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Coming of Age in the Fifties and Sixties: Gender, Race and Generational Identity
From: University of Michigan
| By:
Abigail J. Stewart |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
 How do major social events affect our development, values and identities? While it has been a challenge for psychologists to find methods and theories that help bring together social history and social structure in understanding people's lives, Abigail Stewart (right), Agnes Inglis Collegiate Professor of psychology and women's studies at the University of Michigan, and her colleagues turned to graduates of an American high school in the 1950s and 1960s to examine how generational identities are constructed. The team adopted an unusual approach for psychologists; they decided to use surveys, interviews, and many archival documents to try to understand how the generation we grow up with, and the experiences that shape us in young adulthood, influence how we understand our collective past and ourselves. |
 ur study begins with a school we call Midwest High School, in a prosperous midwestern American city we call Oak Valley. My colleagues and I chose this school because the students came from diverse family backgrounds in terms of social class, and because about one quarter of the entering class of the high school, during the 1950s, was African American. Between the mid-fifties and the late sixties, the school and its surrounding neighborhood underwent substantial demographic changes that mirrored those in cities throughout America; it became less and less white. In 1968 the school was about 50 percent African American, and the school board made a controversial decision to convert it into a middle school, and bus the high school students to other public high schools in the city.  A few years later the middle school was closed, and a residential job corps training program with a regional constituency was housed in the high school building. Despite this history, the graduates of this high school continue to identify strongly with it, holding reunions, selling t-shirts and mugs, and expressing strong "school spirit." |
Our research team included three other psychologists: David G. Winter, Professor of Psychology at University of Michigan; and U-M alumni Donna and Eaaron Henderson-King, currently faculty members at Grand Valley State University. Faculty colleagues, and graduate and undergraduate students from many disciplines (sociology, history, American culture, music, business and psychology, among others) have worked with us on
various aspects of the project. Our research, housed at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, was supported by a grant from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to the Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. |
We were interested in the graduates of this school, because they came from a fairly typical American city, and a school that was diverse in terms of race, class and gender. We were interested in how social structures shaped their lives, through the school experience as well as outside it; we also wanted to explore the role of generation. |
 The model we used is quite simple; it assumes that there are some connections between broad periods in the individual's life course and the impact of major social events--depressions, wars, and social movements. If you want to make a prediction about the kind of impact a social event will have, you need to know two things:
- What was the backdrop against which this event occurred? That is, did this event mark a drastic discontinuity in the flow of events, or was it relatively continuous with prior events?
- What was the age of the individual at the time?
In the absence of cohort- (or generation-) defining events, the default process should be one of identification with values and ideals of past generations. According to this model, cohort-defined generations should be relatively little interested in passing on values from a prior generation to a subsequent one. They should instead see themselves as having participated in a process of social change and transformation that mostly makes them want to pass on an interest in and commitment to that change process, rather than to pass on particular values. It is an interesting question, though, to ask what is involved--psychologically--in the process of passing on of values. If it is not cohort identification that motivates it, is it some other kind of identification? |
 The survey data do suggest that both European and African Americans in the fifties cohorts identify with parental generation events, and have relatively flat investment of social events with meaning across time. In contrast, both groups in the sixties cohort seem to have invested much more meaning in events associated with their own coming of age. We turned next to the interview data to try to verify and enrich our understanding of how the sixties cohort invested historical and social events with meaning in a qualitatively different way than the fifties cohort. We conclude that in fact political and social events helped define and shape their personal identities in a way that they did not for the fifties cohort. |
Investing social events with personal meaning
We invited our interviewees to talk about these things, by asking them the following question that college-educated women shaped by the sixties have been asked in the past: "Looking back over your life, are there any events--historical or public events, social movements, or other things--that stand out as having been particularly important to you?" |
First, a substantial proportion of fifties cohort members indicated that such events had not really affected them at all. Here's how one person put it:
I have always been pretty aloof on that. I am not very interested in politics. I don't get involved in politics. I recognize that it is important but it is just not for me.
In addition, as in the survey, several fifties cohort members who did mention events named World War II, though they were only 4-6 years old when it ended. |
In contrast, when we asked members of the sixties cohort the same question a substantial proportion identified events that were profoundly meaningful to them drawn from their own adolescence. For example, one European American respondent said,
All the assassinations. That was a major impact on me. I mean there was a lot of hope lost there over that. Especially Bobby [Kennedy]. I mean, he had a lot to offer, but it just went by the wayside...
Another white woman responded this way:
Well, of course, John Kennedy when he was assassinated. When Martin Luther King was assassinated. That was probably a strong turning point....and I think--was it Roe vs. Wade, and when they tried to get the Congress to overturn, and I worked on that, you know. I went out and tried to get signatures and stuff on that. And that was a strong influence in how I thought about things...
