The Importance Of Generational Values

As time ticks on and the world changes, some generational values are left behind and new ones emerge as circumstances change and technologies evolve. With more generations working together than ever before, it can be a challenge to understand one another and work out differences. Each generation lasts about twenty years before a new one is created, through generational lines are imprecise and culture driven. There are four primary generations today: Traditionalists (born from 1925-1945), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), Generation Xers (1965-1980), and Millennials (1981-2000). The next generation has started but has not yet been named. Each generation brings unique values, ideals, expectations, attitudes, and perspectives into the ever-changing world that need to be shared and the differences addressed in order for the generations to reach an understanding.

Each generation has a variety of different values defining what is important to them. Family values, work values, and general attitudes seem to be affected by the time period one grows up in. Traditionalists grew up with the traditional nuclear family unit consisting of two parents and only the father working. Soon divorce lost its stigma, and family values were said to be disintegrating as divorce rates went up during the Baby Boomer era. More and

Heather Stanley-Garvey explains that “while all humans experience the same life stages in an entire life cycle — birth, school age years, moving out of parent’s house, getting married, having children, becoming a grandparent, and death — each generation experiences those life stages differently, through their own generational lens” (3). Gronbach and Hagemann state that “each generation is bound together by similar wants, needs, motives, and events” (xiv). This is especially true in forming generational outcomes and