Note: All the material on this page was published by Strauss and Howe in 1991, before any Boomers had taken the Presidency, before the Gingrich "mandate" in Congress, before the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal became public, before Clinton's impeachment and acquittal, before the contested election of 2000 and the ascendency of President George W. Bush [43] and his neoconservative administration, before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, before the military operations in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003)--and before the pervasiveness of the World Wide Web. The text that follows, the authors' description of Millennial Generation midlife, entitled "Entering Midlife in an Outer-Driven Era (2026-2047)," is predictive, and possibly perceptive. I have retained the authors' future tense (even when referring to a future now in the past). What the authors then referred to as an "outer-driven era" they would later refer to as a "High" (First Turning) of a new saeculum.
When the crisis is past and a new Outer-Driven [High] era is dawning, the age bias of public institutions will tilt far (perhaps too far) in the direction of Millennials, a generation that people of all ages will by then equate with investment in the long-term future--much as government tilted in favor of the Republican Generation in the 1790s and the Greatest Generation in the late 1940s. In politics, as a sense of national community builds, Millennial voters may well congeal into an "end of ideology" generation whose political parties will show little difference in style. Meanwhile, they will take steps to solidify their peer conformity by unmasking radicals who embraced the wrong "ism" in their eager youth (the early-Twenty-first Century equivalent of Republican Jacobinism or Greatest Communism). The political culture of fortyish Millennials in the 2030s will be highly conformist. Only team players will be invited.24
By manner more than conviction, Millennials will construct a circa-2030 national mood reminiscent of the post-World War II "American High." Rising leaders will feel an obligation to complete the unfinished agenda of revered Boom elders. Institutions will strengthen, construction will boom, and American society will substantially change its outward appearance. In churches, ministers will emphasize social fellowship over spiritual self-discovery. In universities, brilliant minds will feel in godlike control over nature. Scientists will design (and taxpayers will fund) grand projects that glorify the thinker-doer-builder. "Right-stuff" Millennials will command (and younger technicians will copilot) manned space flights to the nearest planets. Midlife parents and their children (with old-fashioned Generation Xers looking on) will perceive themselves as distinctly "modern." The days of V-8 engines and vacuum tubes will seem as quaint in the 2030s as the days of steam turbines and telegraph lines did in the 1950s.
Like elder civic generations, fiftyish Millennials will feel most comfortable with widely separated sex roles. They may begin to view the assertive moral posturing of very old idealist women as anachronistic--and look upon the suspicious self-sufficiency of aging Xer women as antisocial and possibly dangerous. To the chagrin of old feminists, Millennials will exalt the masculine and criticize the feminine influence on public life--and do the reverse in private life. This resurgent sexism will limit the life options of rising New Adaptive women, thereby planting the seeds of a mid-Twenty-first Century feminist renaissance.
Thanks to the Millennial team orientation, ethnic loyalties will weaken relative to the sense of national community. Applying the circa-1990 definition, this is far and away the most "minority" generation in American history. But by the middle of the Twenty-first Century, the very word minority will have an odd ring to a generation more inclined to homogenize than pluralize. Racial integration will again be a public goal. This will give historic opportunity for Millennial blacks and Hispanics to achieve a far greater measure of social and political equality than their Silent grandparents ever knew. As Millennials try to rid the nation of racial and ethnic distinctions, however, they will be opposed by rising New Adaptives who will see advantage in preserving pluralism.
This page was last modified on 10/13/2025 01:22:49