An African American woman said, "I think the only thing that sticks out for me--I remember a couple friends of ours died in Vietnam." Finally, a European American woman said,
The civil rights movement I think was very important. I think it highlighted for me--it kind of justified for me why I was growing where I was. And then it helped me identify. I can remember where I was when I heard Martin Luther King was killed.... I was in a car coming back from a junior achievement thing I was in and just being devastated by that....  A few fifties cohort members mentioned the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, as do many people in the sixties cohort. There was, even here, a difference. First, although some members of both cohorts described the experience as a "vivid memory," only members of the sixties cohort described it as having long-term political or personal meaning. For example, the woman just quoted, who was in a car coming back from a junior achievement event said of the King assassination, "I just remember the emotions. I remember being just profoundly saddened and, you know, that was just a huge loss." Later in the interview she described her relationship to the anti-war movement, and the student power movement. She said, "All of those things had a lot of influence on who I am and I guess the whole idea of questioning authority was important to me.... And that's kind of probably shaped who I am to some degree." |
There were no race or gender differences in what I've just outlined about the responses from our fifties cohort. Interestingly, neither the European Americans nor the African Americans in the fifties cohort brought up the civil rights movement as important in response to this question. Once prompted by follow-up questions, their answers--though suggesting they viewed it as important--still did not suggest any sort of identity-formative role of the movement in their lives. |
Implications for the construction of political/historical identity
For the fifties cohort, the events that were named on first responses were often drawn from early childhood, there was little focus on the events of the sixties, and virtually none on events from the period of their own late adolescence--events from the Eisenhower years that included, for example, Sputnik, or the Soviet intervention in Hungary. In short, there was little conscious sense of a personal connection to social and political events at all. As we expected, then, this sample from this generation was not especially moved by social and historical events they had experienced or could remember, and did not view themselves as part of a generation shaped by particular events--that is, they did not have a conscious generational identity. And this was true regardless of race, class and gender. |
The sixties cohort was a striking contrast: they recalled many events from their own formative years, and their memories included strong emotion. In addition, they invested those memories with substantial personal meaning. Interestingly, they did not invest other events from other periods with personal meaning. Thus, they differed from the fifties cohort not only in their greater tendency to see themselves in terms of social history--as members of a historically-defined cohort--but they literally attached emotional and personal significance to social events, thereby tying their own personal identities to the larger political and social sphere. This tendency to see oneself as acting on a political, social, or historical stage--like the tendency not to--inevitably results not only in different personality structures or identities, but also in different kinds of adult engagement with processes of social change and transformation on the one hand, and processes of preservation of the past on the other. Our next challenge was to try to understand what "generation" might mean to members of the fifties cohort, if it did not mean identification with historical events. |
Coming of age in the fifties: A different meaning of "generation"
Members of the fifties generation strongly endorsed certain core values at the center of their own lives, as well as at the center of what their parents taught or exemplified. They often articulated these values in answer to a question we asked: "What do you think your parents wanted the story of your life to be when you were in high school?" One common response focused on the parents' hope that their children would be "happy." But the nature of the elements constituting "happiness" were in some ways particular to this generation. For example, one white male elaborated that hope this way: "The folks wanted me to be happy, meet a nice girl and live a nice life. To be a good citizen, have friends, be close to family, appreciate the good things and especially to be patient and to work hard and things would come." |
Though many of these elements were very similar for men and women, there were also some differences. For example, one white woman said her parents wanted her to go to college after high school. Speaking of herself in her parents' voice, she said, "she would get a degree so she has 'the ace in the hole.' She will marry correctly someone who can provide well for her." This woman recognized by implication that her parents' wishes for her were driven in part by their notions of what was necessary and appropriate for a girl--a job she can fall back on, and a husband who will be a good provider. Other members of the sample described similar aspirations for girls. |
Several people in the sample felt their parents focused most strongly not on their happiness, but on educational and occupational achievement, and social mobility. Graduates from poor and from middle class homes both recall a stress on the importance of work and upward mobility. For example, one white man from a relatively modest background said, "I always felt a lot of pressure to be successful." Another, whose family was more prosperous, said his parents wanted him to "be quote successful, end quote. That meant college degree; that meant a certain degree of financial stability or income or however you put it. All the accoutrements, you know, that was expected back in the 50s." And a white woman from the same kind of background said, "I think they had pretty high expectations for me...Not a lot of pressure...I think they just kind of expected that I would do something professionally." One black man, whose family was poorer, felt his father wanted him to have "a better life," and a better life started, in his view, with "education." |
These answers reveal some important distinctions that underlie the common focus on upward mobility and work achievement. Less prosperous parents of fifties graduates, especially African American parents, focused on education as a means toward jobs that offered more financial stability and a decent life; they also focused more on working hard and responsibility than they did on making lots of money or having particular kinds of jobs. This greater focus on behavior rather than outcome is made clearer if we contrast two men's accounts. First, the white man above, who felt pressure to be successful, also said his parents wanted him to:Have a professional career. Just professional. ...I could be anything I wanted to be as long as it was a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. In contrast, an African American man described what would make his parents proud:Of how I turned out to be a man... [that I] don't mistreat people--give respect to receive it. Kept a job, know how to conduct myself on the job, know who the supervisor is, work with the supervisor... I think they'd be proud of me. For this man the issue is how he behaves as a responsible man in the work world, not the outward evidence of accomplishment that comes with accumulation of degrees or money. |
