Table Of ContentWith No Apologies to Tom Brokaw:
The Baby Boom and its Meaning in History
By Terry L. Shoptaugh
October 2010
Roland and Beth Dille Distinguished Faculty Lecture
With No Apologies to Tom Brokaw:
The Baby Boom and its Meaning in History
Terry L. Shoptaugh
August 2010
Abstract: This paper focuses on the ―baby boom generation‖ (those children born in the United
States between 1946 and 1964) as a case study of generation-identity. The paper reviews the origin of the
“boom,” describes the impact it had on American society, reviews the controversies surrounding
the “boomer generation,” and suggests how this group might be remembered by historians in the future.
With No Apologies to Tom Brokaw:
The Baby Boom and its Meaning in History
A few years ago, rock musician Ian Williams was asked if he created all his music to suit
the tastes of his principal audience, Generation X. He said, ―I don't like giving names to
generations. It's like trying to read the song title on a record that's spinning.‖ William‘s remark
has been widely repeated because it struck a chord with those who dislike the idea of labeling
people who are still alive. It‘s easy in 21st century America to mention this generation or that
generation and expect everyone to understand what you mean. But in real terms it is very, very
difficult to define a generation. Certainly parents have children who have children, and so on;
generations of a family thus exist. But people are born and die all the time. So beyond the scope
of a single family and its progeny, what exactly constitutes a generation? Historians routinely
write of the Founding Fathers or those who fought in the American Civil War or those who grew
up during the Great Depression. Many writers and speakers refer to these vast groups as
generations. Yet Benjamin Franklin was born more than fifty years before James Monroe, the
last president who was part of the American Revolution, Still, Monroe, like Franklin, is regarded
as a Founding Father. Similarly Dwight Eisenhower was almost thirty years older than my
father, one of the soldiers under Ike‘s command in Europe in 1944. Both are considered part of
the ―Greatest Generation‖ in books about World War II. Beyond one year in Europe however,
their lives and experiences were very different.1
So what exactly does a generation mean in American culture? What significance does it
have? It may help an understanding of these questions by noting that Ian Williams‘s answer was
in essence a marketer‘s reply, aimed toward assuring his listeners that his music was not intended
for just one specific audience but was accessible to everyone. It is very common in
contemporary American society for books, articles, motion pictures, web sites, blogs, and now
tweets to be employed as marketing tools, aiming their contents at a ―generation‖ of buyers who
will surely want to purchase something, indeed must buy something because it is part of ―your
generation.‖ We have for example Generation X, which one book tells us will ―save the world.‖
And on another hand we have the ―Greatest Generation,‖ so named because never again will
another group of Americans save the world as this one did. And of course we have the Baby
Boomers, which have been praised as an even greater generation than the greatest generation, but
at the same time has been condemned as being so ―selfish, shallow, greedy and egotistic‖ that it
has ruined the future for all who will come after it.2
In confronting these claims it is well to ask: who is selling what, who are they trying to
sell it to, and why? Pandering to buyers is a normal part of American culture. Baby Boomers,
for example, make up 78 million generally solvent and reliable consumers.3 Should it be a
surprise then that these thousands of books, magazines, web sites, blogs and tweets now exist to
cater to this enormous market? No. This is the richest, spending-est nation in the world. Few
salesmen in America would overlook the chance to sell something to the largest ―generation‖
market in American history.
But how significant, then, are generations to the study of the nation‘s past? And if so,
how are generations significant? What can an historian decide is common to all Baby Boomers,
what is significant about those common factors, and what can be inferred from these factors that
makes for a fair judgment? This is by no means easy to do. Recently, the retired telejournalist
Tom Brokaw tried to do it in his book Boom!: Talking about the Sixties. The book sold very
well and thus met the market test. But Brokaw was criticized for relying too much on the
memories of celebrities in his text and for unfairly comparing Baby Boomers to their parents, the
subject of his previous book, The Greatest Generation. Many readers thought that Boom was
rather shallow, that it lacked context on several subjects, like civil rights, the draft, the Chicago
convention of 1968, and the Great Society programs. Brokaw‘s method in creating the book
made such reviews almost inevitable, for he decided to hold a ―virtual reunion‖ (meaning filmed
interviews) with a ―cross-section of the Sixties crowd‖ (meaning people he knew well from his
days with NBC). Then by asking them questions like ―what seemed so important [in the sixties]
and seems foolish now‖ or ―who were the winners and who were the losers‖ in that era, he had,
with his own personal memories, a book. Faced with an era of much controversy and even
greater moral ambiguity, Brokaw‘s did not do much to clarify matters, which may explain why
he settled for a tepid statement that the sixties helped to create ―hardened ideological and
partisan positions‖ that still influence the nation.4
The criticism leveled at Brokaw carried a clear warning to those who would write about
the living – if you want praise from your audience, write nice things; if you don‘t, expect
difficulty. Many others have written about the Baby Boom, but virtually all have been lambasted
in one way or another for oversights and bias that readers have perceived in their conclusions.5
It is therefore imperative to note some of the most important parameters of the Baby
Boom. First, it is important to explain what the boom was. The boom was a sudden rise in
births rates. But, as we shall see, the identification of those born in the boom as making up ―a
generation‖ originated as a way to market goods and services for this mass of new customers.
