The Millennials turn 30: Reflections on a generation's values

Happy 30th to the millennial generation

From a demographer's perspective, "generations" are groups of people born within a specific time period who share something in common. Generations are shaped by extraordinary circumstances: perhaps by long wars and economic difficulties, but equally by peace and prosperity. While generations are usually felt to have specific beginnings and ends, such as the baby boomer generation that resulted from the return of our servicemen from the Second World War, people are being born all the time, which means that oftentimes, the specific beginnings and ends of generations are somewhat malleable.

With that caveat, however, the year 1982 is widely accepted as the beginning of the millennial generation. The oldest of us are just hitting our 30th birthday, like I did last month. And as we enter our fourth decade of existence, it seems as good a time as any to reflect on who we are and what we have been through. We're not monolithic; no generation is. But we do have common experiences, and those experiences have shaped our values as a generation. Eventually, we will be America's political and economic leaders; some of us already are. But when we are governors, senators and presidents, what might an America run by millennials look like?

Let's start with who we are.  We will be the first generation in some time not to idolize Ronald Reagan; not because we don't respect his political ideology (though that may be the case), but simply because only the oldest of us have any recollection whatsoever of his presidency, and a six-year-old's hazy memories aren't worth much. For us, the Cold War is a part of history that was before our time, not part of the world we grew up in as a day-to-day reality. That's not to say that our geopolitical reality has been any more pleasant; for most of us, the attacks of September 11, 2001 were childhood experiences. Our constant reality since then has been wars and occupations, terror alert codes, recessions, eight years of George W. Bush, and a faith-destroying economic catastrophe. But we'll get to that in a minute.  READ MORE