Undoubtedly this greater flexibility in the definitions of success that African American young people of this generation internalized was based on African American parents' knowledge that the opportunities for their children would be more constrained than those for European American children. |
There was a similar flexibility in the definitions of family success that African Americans of this generation internalized, and inflexibility in the minds of European Americans. One white man said, "my parents didn't want anything more than the perfect American family." In contrast, African American parents were viewed as hoping that their children would be able to support their families. |
While that was assumed by the other groups, too, there was a softening of this expectation for African American offspring in the fifties. Getting married was desirable, and if there was a family, it was critical to stay with it and provide for it. But if a family didn't materialize, that was felt to be acceptable to African American parents. Again, it seems to us that there is a kind of flexibility about the outcome, in the context of firm expectations and demands about behavior within particular outcomes. In contrast, European American kids were faced with very specific expectations about outcomes, and not as much was filled in about behavior. |
Finally, both African American and European American men and women stressed the importance of religion in their families of rearing. Most families attended church at least once each week, as well as many other church-based activities--catechism, choir, and age-based groups. There was a strong emphasis on the performance of religious commitment, and on behaving in a proper manner, and much less emphasis on religious belief. The most cynical version of this was expressed by one white male, who said "It was just more going through the motions." A little less cynically, but still rather vaguely, a white woman described how her parents communicated the importance of religion in her family: "I don't think they were quite as open about verbalizing it as I might be now with my children. You just sensed it, you were very aware of it and this was just the thing to do." |
Strikingly, most of the participants in the sample described themselves as having strong religious faith, and many participate both in the life of a religious community like a church, and in religious activities at home. Though in many cases they are participating in a different denomination from the one in which they were raised, virtually all see themselves as continuing a commitment to religion that they learned from their parents, and worked hard--mostly successfully--to cultivate in their children. |
In sum, then, the men and women of different social class and ethnic backgrounds of the 1950s cohort are strikingly similar in some ways. Specifically, they see themselves as enacting and passing on profound personal commitments to a work ethic that emphasizes hard work and success, to family values that require commitment not only to a marriage partner, but responsibility to children, and to religious faith. It is equally apparent that they do not see themselves as participating in a process of social change, or as holding important collective identities, either as young adults or in their present lives. |
The model melting pot
There is one more important feature of this generation's values and beliefs that may help account for these thematic absences. Many individuals--European and African American alike--expressed a very strong view that their high school was quite idyllic, in terms of social relations. They described it as having been a very successful example of the American "melting pot"--a place where differences were accepted, and conflict was nonexistent. We were surprised by the strength and intensity of participants' expression of this view, and the degree to which it was shared across class, race and gender. |
Of course, some individuals did describe differences within the school community, especially economic differences associated with the feeder elementary schools. One white woman commented that for African American students "There had to be an undercurrent, their not feeling accepted and having equal rights..." But overall the picture drawn was one of acceptance and mutual respect across those differences. Certainly some of the respondents--both African American and European American--noted that in retrospect Midwest High School was not fully egalitarian, but many individuals contrasted their experiences of a relatively successful transcendence of difference in Midwest High School with the ethnic conflict and deterioration of the inner city since that time. They portrayed the fifties as a sort of golden age, when the melting pot vision was actually attained. Most of the people we talked with felt the school represented a model of what was possible and has been lost in the contemporary era. |
This memory of Midwest High School as a successful model melting pot may help us understand how powerful the shaping social experiences of this generation actually were, despite not being tied to particular identities or historical events. Many of the class members expressed not that they were simply too busy or distracted to attend to the social changes and activities of the sixties, but that they found those changes and activities repellent, and they recalled their own coming of age with great nostalgia. Their warm memories of the social world at Midwest High School and in Oak Valley in the 1950s powerfully immunized them against later calls for social change. |
These data suggest, then, that perhaps both cohort identification and identification with parental values serve as anchors of identities in later life--points of reference and resistance in the context of subsequent events. The issue is both what past the generation identifies with, and what kind of use they make of it. Some remembered pasts, like the fifties, are golden ages of expression of permanent values, pasts that need to be restored or preserved. Others, like the sixties, are golden ages in which new values were created, times of transformation that serve as models for future change, not continuity. All cohorts or generations include individuals with each of these dispositions, and the presence of these two dispositions in human personalities has certainly been noted before. |
What I am arguing today is not just that these two dispositions exist, but that they may help us understand how the generation we grow up with, and the experiences that shape us in young adulthood may in fact predispose us to different uses of the past. Moreover, different generations have different proportions of these two basic human dispositions. |
I am, then, arguing that generation provides an important context for the construction of the personalities not only of those whose identities are shaped in adolescence by transformative social events, but also of those whose identities are shaped by powerful visions of core values that transcend history. And the coexistence of generations with different proportions of those two predispositions in a given population--in our own time as in others--ensures that there is always a struggle over both their uses of the past and their visions of the future. |
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