During a sociology of aging, i.e. gerontology class, one of the first assignments was to describe my generation. I’ve lived in a pretty damn good 50 year time to be alive. Here was my submission.

I personally love researching Generation X, not just because I was born there, but because we really do have such a wide range of life experiences. Naturally I believe we had the best music, but to me, being part of Gen-X is a bit more complex. In the Library of Congress Generation X summary, it showed a very high level description of who we were as a group, which fits mostly into my life. I was born in 1977, meaning I grew up in a physical, dialog style world, and saw it transition to a digital, convenience based world before my 30’s. We did not have a cordless phone or cable TV until I was a teenager, and no internet until the year after I graduated high school. The music I listened to came from 2 distinctively different decades of artists, and television went from family friendly sitcoms to MTV’s spring break in that same timeframe. I ate cereal and frozen waffles for breakfast because for the first time, the majority of my generation had 2 working parents in our home, including my family. After elementary age, I came home most days to an empty house, and immediately hopped on my bike to go to a friend’s house to play basketball or skate.  

While the Generations summary does get a general idea across about my generation, there is so much that was different and deeper. Living my life as Gen X really does feel like, as Tyler Durden said in Fight Club (1999), “We are the middle children of history.” Boomers created the media and tech landscape that rose during our generation, and the Millennials are the ones who saw the bulk of the benefits.  We got stuck right in between with some of both, and we are all better for it.

All of this came to me as I reviewed the Pew Research website that was referenced, showing how Gen-X seems to be stuck in the middle (Taylor & Gao, 2014). We’re not invisible, but we are overlooked. Sure, we came along at just the right time to experience two completely different eras, but we also put in the hard work in the middle to make it successful for the future. Not to mention, again, that the music was awesome.  

Something else that hangs over our heads is how we will make sure our children have a better life than we did, because we had it pretty good. We had our needs met, watched technology take over our homes, and got to experience drinking from a water hose in the summer instead out of a bottle. Now we are struggling just to afford enough savings for our children’s future education, and for us to retire as well. Boomers were able to still save while having more children due to the lower cost of living, and millennials are having far fewer children which makes their lives more affordable as well (Hays, 2025). So, once again, we are stuck in the middle with our 2.1 average children per family. 

I hope one day to have grandchildren, and when that happens, I will regale them with stories of how my math teacher told me I wouldn’t always have a calculator in my pocket. I’m sure that will sound like walking “three miles uphill in the snow to school” sounded to me as well. Until then, I am going to polish up some dad jokes for tomorrow.

​​References:​ 

Library of Congress. (2026, March 27). Generations. https://guides.loc.gov/consumer-research/market-segments/generations 

​​Taylor, P., & Gao, G. (2014, June 5). Generation X: America’s neglected​ ​“middle child.” Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short–middle-child/​ 

​​Hays, J. (2025, June 18). U.S. adults in their 20s and 30s plan to have​ ​fewer children than in the past. Pew Research​ ​Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/18/us-adults-in–30s-/​ 

Fight Club (1999). D. Fincher (Director), & A. Linson, C. Chaffin, & R. Ceán Chaffin (Producers). 20th Century Fox.