Second, the birth explosion coincided with the fortunate economic situation that the
United States enjoyed from 1946 to the late 1960s. This in turn had an indelible impact on how
they became the target of marketing and how both prosperity and the generation ―tag‖
subsequently influenced the outlook of boomers. Closely tied to this marketing was the
burgeoning American media. All media, but especially television, relied heavily on presenting
information in compressed forms, using easily comprehended metaphors and ―tags‖ to tell a
story or make a point. It was therefore very easy for media outlets to seize on the ―boom‖ as a
quick way to refer to complex forces at work during the fifties and sixties. Boomers in turn were
entranced by television. Television informed their views of the world almost from infancy.
Television also encouraged boomers to act, almost instinctively, on the belief that ―things
happened‖ through dramatic actions, a view that had great influence on the events of the 1960s.
Finally, it is vital to remember that whatever else Baby Boomers are, they have
consistently reflected many of the most common values of American culture. As such, boomers
were and still are influenced by the idea of the American Dream. Future historians then will
find the boomers‘ place in America‘s history in what the boom was; in the economic setting in
which it occurred; in the impact of a highly developed media; and in the commonly held
American Dream of making life better than it was before.
The Baby Boom Defined
To the first question then -- what was the baby boom? It begins with the fact that
between 1946 to 1964 there was an enormous increase in the birth rate.6 Indeed, there were
marked increases in birth rates across the globe in the wake of World War II. The U.S., Canada,
Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Sweden, and Hungary had birth booms. By the mid-
1960s four out of every ten of the citizens in these nations were under the age of twenty. The
full reasons for this rise in birth rates are still being debated, but delayed marriages and
suppressed births due to economic depression and war certainly contributed, as did
improvements in nutrition and health care after the war ended. A lot of babies were born in a
comparatively short span of time and as a result the economics and cultures of the countries
involved in the boom were subjected to sudden and significant stresses.7
Let the Good Times Roll – Prosperity and the Boom
The baby boom happened during one of the grandest realizations of the American Dream
– that endless pursuit of a good life that is measured by what we do and how well we succeed.8
Thomas Jefferson wrote that all people had natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. From the moment that European colonists arrived on these shores in search of ―free
land,‖ the pursuit of happiness in America has leaned heavily toward prosperity. World War II
ended with America as the most powerful and the richest nation on the planet. Unlike almost all
the other nations in the war the U.S. had almost no territorial damage at war‘s end. Americans
were making enormous profits from domestic business and international trade surpluses. Our
gross national product increased at a rate of four percent annually for eight years, then by almost
three percent for three more. There was no significant unemployment and family incomes rose
at an only slightly slower pace. In 1950 the average annual income for a family was just over
three thousand dollars, higher than that of any other nation. Prices remained relatively stable
throughout the ‗50s. And since the average family income rose more than sixty percent by 1959,
families had opportunities to spend and still save considerable amounts of money.9
Good times permitted the United States to absorb the stresses of the baby boom more
readily than any other nation. The boom itself ignited an economic need for new housing, new
schools, more clothes, more of just about everything. The columnist Sylvia Porter, who is
widely credited with first using the term ―boom‖ in this context, saw the prospects for money
making when, in 1951, she wrote in the New York Post that the nation had a ―bundle‖ of babies
―all over the bountiful land that is America.‖ This, she wrote, would fuel ―the biggest boomiest
boom ever known in history.‖ An expert on family finances, Porter predicted that the population
boom would feed economic growth for at least a decade.10
She was right. As historian James Patterson notes, the ―rise in births unleashed a dynamic
‗juvenile market,‘ especially for producers of toys, candy, gum, records, children‘s clothes,
washing machines, lawn and porch furniture, televisions, and all manner of household ‗labor-
saving‘ devices.‖ Diaper sales alone were adding $50 million a year to the economy.
