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Television, too, has deflated the pretensions of youth. Gone are such shows as The Young Lawyers and The Young Rebels. Their replacements treat age with more deference. An older and a younger detective collaborate in solving cases in The Streets of San Francisco; an older and a younger doctor pool their skills in Marcus Welby, M.D. A new show, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, starts this month. While Bob and Carol are in their swinging 20s, Ted and Alice are more conventional over-30s.
Today's more sober appraisal of youth is based partly on a striking demographic fact: America is growing older. There are proportionately fewer young people than in the 1960s. In that decade, as a result of the post-World War II baby boom, the age group of 14 to 24 expanded by an unprecedented 13 million, or 52%. Youth was bound to make more of a stir on the basis of numbers alone. In the 1970s, however, this age group will increase by only some 4.3 million, while in the 1980s it will decline. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the median age of Americans may rise from 28.0 in 1970 to as high as 35.8 in the year 2000.
The overemphasis on youth in the 1960s was also part of the social dislocations of the time. If anything aroused generational solidarity, it was the Viet Nam War. To many observers, youth's almost unanimous opposition to the war made all young people seem alike. They appeared to speak with one magisterial voice, leading sympathizers to generalize: "They have something to tell us. We should listen." On most issues, in fact, youth spoke with as many voices as any other group, but the discords were drowned out in the uproar over war and generation gap. Class, ethnic and geographical differences went largely unexamined. When kids battled cops in the '60s, it was overlooked that the cops were often the same age as the kids. Once the war wound down, the convenient abstraction, youth, began to crumble.
The youth tide did not ebb without reshaping the landscape. A mere glimpse of the hair and clothing styles of Wall Street commuters is enough to convince anyone that the youth impact of the '60s was at least skin deep. And deeper. The voting age was lowered from 21 to 18, the draft was abolished, and students were given places of responsibility in college administrations. Age has paid another compliment to youth in taking over some of its protest tactics. People over 65, in particular, are organizing to better their lot.
When the war of the generations was at its most virulent, apocalyptic commentators thought that it might go on forever or end in victory for one side or the other. Perhaps America is fortunate in that no public passion seems to endure very long. Harvard Sociologist Seymour Lipset has calculated that American social obsessions—from Know Nothingism to McCarthyism —have a life cycle of four to five years. After that they quickly fade. The generational battle was true to the norm.