05/21/03

Word count: 971

Parents may be relieved to know that the substantial generation gap that they experienced in the early 1970s has narrowed considerably. However, that is not to say that it is nonexistent. Youth and their parents still differ on a wide range of issues, from religion, to politics, to sex and cultural norms. Using data from the a survey by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), Tom Smith, in his chapter in On the Frontier of Adulthood, tracks the changing attitudes of young adults across three decades as a way of gaining insight into the changing paths to adulthood documented throughout the volume. He finds that youth today are more disaffected and disconnected, they are more pessimistic about society in general and of people in particular, and they are more liberal on a wide range of social and political measures.

To examine the generation gap, Smith compared a set of youth aged 18–24 in 1997 with the same age group in 1973 and 1985, and also compared the 1997 cohort with today’s older generations. Using the NORC General Social Surveys—full-probability samples of adults living in households in the United States—he looks at differences in values, attitudes, and behaviors across time and age groups. He considers how the age groups differ at each of the three points in time, how the same age groups compare across time, and how the generation gap has changed from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Demographic change is usually small and slow, but there have been some important shifts in the profiles of the cohorts during the last three decades. Compared with those entering adulthood in the 1970s and 1980s, those in the late 1990s are more racially and ethnically diverse (reflecting a change in the population in general); they are much less likely to have been reared in an intact, two-parent family; as young adults they are more likely to have never married; their earnings are the lowest of all three time periods; and they have lost ground on both social class ranking and occupational prestige.

Since the 1970s, youth have most often differed from their parents on sex, civil liberties, and patterns of socializing (going to bars, meeting with friends) However, in the 1990s, civil liberties was replaced by misanthropy as the second largest difference between youth and parents. This was the only topic that unambiguously showed a widening gap since the 1970s among all 20 topical areas examined. Youth in the 1990s were more likely than their parents, and their counterparts in the 1970s and 1980s, to have taken off the rose-colored glasses to view the world with mistrust and cynicism.

Youth today are also more disconnected from society on a number of fronts. They are less likely to read a newspaper, attend church, belong to a religion or a union, or vote for President or identify with a political party than previously. Moreover, on all of these measures, the generation gap increased from 1985 to 1997. This growing disaffection seems to support the notion, put forth by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone,of declining social capital.

In addition, youth today are more cynical and negative about people that previously. They are less likely to believe people are trustworthy, helpful, and fair, and in the idea that humans are naturally good and that the world reflects God’s goodness. These outlooks may also be reflected in their greater expectation of world war. The young have also lost confidence in institutions, although in that they are not alone. Confidence has eroded across all groups, and the generation gap, therefore, has not increased.

This negativism does not, however, extend to personal evaluations of well-being. Only financial satisfaction showed both a decline in optimism and a widening generation gap across time. Generation gaps surrounding job satisfaction and financial position narrowed, and the most recent generation is generally more optimistic about both. Happiness and other measures of well-being showed mixed, and small, changes.

Politically and socially, youth have moved toward more liberal positions, especially on civil liberties, modern gender roles, racial equality, and secularism. The youth of prior generations had veered to the right politically from 1973 to 1985 but then moved back again to the left thereafter. Across time, 18–24-year-olds have been the most likely to consider themselves independents.

Sex has always been a topic on which the generations differ dramatically. That gap has narrowed, but not always because adults have become more permissive. The gap surrounding extramarital sex, for example, has narrowed because youth in 1997 have become less permissive, moving closer to their parents’ position. Approval of sex education narrowed as positions of both the young and the old liberalized, but the older group saw greater movement, beginning to catch up with the young. The generation gap on approval of homosexuality narrowed in 1985 as the young increased their disapproval and moved toward views held by the older generation. However, the trend reversed by 1997, with all age groups becoming less disapproving, with the greatest shift among the young.

Each new generation also comes of age during a unique historical period. Their collective socialization creates a point of view distinctive from that of earlier generations, and changing social conditions affect how the transition to adulthood transpires. This distinction is evident in the young adults of the late 1990s in their rising pessimism, mistrust, and disconnectedness. Yet, even with these changes, the youth of today are not necessarily more distinctive than in the past, nor are they especially distinctive among age groups. As this volume attests, succeeding generations of young adults travel through a largely similar process of maturing, involving the same key institutions of family, education, and employers, albeit in changing patterns.

Based on Smith, Tom. forthcoming. Generation Gaps in Attitudes and Values from the 1970s to the 1990s. Chapter 6 in On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research, and Public Policy. Edited by Richard A. Settersten, Jr., Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., and Rubén G. Rumbaut. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.