Companies like Proctor and Gamble, Mattel and Levi Straus were rising to the status of
economic giants, while Johnson and Johnson likely sold enough ―no tears‖ shampoo to fill the
Devil‘s Lake basin. Economic health was mirrored by personal health. Most boom babies had
better medical care than their parents had in childhood; antibiotics developed after 1940 meant
that far fewer children in the fifties died of throat infections or other maladies that had killed
children in the 1920s. Personal nutrition for boom children was better as well.
A few personal memories underscore this point. In 1950, my father bought a house in
one of the first suburbs north of St. Louis. The monthly mortgage payment was $45. Dad was a
blue-collar worker, a printer. But he was skilled in offset work and was part of a good union,
and so was getting a middle-class income. Mom was already planning ways to pay off the
mortgage in twenty years instead of thirty. Within a few years the neighborhood was filled with
children. Growing up, we all watched as parents bought appliances, televisions, mixers and
stereos. Contrary to image of the stay-at-home mom, so celebrated in contemporary TV and
magazines, a good many mothers entered the job market, at least in part-time jobs. By 1956, in
fact, 51% of America‘s working women were married and most had children. As kids we
watched all this and quickly absorbed the lessons about product loyalty and the importance of
money.11
Yet, even in the midst of this plenty there were soft spots in the economy. The
percentage of Americans in poverty dropped steadily in the Fifties but it still exceeded twenty
percent at the end of the decade. While non-white minorities often suffered cruelly from poverty
-- Black Americans had an unemployment level double that of the national average -- the
majority of the poor were in fact white. Good times had not blessed everyone, a fact many
boomers remained ignorant about for some time.12
Education and the Television Generation
Beginning in 1951, all these children started pouring into public schools, in such numbers
that overall school enrollment went up at a rate of almost a million new students each year in the
fifties, and a two million jump for the 1959-1960 school year. This was twice the rate of the
nation‘s population growth. Additional resources for education were clearly needed, money for
new schools and more teachers. Thanks in part to the National Defense Education Act, and even
more to the willingness of millions of parents to pay taxes for schools they could only dream of
in the 1930s, spending per pupil more than doubled from 1950 to 1970, with some $21 billion
expended on construction alone. Even so, classrooms were crowded well into the 1960s,
especially in the explosively growing urban suburbs.13
A great deal remains to be studied about education in the 1950s. One area that has been
thoroughly researched is how American history was presented in textbooks. In those the story of
America was a success story in which the nation invariably solved every problem it confronted.
But even as it left students with a feeling that we too could solve any challenge, the story made
only limited mention of those men and women who had been systematically denied freedom and
opportunity. Perhaps just as bad, given what was going to happen in the sixties, the texts failed
to point out that large segments of society had opposed almost all of America‘s wars -- as much
as half of all the colonists were against independence from Great Britain, northern states had
opposed the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, and American entry into World War I was
afterward regarded by most of the nation as a grave mistake. Only World War II, which
Americans wanted nothing to do with before Pearl Harbor, was fought with near complete unity
and commitment. Since that war involved boomer parents, the contrast between their memories
of war and the historical reality was marked. This had an impact on the 1960s14
For the moment parents were satisfied with the education that boomers received. By the
late 1960s, three out of four students were graduating from high school, an increase of nearly 20
percentage points over the rate in 1950. And over half of these graduates went on to colleges.
Society at large saw in these numbers, ―[a further] sign that the American dream was alive and
well.‖ That feeling was soon dramatically challenged.15
But the greatest common memories of boomers probably were formed outside of school,
in the virtual world of the television set. Almost every boomer born before 1959 vividly
remembers the assassination of John Kennedy. It was the memory of the shocking event and a
testimonial to the power of television, which replayed it for us endlessly for weeks afterward.
Television may well constitute the greatest number of common memories among boomers. You
want to test a boomer‘s real sense of his or her youth? Ask them to sing the Oscar Mayer jingle.
Ask them which cigarette meant ‗fine tobacco.‘ Ask them if they liked Dick Van Dyke better
falling over the ottoman or dancing around it. Was it Cronkite of CBS or was it Huntley-
Brinkley on NBC? Having discovered the impact of on-the-spot coverage during the civil rights
marches, TV networks invested huge sums of money in smaller cameras, live coverage and
satellite feeds.. By 1965 we were seeing news as it happened.16
Description:With No Apologies to Tom Brokaw: The Baby Boom and its Meaning in History . Terry L. Shoptaugh . August 2010 . Abstract: This paper focuses on the ―baby boom
