Generation X

I was born in the 70s. In fact, anyone born after the mid-60s to the early 80s is said to be a member of my generation too. I am a member of Generation X. We are the non-Baby Boomers.

If you simply look at the numbers, we’re also a minority. We’re the post-boom generation sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials. Our numbers are smaller than both of these groups, which is thought to be due to the introduction of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s that dipped the population growth.

We Generation Xers grew up in a time when divorce rates started to rise. Due to this, there may have been instability in the family home when we grew up, possibly leading to later insecurities in life that some of us have carried into adulthood. Our parents probably worked long hours. Both of them probably worked too.

Due to this, we’ve also been described as the latchkey generation. From an early age, during the day or in the holidays, we had to fend for ourselves. Left to our own devices, we spent a lot of time hanging around with our friends. This has given us a very peer-oriented view of the world.

We’ve been given the work ethic of our parents. They may have worked hard to send us to college. We’ve been trained, educated well, and given the opportunity to become skilled in what we do. But as a population group, we also have a few problems.

Generation X works hard. We’re too young to retire. We may have been too young to invest in the rewards of an economy that grew as fast as our parents’ generation did. Possibly we’re still running to catch up with those investments we’ve already made.

In addition, the investments we’ve made may be giving us flat returns. Or we may just be recovering after being caught in the financial and property crashes. Often we struggle with mortgage payments, with debt, school fees, pension plans, and the increasing cost of living the life we want to lead. All while also facing the financial and emotional cost of looking after our parents as they get older.

We are often too busy to notice we’re working ourselves into early graves.

People who belong to Generation X see themselves working much longer into later age. Certainly longer than the generation before us. In my profession, the prospect of working as hard as I am now for another decade or more is at times soul-destroying. We are the result of our parents pushing us into education, then other careers. Our morals and ethos are built around the rhetoric our parents had of working hard and succeeding.

But in reality for some of us, that means working hard and then harder, with the additional prospect of working for much longer too.

Generation X is in danger of being stuck. Stuck at doing what they do. Stuck with the frustration that this gives them. We’re stuck between the Boomers and the Millennials. Stuck with the traits of our MTV generation, sometimes relying on drugs and alcohol to see us through.

Generation Xers are peer-focused. We want more. We work more. We want to impress others. We find it difficult to say no. Due to our insecurities driven by our broken homes and latchkey past, we can now be too over-eager as parents too, feeling a need to step in and help our kids out far too soon.

Let me tell you what this actually looks like in my surgery.

There’s the 48-year-old project manager who comes in with chest pain. Turns out it’s anxiety. He’s working 60-hour weeks, supporting two teenagers, paying a mortgage on a house that’s worth less than he paid for it, and trying to save for retirement that feels impossibly far away. His father has dementia. His mother can’t cope. He’s paying for care home fees because the state won’t cover it all.

He’s exhausted. He’s stressed. He’s stuck. And he doesn’t see a way out for years yet. If he makes it that far.

There’s the 45-year-old marketing executive who’s just been made redundant. Again. Third time in ten years. Each time, she has to start over. Prove herself. Work twice as hard as the 28-year-olds to show she’s still relevant. Still valuable. Still worth employing.

She has experience. Skills. Wisdom. But the market doesn’t value those things as much as it values youth and willingness to work for less money.

There’s the 50-year-old who’s finally paid off his student loans. Not because he’s been diligently paying them. But because they’re old enough that they’ve been written off. He never earned enough to trigger the repayment threshold. He’s worked hard his entire life. Multiple jobs. Constant hustling. But the promised prosperity never materialized.

This is Generation X. The forgotten generation. The ignored generation. The generation that doesn’t get books written about them, think pieces published about them, or politicians courting them.

We’re too young to have benefited from Boomer prosperity. Too old to be digital natives like the Millennials. Caught in the middle. Making do. Getting by. Working harder and harder just to stay in place.

Here’s what nobody tells you about being Generation X. You inherited your parents’ work ethic but not their economic opportunities. You were told that hard work pays off. That education leads to success. That if you do everything right, you’ll have the life your parents had.

You did everything right. You worked hard. You got educated. You climbed the ladder. And somewhere along the way, you realized the ladder was broken. The rungs missing. The top unreachable.

Your parents bought houses in their 20s. You bought yours in your 30s, if you were lucky. Your parents had defined benefit pensions. You have a pension pot that might or might not see you through retirement, depending on how the markets perform. Your parents retired at 60 or 65. You’ll be working into your 70s.

The social contract that governed your parents’ lives doesn’t apply to you. But nobody told you that until it was too late to do anything about it.

Generation X is cynical. And we have good reason to be. We watched the Boomers dismantle the systems that created their prosperity. We watched corporations prioritize shareholder value over employee welfare. We watched government after government make choices that benefited the old at the expense of the young.

