Let's talk about gen X because no other bugger does.

[Mach3]

Hail fellow X'ers.

We are never mentioned. It's always Boomers, Millennials or gen Z.

Why the fuck not?

We definitely exist, we were very cool people.

I have such good memories of my 70's childhood and teenage years in the 80's.

And all the goodness of the late 80s and early 90s.

It did happen didn't it?

I find the whole generation thing a load of rubbish. Maybe that's because I fall between 2 generations? I was born the end of the year 1980. Some time frames given put me as a millennial, others Gen X. My DH is 5 months younger and same school year, but some time frames put us in different generations. In reality I don't think we feel either Gen X or Millennial fit us. To be honest though, I think it's a bit ridiculous to think people have the same characteristics just because they were born within the same time frame.

Too busy getting shit done to be dealing with the breast-beating ennui of millennials and Gen Z'ders....

It isn't an exact science and the whole 'gen' thing is very American but we are products of our environment and you're going to develop good coping skills if in your early twenties you have to deal with, for example, getting a train to a new city, buying a local newspaper, finding a room to rent in the newspaper ads, ringing the landlord from a payphone, buying a street atlas, getting a bus to the house, agreeing and signing the tenancy agreement and then getting a train home again then moving in with a suitcase a couple of weeks later without the help of the internet, google maps or a mobile phone because they hadn't been invented yet. We know we can manage without because we've had plenty of practice.

And the generations before you were doing exactly that too.

Yep agree with @Lovelyview. Think you just did all that stuff didn’t you? I had Saturday jobs from 14, took myself off to uni open days, went to uni in the last year of what was by then a very meagre grant, snd pretty much put myself through uni with basically no help from my parents. Maybe rang them once a week from the communal phone in halls/our student house. Just sort of got on with it! As did so many others. Am trying to instill similar independence in our kids now, as much as I can…

Left home at 16 in the early '80's and used to hitch everywhere. Eventually ended up living with New Age Travellers in a horsebox! Anyone remember them?
I've instilled independence in my own kids but they don't know the full extent of my wild, free,raving and risky, wonderfully misspent youth. They know it was fun but really tough. But it prepared me for a lifetime of resilience,entrepreneurialism and self employment, self sufficiency, virtually no family contact and lone parenting. To the point where I'm mortgage free, financially stable and accountable to no one. GEN X through and through, tough as old boots and wouldn't change a thing. LOVE IT!!!!!!!

As I was writing that I wondered if that was true for the generation of women before that. Of course there were trail blazers but a lot of women went from living at home to marrying and bringing up children. While working class women always worked that wasn't as true of middle class women and far fewer had careers - often you were expected to leave work when you married. So I don't think boomers did have that combination of freedom and self sufficiency that generation x had.

I do think women during the war were far tougher and had to be much more resilient than gen x ever were though.

@Lovelyview That must have been tough and as I can imagine it taught you great life skills, full credit as it must have taken guts. As @TheAlertFinch says though it's not unique to GenX as previous generations would have had to do the same when moving areas. I would also say many GenX would not have experienced what you did though, in the example you gave. A good percentage would have chosen to stay in the area they grew up. More would have had accomodation arranged through University/college and chosen to stay in that area. Some would have had a car (which for me makes the whole idea of what you explain a whole lot less daunting). I appreciate you were giving just one example, but it just that shows to me that people within the same generation have very different life experiences. And as someone who is often classed as GenX, by the time I went to University at 18, I had a mobile phone. I also had access to the internet at University. By the time I finished university and moved to a new area for a job, Rightmove existed. I was able to arrange viewings from home and drive there at the set time.

Even with people growing up around the same time access to technology can vary greatly with factors such as wealth and the area of the country they. For example, my Dad was two years older than my Mum (both boomers), he grew up with a TV, but my Mum didn't have on till she was an adult

We just get on with it and don't whinge

I've got a tshirt that says
'Gen X raised on hosepipe water and neglect'

Never a truer word said 🤣

I just make it into the boomers ( was born in 64 ).
My very soon to be 21yr old youngest son also wishes he had been a teen in the 80's as thinks it sounds amazing with the music and nightclub culture.
My 2 older sons are millennials and they definitely have a different perspective on life from their younger Gen Z brother, lol.

Every generation has done this or will do this in their future.

And yet here you are on social media.

I like the newly defined generation the Goonies generation 1970 to 1985 a bridging generation between the disaffection of generation x and the optimism of the millennials. A generation who had screen free childhoods but transitioned into adulthood with the benefits of the switch from analogue to digitial and the rise of the internet and all that stuff. Officially older than Google but young enough to fully utilise it.

