Silent Generation Youth

Born mostly during an era of Depression and war, the Silent were the product of a birthrate trough. They later became the only American generation to have fewer members per birthyear than both the generations born just before it (the Greatest) and just after it (the Boom). During the 1930s, the U.S. population grew by only 7 percent, the lowest decennial growth rate in American history.¹⁹

"Overprotective was a word first used to describe our parents," Benita Eisler recalls of her Depression-era youth. The first American generation to be born mainly in hospitals, Eisler's peers grew up hearing stern warnings not to "do that" or "eat this" or "go there" from midlife Lost Generation adults who regulated the child's world with the heaviest hand of the Twentieth Century.²⁰

While a child's fatal pony fall in Gone With the Wind reminded parents to keep a close watch over their charges, Norman Rockwell depicted the enduring image of Roosevelt's fourth freedom, "Freedom from Fear," by showing a sleeping child lovingly guarded by mother and father. The leading parenting books suggested "total situation" child care and other no-nonsense approaches, including Herman Bundesen's strict feeding regimen and John B. Watson's behavioral rules that critics likened to the housebreaking of puppies.²¹

Kids were read stories about "Tootle" (a little train that learned to always stay on the track) and Paddle to the Sea (a little boat that reached its destination by floating safely with the current). At the movies, they watched Spanky, Alfalfa, and the "Little Rascals" scrupulously mind their manners whenever they encountered elders.²²

As threats against the national community deepened, children were bluntly told that older generations were making enormous sacrifices so they could grow up enjoying peace and prosperity. Family survival took first priority and gave many kids a home life of limited cultural experience, plus a fear that any day could bring devastating news--a layoff, a foreclosed home, the combat death of a father. "As a young child," Frank Conroy remembers asking "what was in the newspapers when there wasn't a war going on."²³

In the years after VJ-Day, the Silent "became teenagers when to be a teenager was nothing, the lowest of the low," as Conroy put it. "Most of us kept quiet, attempting not to call attention to ourselves." Watching from the sidelines, they saw the nation celebrate thirtyish war heroes and an indulged new generation of postwar babies--and reaffirm a social order at once comfortable and impermeable. America offered young people peace and jobs, but put them in a social and cultural no-man's-land.²⁴

The kids were not working at jobs, as kids in earlier generations had. In the immediate postwar years, barely 1 percent of youths between 10 and 15 were in the labor force--the lowest child labor force participation rate of the Twentieth Century.²⁵

Their worst school discipline problems ranged from gum chewing to cutting in line. In 1942, adolescent graffiti in New York City was just about the tamest on record ("Nuts to all the boys on Second Avenue--except between 68th and 69th Streets!"). The pressure to conform came more from adults than from peers. Emulating older Greatest, most teens became strictly monogamous "steadies"--who then exchanged pins, got engaged, scheduled "June bride" postgraduation weddings, and "tied the knot."

It's too late now, there's no turnin' back,
You fell in love, you're part of The Tender Trap.

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This page was last modified on 08/16/2025 02:03:16