Characteristics Of The Silent Generation

There are currently six living generations in the United States, each with different characteristics, beliefs, and values. The things that define each generation’s culture are derived from their history, upbringing, and the lifestyle of their time. Our generation was born between 1980 and 2000. We are called Millennials. We grew up in a technologically savvy world and have a high demand for instant gratification. More specifically, we grew up in the South, which typically lends itself to being more conservative, based on a stricter religious upbringing. These characteristics, along with others, define who we are, what we believe, and how we view other generations. For instance, we might have differing views with the Silent Generation. Some

For the Silent Generation, this saying hits home. When they are prosperous, they think of the time during the Great Depression when they were penniless and wondering how they would pay for their next meal. When they feel the abundance of love from family and friends, they think of the time during World War II when fathers were away at war and mothers were away at work. They learned to appreciate and value the simple things in life because they have experienced the feeling of having everything stripped away. The Silent Generation was greatly impacted by the Great Depression and World War II, each event stripping away the chance of a normal life economically and

It was a time of economic turmoil in the United States between 1929 and 1939. In October of 1929, the stock market crashed sending Wall Street into a panic and destroying millions of investors’ likelihoods. America’s confidence slowly withered away. In Alan Brinkley’s book on culture and politics during the Great Depression, he describes how men looked for work day after day knowing there was no hope in finding a job (8). This insecurity caused families to feel ashamed and hopeless. Mark Wheeler describes how the downturn resulted in severe inflation of the consuming population’s wealth and income (66). Families that were once wealthy, now found themselves without money. Wheeler comments that after the crash, the economy was left “saddled with excess capacity and inadequate demand” (66). This forced factories to lay off workers, which led to a dramatic increase in unemployment rates and sent the economy plummeting. Not only did the Great Depression affect the economy, it affected the social aspects of the United States. Brinkley describes how gender roles began to change within the family (8). Because women’s occupations (nursing and teaching, for example) were not “immediately vulnerable to recession” unlike men’s, women often became the “family’s principal breadwinner” during the Depression, according to Brinkley (9). Although this was a positive outcome for women, men saw this as shameful