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 elderhood, entitled "Entering Elderhood in an Awakening Era (2048-2069)," 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.
Sometime in the 2040s, vigorous veterans in their fifties may well march down Pennsylvania Avenue, accompanied by parade floats carrying their instruments of valor. They will celebrate the inauguration of America's first Millennial President. The message to older generations will be much the same as it was back in 1961: the arrival in power of a great and heroic civic generation.
Watching from the sidelines will be a new (and probably "boom") crop of kids, raised indulgently and scientifically by Millennial moms and dads. These kids will notice something a bit stale, a bit unreflective in the veterans' parade. Beyond that, watch out: Within a few years, just as busy Millennials are undertaking their grandest-ever projects, the fury of youth will erupt. By the 2050s, sixtyish Millennials can expect to find themselves on the wrong side of a two-apart "generation gap" reminiscent of the late 1960s. They will think back on what good children they were back in the 1990s and puzzle over why their children cannot afford them the same respect they once showed their own Boom parents. After the fires of a new Awakening have cooled, and after a series of outer-world disappointments, Millennials will retreat together into a comfortable old age--wondering with each other if their lifetime constructions can survive a rising generation of narcissists.25
As a Bushlike [42] President stages his generation's final inaugural--this could happen on January 20, 2069--old Millennial heroes, by now in their seventies, will march down Pennsylvania Avenue for the last time. The next President will come to power knowing about the Crisis of 2020 only through a child's eye, or from film clips. When that happens, Americans of all ages will feel something missing.
By our present-day capacity to reckon the future, the Millennial Generation will have an unfathomably long reach. Perhaps a million will live to see the Twenty-second Century. Some will be around to celebrate the arrival of babies who will live into the Twenty-third Century, babies who will grow up looking upon John Kennedy as distantly as Kennedy looked upon Thomas Jefferson. Those of us born in a year that will then seem ancient--in 1910, 1930, 1950, or 1970--can hardly imagine what world these future children might inherit, and what world they might pass on in their turn. We can only guess at the great wonders they will see, the great deeds they will accomplish, the great truths they will grasp. They too will play their role in the drama of American generations.
It has been a vast and magnificent pageant, with so many acts and so many actors since John Winthrop first felt the hand of God. Yet surely one with even more acts and actors yet to come.
This page was last modified on 08/13/2025 06:17:22