BBC have deboomerised me.

[Thegoatliesdownonbroadway]

I thought boomers were up to 1964, BBC news had an article about "Alphas". In which boomers were designated as born between 1940 and 1960, so I am an "X" now. Given the resentments that exist towards "Boomers", maybe it is for the best.

I have read about Xennials here for the first time and my DC fit into this. I'm pleased to see it as one is GenX and one a millennial, but they grew up playing their first compputer games together and getting their first mobile phone at the same Christmas, and internet at home etc. It's hard to have a rigid cut off for specific generations.
I'm a baby boomer but when I was young those born in the 1960s were never included in that group.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Sorry but the BBC is wrong. It's 1946 to 1964. The term boomer comes from the "post war baby boom". 1946 men home from war starting a family to 1964 - when oral contraceptives came on to the market.

That’s my understanding as well but I think people born in 1964 would have had such different experiences from people born in 1946

1946 = Maureen and Sheila
1964 = Debbie and Julie

Crikey.. I’m November 60…. Am I still a boomer… asking for a friend

Fraid so. You still get all the vitriol.

I'm 1964 - have been a boomer for 60 years and am not identifying differently now!!!

Haha I’ll survive !

Wow. I started uni 1995 and definitely no mobiles here in the UK . In halls we queued for the pay phone on our floor and our parents sent us phone cards in the post. Moved out of halls into a shared house and we had a landline contract that allowed us to put in a code so we all got separate bills. Around 1998 I went to work in applied and it wasn’t long after that I got my first mobile phone but it was pre Nokia. It was on Vodafone and looked like a bit of a brick. Nokia came a few years later. When I started uni there was no internet. We queued for library books on short term load and hand wrote assignments unless we bought a word processor with build in printing - looked like a typewriter but took floppy discs. Didn’t get on of this too my final year and mine didn’t have spell or grammar check. Used to use the uni computer labs that had just opened to access some internet but mainly msn chat and email. Started teaching 1999 with a desktop (previous year my teaching practice still had bbc computers) and a few years in we got excited over Encarta cd Rom. For dial up internet in my house and couldn’t make a phone call at the same time as using it.

Sounds like I’m an Xennial (77 birth)

i was at university in 96 and we did have internet because that’s when I got my first email address. No Windows tho, they were DOS computers. You could type in web addresses and look up academic papers.
I wrote essays on the computers so they must have had word processing programmes but can’t remember what it was called?

My dad was born in 1940 and is a war baby, not a boomer

This fits those of us born at the very end of '76, as much as those born from '77. 🤷‍♀️

The experiences of people who are classified as "proper" baby boomers is totally different to those born in the early 60s. The real cohort grew up with the Beatles, hippies and pretty much full employment. The later (my) lot, punk, the New Romantics, Thatcher's Britain and 4.5 million unemployed as we came of age.

There is a real dissonance between the people of supposedly one generation and I think it actually demonstrates how flawed the concept is.

What about pre-boomers?

How very boomer you are 💕

EXACTLY THIS

@Uricon2 and @Jumell I don't entirely agree. I was born in 1960 so am a late boomer. I think the world turned one or two years later and that it had little to do with The Beatles (to whom I related) and Punk and New Romantic wave (to which I did not).

My mother was born in 1936 and remembered WW2, my grandparents in 1909 and 1910 and remembered WW1. There were lots of tales of the war and and a view of the world arising from them.

I recall being the last year at school where it was possible to fail an O'Level prior to grades D and E being introduced. The last year or two who did calculus with slide rules and log books. Except for the rare genius, girls were encouraged into nursing, teaching or the civil service. They could enter nursing at 17 and the civil service at 16! Otherwise they did a secretarial or cordon bleu Cookery course. A small handful of girls from my selective grammar went to university in 1978. By 1980 that tide had turned. Girls were still expected to focus on being wives and mothers and have jobs rather than careers.

It's hard to put my finger on it but there was a definitive shift around 1962 (1978 educationally). I think it hinges on people no longer being allowed to fail and the shift in educational terms from being well educated to well qualified without being fundamentally well educated..

Awww shucks! That means I was born 4 days too early to be an X.

It’s all a load of bollocks really isn’t it!

I’m a “young” Xer: July 1979.

Early boomers (1946/7 etc) were capable of having boomer children in the early 60s, and their experiences were of course very different. This is just England and Wales but the trends in the 40s and 60s are similar.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/articles/trendsinbirthsanddeathsoverthelastcentury/2015-07-15

Streetlights were our curfew !!

We played out on our Choppers!! (Not a euphemism!!)

We drank straight out of the garden hose !!

Our parents smoked Benson and Hedges in the car leaving us gagging !!

We grew up with 3 TV channels !!

We taped the Top 40 on Sunday afternoons !!

We had no seatbelts !!

We loved watching Jim’ll Fix It!!

So, which demographic am I lol 🤣any guesses??! Much as I love this demographic - we DO need to learn to laugh at ourselves !!

@Jumell sounds like my kids, are you early Gen X? We were the guilty B&H smokers in the car, with no seatbelts.

Ah you’re very close !!!

im actually bang in the middle of Gen X - born 1972 - couldn’t be more typically Gen X if I tried lol

my mum smoked around 40 a day and never attempted to give up lol !

I see you've already confirmed but I knew as soon as I read it that you'd be close in age to me - mid Gen X.

YEP!!

We grew up with the best TV programmes , best roller skates … I could go on !!