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Baby Busters

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American Generations
Term Period
Awakening Generation 1701–1723
First Great Awakening 1730–1740
Liberty Generation
Republican Generation
Compromise Generation 		1724–1741
1742–1766
1767–1791
Second Great Awakening 1790–1840
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Transcendental Generation
Abolitionist Generation
Gilded Generation
Progressive Generation 		1789–1819
1792–1821
1819–1842
1822–1842
1843–1859
Third Great Awakening aka Missionary Awakening 1886–1908
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Interbellum Generation
G.I. Generation
Greatest Generation 		1860–1882
1883–1900
1900–1910
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1911–1924
Jazz Age aka American High 1929–1956
Silent Generation
Baby boomer>Baby Boomers
Beat Generation
Generation Jones 		1925–1945
1946–1964
1948–1962
1954–1965
Consciousness Revolution 1964–1984
Baby Busters
Generation X
MTV Generation
1958–1968
1961–1981
1975–1985
Culture Wars 1984–2005
Boomerang Generation
Generation Y
Internet generation
New Silent Generation 		1981–1986
1977–2003
1986–1999
2001–

Baby Busters is a name for a demographic group born in the United States, and sometimes Canada, from 1958 through 1968. They are called this due to a decline in the birth rate; specifically, the U.S. birth rate fell for eleven consecutive years after 1957, the longest such decline in American history. The name is intended to contrast with the term "Baby Boomer"; indeed, the central purpose of its usage appears to be to deny Boomer affiliation on behalf of those born from 1958 through 1964, thus rejecting the mass media's widespread practice of observing 1960 or even 1964 as the baby boom's cutoff date. Approximately 43 million people were born in the United States during the years of the actual "bust"; adding immigrants and subtracting deaths of those born during this period, it is believed that about 41 million persons born during these years were alive in the United States as of the end of 2003.

The first identification of baby busters in this context appears to have been made by anthropologist Marvin Harris (1927-2001) in his 1981 book America Now (later re-released under the title Why Nothing Works: The Anthropology of Daily Life). In 1987, the word twentysomething was coined, an apparent back-formation of Thirtysomething, the title of a then-popular Baby Boomer-themed television series. Douglas Coupland's groundbreaking 1991 novel was dedicated to "the generation born in the late 1950s and 1960s", and in the following year's presidential election the "under-35 generation" was frequently cited as the core supporters of third-party candidate Ross Perot. In his 2001 book, The Isolation Generation, Dean Anderson identifies a generation labeled the Pre-Lunar Space-Agers as having been born between the launch of Sputnik (October 4, 1957) and the Apollo 11 moon landing (July 20, 1969), thus making 1958 through 1968 the group's full birth years.

Owning an early childhood flooded with televised images of protest, rapidly variegating morality, tragedy, and scandal, they have no recollection of a world in which authority was not constantly questioned but they were not old enough to effect changes like the true Boomers. By the time the Busters reached adolescence, Watergate had ended unquestioned authority, individuality was the new conformity, and hedonism the cultural ideal. Many were the first children of Boomers. They were also the first grade school students formally taught by the newly graduated Boomers from activist college campuses during the 1960s.

The psychographic position of the Baby Busters and how they relate to neighboring generations has been the subject of considerable debate. Some insist that the Busters constitute an entirely separate group, between the Baby Boomers and Generation X, while others reckon them as an older subset of Generation X. The combination of the aforementioned dedication of Douglas Coupland's novel followed by the media obsession with "twentysomethings" that persisted well into the 1990s has only served to heighten the confusion. Caught in a cultural no-man's land, their isolation may be humorously illustrated thus: They believe the Beatles were overrated and that Nirvana was just noise.

Another frequently-encountered description of Baby Busters consists of the span of birth years 1965 through 1976 in the US. These years lie in between the end of Baby Boom (1964, beginning in 1946) and the beginning of the Echo Baby Boom (1977, ending in 1994 and sometimes known as "Generation Y", even though birth rates began a seven-year dip in 1991, this being the second longest such streak in modern history after the eleven-year decline of 1958–68 already alluded to), the conceptual children of the Baby Boomers. As plotted against a normal distribution curve, the Baby Boom had its apex in 1957 (4.3 million births), and was followed by a decline in births but was still a relatively large number of births (remaining at 4 million or above through 1964). The US Census Bureau defines the dearth in births from 1965 through 1976 in terms of demographic birth cohorts as the Baby Bust, although many in the advertising industry prefer to observe 1978 as the last such year (with Generation Y commencing with those born in 1979).

Baby Buster celebrities

Celebrities born 1958 through 1968 include:

For Baby Buster celebrities born from 1961 through 1968 see the list at baby boom and Generation X.

External links

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