No they havebt @Mere1 . We are the first generation where there are young children and elderly parents plus full time working women. Yes for the future this will be the norm but it's called the sandwich generation and it's new.

Perhaps you’re the generation who’s always right. I am not Gen x. Nor are most of my friends. We worked full time and had our children fairly late. Our parents were born in the 1920s. We worked full time. had children to look after and our parents lived in to their 90s. A sandwich-it’s not restricted to you.

Not really. Boomers had children much younger than your average gen xer. My brother and I had left home by the time my parents were 40 and all their parents were dead by then as life expectancy was shorter.
Gen xers were the first generation to hold off on marriage and babies hence why we are now in our 50's with teens/young dc and ailing parents.

I hated the 80s. Really badly bullied at school, and there wasn't the support then. Politically so awful too. But I absolutely loved the 90s. Especially the late 90s. The best time.

Perhaps you’re the generation who’s always right. I am not Gen x. Nor are most of my friends. We worked full time and had our children fairly late. Our parents were born in the 1920s. We worked full time. had children to look after and our parents lived in to their 90s. A sandwich-it’s not restricted to you.

Calm down

I do think some X-ers (and I'm one) look back with rose-tinted glasses at some of it. I personally was spectacularly miserable for much of the 80s (around '84 to '89) as a child/early teen. Secondary schools were often pretty awful places then. Bullying rife, and little mental health support. We were brought up with a hideous right-wing government who hated the working class.
I did love mid to late 90s, my early 20s. After Labour got in (pre Iraq war) it was such a hopeful time, sigh!

Nah sorry, having a 60s childhood, being a teenager in the 70s and in my 20s in the 80s is the best. And now only a skip away from retirement. Definitely not as cool as being a boomer 😂😂😂

And the amount of times I jumped out of my window in the middle of the night and went out with my friends was crazy.

I did this too.

Loved the space invaders - and those Outrun machines where you sat in a proper car. And huge old pinball machines that weren't on a computer. Also glad, however, that dial-up and live chat-rooms have died a death. I love this thread ...

Perhaps we’re just not the attention seeking generation. 😉 but yes I have noticed this.

I have no idea what you are on about sorry,

Ah, this has been a lovely nostalgia tinged thread (in the main!) and has brought back/got me thinking about some of the things that defined my 70's/80's/90's (I'm a late '74 baby)
Those years conjure up memories of some decent summers (remember when that was a thing?!) Playing outside with my friends on the small estate we lived on and in the fields and a popular walking area near my house. No adults, would only go in when it got dark or everyone else had gone in for dinner. We built rope swings with tires or big sticks for seats, climbed trees, hop scotch, elastic jumps, 40/40.
BMX bikes with spokey dokeys, Rubix cubes, coke floats and persuading Mum to buy multiple large cereals just so we could collect enough tokens/bits of plastic tat/medals. UmBongo. Gino Genelli ice-cream!

I clearly remember watching Live Aid and feeling there was something really powerful going on. I think it was also the first time I realised how privileged and lucky I was to live where we did and have the things we had.

NOW that's what I call Music, making mix tapes for your friends, especially if they had gone through a break up, Judy Blume Books (Outing potentially but our school library ordered in "Forever" after multiple student requests - it was so popular, always being reserved and going in/out the library that one of the english teachers got suspicious and decided to read it herself and that was the end of that we all had a stern talking to!)

The Breakfast Club, The Fly, Evil Dead, Weird Science, The Police Academy films, Stand By Me, Dirty Dancing as well as brilliant music - Nirvana, Pearl Jam, the Seattle scene in general, Don't you Forget About Me from Simple Minds and paradoxically a love of cheesy pop (Stock Aitken & Waterman I'm looking at you!) rushing home off the bus to watch Home & Away and Neighbours, getting yelled at for tying up the landline.

Writing your name over & over again on your school books with the surname of the boy you fancied and doing a maths equation thingy to work out how compatible you were based on some formula. Dungarees, Dexies Midnight Runners, Grolsch Bottle tops in your school shoes (why?! something to do with Bros I think?)

Not so nice to recall that homophobia at school was pretty rampant in my teen years so no one would admit to liking someone of the same sex. Scary adverts on TV with tombstones about HIV/AIDS and the death of Freddie Mercury I remember vividly.

Although I do think life is quite a tricky balancing act now of aging parents needs and those of my kids, I do feel very grateful to have grown up when I did and think Gen X have a resilience and can-do attitude on the whole. I definitely don't feel 50...it sounds so old and not an age I associate with myself! Keep reminding myself that aging is a privilege :)