(3 of 5)
Only today, in our 30s, do we know that we were different—fundamentally different. When the generation lines began to form, we discovered, to our own surprise, that we did not automatically side with our parents. The new youth counterculture was scarcely less foreign to us than it was to them, but it did not strike us, as it did them, as hostile or threatening. The reason is simple enough: we had not been so committed to the old values as we had thought. We had rented them rather than bought them, and anything rented can be discarded without a sense of loss.
We are renters still, taking as our own the values of both old and young—and not thoroughly comfortable with either. Many of us now feel quite at ease with pot, rock and permissive sex; many of us reject the youih culture categorically. Most of us, however, occupy the unhappy position of being undecided: we want to enjoy, but deep down in our pre-Spock psyches, we feel we shouldn't. We puff marijuana at parties when we would be happier with Scotch or gin; we don bell-bottoms when we would rather be in tweeds; we jump into affairs when we would rather be at home in bed—asleep. The visible result often is a compromise: the staid Wall Street lawyer, in vest, rep tie and cuffed trousers in the daytime, who turns Bloomingdale hippie in the evening, donning tie-dyed pants and tank top to weed the garden.
Perhaps our uncertainty is symbolized by the uneasy experience of a New York architect, 31, who lived with his girl friend for a year before marriage. The under-30s never even thought about the arrangement; the over-40s vocally disapproved. Many of his contemporaries, on the other hand, were obviously disturbed but said nothing, uncertain of their own feelings or afraid of being thought square. "The short-hairs and the naked-faces have a hard time being real," asserts a bearded 27-year-old with amiable contempt. And he is right.
Many of our marriages have not survived the strain of being pulled in two directions. The number of divorces for those in their 30s is alarming, the number of unhappy marriages staggering. Sex is probably the same for us as it is for everyone else past puberty. The difference is that our expectations are now those of the young, while many of our marriages were formed according to the rules of the old. The over-40s may be no happier, but they usually are more resigned or more accepting; the under-30s may be frustrated too, but they at least are not caught in the same tight bind of mixed emotions. Our views on religion are scarcely less confused. Is God dead? Don't ask us. For the majority of us, religion is merely a word, sometimes honored, sometimes not.