Silent Generation

[2] In the United States, the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the early-to-mid 1940s caused people to have fewer children and as a result, the generation is comparatively small.

[4] However, they have also been noted as forming the leadership of the civil rights movement and the 1960s counterculture, and creating the rock and roll music of the 1950s and 1960s.

They lived through times of prosperity as young adults, economic upheaval in middle age, and relative comfort in later life.

[7] A reason later proposed for this perceived silence is that as young adults during the McCarthy Era, many members of the Silent Generation felt it was unwise to speak out.

This generation had reached maturity as early as 1946 and as late as 1963, but the majority of Silents had become of age in the 1950s, in the wake of the Civil rights movement, which was followed by older boomers in the 1960s.

[3][17] People born in the later years of World War II who were too young to have any direct recollections of the conflict are sometimes considered to be cultural, if not demographically, baby boomers.

Other popular activities included reading comics, playing board games, going to the cinema, and joining children's organizations such as the scouts.

[28] The quality of education fell everywhere but particularly in urban areas for various reasons, including a shortage of teachers and supplies, the distress pupils suffered from air raids and the disruption caused by evacuations.

[32][33] However, rationing during World War II and the years after improved the health of the population overall with one study conducted in the early 2000s suggesting that a typical 1940s child ate a healthier diet than their counterpart at the start of the 21st century.

Go round the country, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime – nor indeed in the history of this country.The idea of the "teenager" as a distinctive phase of life associated with rebellion against adult authority and older generations social norms became increasingly prominent in public discourse during the 1940s and 50s.

[57] Cultural norms[58][59][60][61][62] and government policy[63][64][65][66] encouraged marriage and women to focus on their role as homemaker, wife and mother whilst their husband acted as the household's primary breadwinner.

Abortion[67] and homosexuality[68] were illegal whilst later investigations suggest that many women who gave birth out of wedlock had their babies forcibly removed from them.

[67][68] Heavy industry had been troubled in the UK throughout the 1960s,[71] this combined with a global energy crisis and influx of cheap goods from Asia led to rapid deindustrialisation by the mid 1970s.

[72][73][74] This situation led to significant political instability and industrial unrest causing a great deal of frustration and inconvenience to the general public.

[80] For instance, her government created the right-to-buy scheme which allowed renters to buy up their council homes at a reduced prices.

They were, however, by the end of the time period studied, less likely to vote for the Conservatives than the next youngest age group, baby boomers.

When the Silent Generation began coming of age after World War II, they were faced with a devastated social order within which they would spend their early adulthood and a new enemy in Communism via the betrayal of post-war agreements and rise of the Soviet Union.

[93] This generation was also heavily influenced by the transformations brought about by the Golden Age of Radio, the rise of trade unions, the development of transatlantic flight and the discovery of penicillin during their formative years.

[16] From their childhood experiences during the Depression and the example of frugality set by their parents, Silents tended to be thrifty and even miserly, preferring to maximize a product's lifespan, i.e., "get their money's worth."

[96] Critics of the theory that Silents tend towards conformity and playing it safe note that, at least in the United States, leaders of 1960s-era rebellion/innovation/protest such as Muhammad Ali, Bob Dylan, Noam Chomsky, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jimi Hendrix were members of the Silent Generation, and not Baby Boomers, for whom these figures were heroes, although the majority of their followers were Boomers.

[97] Widely seen as "following the rules" and benefiting from stable wealth creation, their Boomer and Gen X children would become estranged from them due to their different views regarding social issues of the day and their relatively decreased economic opportunity, creating a different generational zeitgeist.

For example, the Boomer children were instrumental in bringing about the counterculture of the 1960s, and the rise of left wing, liberal views considered anti-establishment, which went directly against the "work within the system" approach that many Silents had practiced.

These less-restrictive behavioral standards, seen as overly permissive by the Silents, further estranged those Boomers from their parents and, among other things, gave rise in the 1970s to the term generation gap.