We’re the generation that grew up on MTV, grunge music, and ironic detachment. We learned early that sincerity was dangerous. That caring too much left you vulnerable. That the safest position was cynical, skeptical, and self-protective.

But that cynicism has a cost. It makes it hard to engage. Hard to hope. Hard to believe that things can be better. We’re too jaded to be optimistic but too tired to be truly angry. We just keep our heads down and keep working.

Generation X invented the concept of work-life balance. Then we proceeded to be absolutely terrible at actually achieving it. We work longer hours than our parents did. We’re more stressed. More burned out. More likely to self-medicate with alcohol, prescription drugs, or whatever else helps us get through the week.

We were supposed to be the generation that did things differently. That rejected the corporate ladder-climbing of our parents. That prioritized quality of life over material success. But economic reality had other ideas. We can’t opt out of the rat race because we have mortgages to pay, children to support, and retirement to save for.

So we run faster on the hamster wheel. Work harder. Sacrifice more. And wonder why we’re so tired all the time.

Here’s the thing about Generation X. We’re resilient as hell. We had to be. Latchkey kids learn self-sufficiency early. You figure out how to cook your own dinner, do your own homework, and solve your own problems. Because nobody’s coming to save you.

That resilience serves us well in some ways. We can handle adversity. We can adapt. We can make do with less. But it also means we don’t ask for help when we need it. We soldier on when we should stop. We normalize dysfunction because that’s what we grew up with.

Generation X is the generation that remembers life before the internet. We’re old enough to remember card catalogs in libraries and waiting for film to be developed. But we’re young enough to have adapted to the digital revolution. We’re not digital natives, but we’re digitally bilingual.

This puts us in a strange position. We can code-switch between the analog world of our parents and the digital world of our children. We can translate between generations. Bridge the gap. But it also means we don’t fully belong to either world.

We’re the generation that was promised the future would be better. That technology would make life easier. That progress was inevitable and positive. We believed it, for a while. Then we saw technology used to monitor us at work, make us available 24/7, and replace human jobs with automation.

We’re not Luddites. We use technology. We appreciate its benefits. But we’re also deeply aware of its costs. We remember what life was like before smartphones. Before social media. Before the constant connectivity that makes it impossible to ever truly switch off.

Generation X is small. Numerically, politically, economically. We don’t have the voting power of the Boomers or the demographic weight of the Millennials. We’re the middle child of generations. Overlooked. Ignored. Expected to just quietly get on with it while everyone else gets the attention.

And you know what? That’s what we do. We get on with it. We don’t complain much. We don’t demand recognition. We just keep working. Keep paying the bills. Keep holding things together.

But there’s a cost to that. The cost of feeling unseen. Unheard. Unappreciated. The cost of watching Boomers retire comfortably while knowing you never will. The cost of seeing Millennials portrayed as the future while you’re still trying to figure out your present.

So what does this mean for you? If you’re Generation X, you need to understand that your exhaustion isn’t personal failure. It’s structural reality. You’re working harder than your parents did for less reward. That’s not because you’re doing something wrong. It’s because the game changed and nobody told you the new rules.

If you’re from another generation, you need to understand that Generation X isn’t lazy or cynical for no reason. We’re the generation that was promised prosperity and got stagnation instead. We’re tired because we’ve been running uphill for decades.

Generation X shaped the world you live in today too. Just less obviously than the Boomers. We built the internet infrastructure. We created the tech culture. We invented modern work practices, for better and worse.

We’re the generation that’s holding the middle. Caring for aging parents and growing children simultaneously. Working the jobs that keep society functioning. Paying the taxes that fund services for others.

And we’ll keep doing it. Because that’s what we do. We’re Generation X. We’re survivors. We’re cynical but capable. Exhausted but resilient. Forgotten but functional.

The question is, what happens when we finally stop? When we burn out completely? When we hit retirement age with insufficient pensions and bodies broken from decades of overwork?

That’s a question society will have to answer soon. Because Generation X isn’t going to stay in the middle forever. Eventually, we’ll age into the category of “problem” that the Boomers currently occupy. Except we’ll have less money, worse health, and more economic insecurity.

Understanding Generation X means understanding the cost of broken promises. The weight of being the bridge generation. The exhaustion of working harder for less.

That understanding might help you avoid our mistakes. Or at least see us more clearly when we’re too tired to explain ourselves anymore.

Further reading

• Coupland, D. (1991). Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. St. Martin’s Press.
• Howe, N., & Strauss, W. (1991). Generations: The History of America’s Future. William Morrow.
• Standing, G. (2011). The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. Bloomsbury.
• Sennett, R. (1998). The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. W. W. Norton.
• Taylor, P., & Gao, G. (2014). Generation X: America’s Neglected ‘Middle Child’. Pew Research Center.