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It is not quite fair to accuse them, as some have done, of betraying their youthful ideals. Though Boomers have shaken the institutions of family and work, in some ways society is better for the jolts. Women have struggled to end the condescending notion of "women's work," and they have succeeded in winning a measure of equality at home and on the job. Men have had to learn new jobs like diaper changing, and more fathers actually know their children. Baby Boomers remain wary of institutions in general and Government in particular, and their reformist energy surfaces in grass-roots movements aimed at curing everything from drunken driving to the arms race. If some Boomers have resignedly become the organization men and women they once mocked, others have unleashed innovative and entrepreneurial energies that in the long run may provide enough growth and opportunity for them to realize their dreams after all.
From the first, the Baby Boomers were accustomed to instant gratification. Often brought up in shiny new suburban enclaves of middle-class comfort, they were doted on by parents who were counseled by Dr. Spock to dispense with the rigidities of traditional child rearing. Their surrogate parent was the television set. Parked in front of the glowing blue tube for an average of four hours a day, a quarter of their waking life, Boomers became the first video generation. Bored? Just change the channel. Hopping from one instant fad to another--from Davy Crockett coonskin caps to Hula-Hoops --they moved as a single mass, conditioned to think alike and do alike. Trendiness became a generational hallmark; from pot to yoga to jogging, they embraced the In thing of the moment and then quickly chucked it for another.
Maybe, like most other adolescents, they would have rebelled anyway. But the Viet Nam War--and, more precisely, the draft--guaranteed what was called, and what in some ways became, a revolution. Behind the barricades on campus grew up youth ghettos, strange worlds where adult rules were suspended and whirl was king. In reaction to parental values deemed empty and materialistic, a flamboyant and vocal minority known as the Woodstock generation preached rock music, free love and heightened consciousness. Mostly they celebrated youth. "We ain't never, never gonna grow up," yelled Yippie Leader Jerry Rubin. "We're gonna be adolescents forever!"
Rubin was already 30 when he was posturing as a Peter Pan of the left. By 1980 he was a $36,000-a-year securities analyst on Wall Street declaring that "money is power." At least Rubin was able to land a well-paid job. In the harsh economic climate of the 1970s, Baby Boomers discovered that the prosperity many took for granted as teenagers was hardly a given in the grownup world. The shock was particularly tough for the silent majority of Baby Boomers who had quietly supported the war and, when drafted, dutifully gone off to fight. The Viet Nam veterans returned to find little gratitude or employment opportunity at home. "I learned how to fight while they learned how to make money," says Vet Stuart Bridenball, who drifted in and out of jobs after winning a pair of Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart in the Army.