby Boom is the iconic term widely used to refer to the American population and culture in particular, as post WW II demographics across the world did not mirror the sustained growth in American families over the same interval.

Causes of the Baby Boom

A large part of the Baby Boom was an after effect of World War II where the bombed out cities and fractured economies increased the needs for goods and services in unprecedented peacetime amounts. Consequently, the Arsenal of Democracy switched gears and started cranking out goods and materials for export, as America supplied the "free world" with goods to rebuild their own economies. This led to an unprecedented bubble of vigorous economic growth that didn't slow down until 1958. Furthermore, in the U.S. the G.I. Bill enabled record numbers of individuals to attend college and obtain, perhaps in most cases, the second college degree in their extended families. This led to an increase in education and granted higher incomes to families allowing them the resources to produce more children.

To date, there are various designations for the beginning of the Baby Boomer generation. In his book, Boomer Nation, Steve Gillon breaks Baby Boomers into two groups: Boomers, born between 1945 and 1957; and Shadow Boomers born between 1958 and 1963. In some cases the term Shadow Boomer is incorrectly applied to the children of the Baby Boomers. However this group is more accurately referred to as Echo Boomers.[2]

William Strauss and Neil Howe, in their book Generations, include those conceived by soldiers on leave during the war, putting the generation's birth years at 1943 to 1960. Howe and Strauss argue that persons born between 1961 and 1964 have political and cultural patterns very different from those born between 1955 and 1960 and fit into what those writers term the Thirteenth Generation or Generation X (also known as the Cold War generation) born between 1961 and 1981. As the influence of Strauss and Howe has grown, a smaller number of people still accept Baby Boomers as including those born after 1961, although there are some who put the dates at 1946 to 1963 because of the number of significant "Gen-X" figures born in 1964. There were over 79 million babies born during that generation.

It can be argued that the defining event of early baby boomers was the Vietnam War and the protest over the draft, but it would be certainly correct to say it was the generation of The Beatles, The Motown Sound,Beats and Hippies. Conscription in the United States ended in 1973 so anyone born after 1955 was not subject to the draft. This argues for a ten year range 1946 to 1955 and this would fit the thirtysomething demographic covered by the TV show of the same name. This means that those born in the years 1956 to 1965 would be Generation X in the late 1980s and would be twenty something as a response. On the other hand, if the gross number of births were the indicator, there would be no reason for 1964 to be the ending year as the number of births did not decline in 1965. The choice of 1964 as the end date may not have been set by a demographer but by more popular writers and the source of the 1964 year has not been pinned down yet. The entire controversy over naming and dating between the boomer and the Gen X cohorts could be explained by noting that the boomer years of 1946-64 is too long for a cultural generation yet may still mark a period of increased births while the cultural disaffinities of those born 1957 and after (thereby missing the draft and being too young to be part of the 1960s) could be captured by the Gen X of Douglas Coupland, the term "X" has itself been transformed to cover a later cohort.

Baby Boomers grew up in a new world quasi-dominated by American Military might, where the bad guys were known to be socialists and communists, during a cold war where researchers lead to today's computer driven world, which if glimpsed then would have been scoffed at as poor science fiction. Moreover, the generation matured for the most part both off the farm and outside of urban crowding where every year brought new wonders, marvelous gadgets and household appliances, and unemployment was virtually absent (provided your family was Caucasian and willing to work).

Baby boomers presently make up the lion's share of the political, cultural, industrial and academic leadership class in the United States. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, born within sixty days of each other in mid-1946, are the first and second Baby Boomer presidents, and their careers in office illustrate the wide, often diverging spectrum of values and attitudes espoused by this largest American generational group to date.

To date, baby boomers also have the highest median household incomes in the United States.[1] There are early boomers that the generation is identified by, and late boomers who did not experience the 1960s and were not subject to the military draft. Nonetheless, demographic popularizers have referred to them as a generation for the cultural factors they shared went far deeper than the triviality of a foreign conflict, more people were killed on the nations streets and by-ways in any single year of the conflict, than were lost to enemy action.

The second boomer generation (late boomer, early gen Xer's) are still in their forties, and many have yet to "leave their mark upon history," a desire that drives most leaders of this generation. Patterns of history for Idealist generations suggest that Boomers will have a long tenure of political office and cultural influence, as was true for the Awakeners of Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams, the Transcendentals of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman, and the Missionaries of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and George Catlett Marshall. Strauss and Howe's posited patterns of history indicate that Boomers will occupy the upper echelons of worldly power through a likely Crisis Era that will not end until about 2020. The best Idealist leaders demonstrate vision, decisiveness, and culture that allows them to lead in the best manner in the worst of times.

A caveat applies: the arrogance, selfishness, and ruthlessness that Strauss and Howe attribute to an unusual degree in all prior Idealist generations can lead to factional strife (as during the American Civil War) or to outright despotism. Younger generations may need to rein in these destructive tendencies.

Leaders of this generation tend to reevaluate their lives in midlife, and many focus desperately on the successes and failures of their children. Increasingly, the tendency to "micromanage" the lives of their children is expressed in this generation to a significant degree; and this generation's tendency to regulate personal behavior (as in alcohol and drug use and the content of cultural creations) is arguably more stern than that of the "uptight" adults that Boomers knew during the Consciousness Revolution that Boomers experienced around 1970. As an example, Boomers may have not gone so far as Missionaries did in attempting to outlaw alcoholic beverages, they have been in the forefront of efforts to attack the pathologies (drunk driving, domestic abuse) of drunkenness and drug use. Boomer prosecutors have shown unusual willingness to impose severer sentences upon criminal offenders, including "three strikes" laws and the death penalty.

Boomers have played a strong (and surely unforeseen) role in attempts to make America more overtly religious. Many have turned to fundamentalist Christianity as a solution to what they see as social rot. Many prefer religion over science wherever any doctrinal conflict appears; thus one finds a rise in creationist dogma and the promotion of prayer in public schools to an extent not known since the time of the Scopes Trial. If not so religious, Boomers are in general unusually protective over Gen X and Gen Y children, and this could be a reaction to their parents not being protective over them. An example of this is the fact that Boomers are the ones who insist upon V-chips in television so that children not see 'adult' content that Boomers could hardly wait to indulge in when children (because of this they have been called "hypocritical"); they also are unusually swift to sanitize the culture that children see. Because of these and other reasons, some believe that because the freedom of Gen X and Gen Y people is more restricted, they may end up being less protective over their own "Gen Z" children.

Boomers seek to improve society through children as their Silent next-elders seem to have failed (by Boomer standards) through excessive leniency. Such change will come with mixed blessings, particularly to those who must endure Boomer judgment, which becomes steadily harsher as Boomers supplant older (GI, Silent) adults.

Boomers may have been best known for hippies and other counter-cultural types, but the conservatism that one associates with country music has become more the norm. But like other Idealist generations of the past, Boomers have strong passions for personal and social improvement, and although the expressions of such passion change, the intensity of that passion remains until they age out of prominence.