I was born in the summer of 1972, perfectly in the middle of the 16 years that make up one of the coolest, smallest, and most independent of all the American generations: Generation X.  

Generation X (Gen X) kids were born between 1965 and 1980 (some count the children born in the early 1980s as well), and we were known as the “forgotten middle child” of American generations, and also the “last generation of feral children” according to one social media influencer. Gen X kids were wedged in between the more populous Baby Boomers and the younger, tech-savvy Millennials. 

Gen X kids developed some serious life skills early on (which we will dig into in a moment) and later grew up to be savvy, skeptical, cynical, self-reliant, resourceful, practical, and hard-working adults who are currently in leadership positions worldwide.  Gen X adults also tend to not give a flip about a lot of things, including what other people think of them. 

The following post is my attempt to encapsulate some of the pros and cons of growing up Gen X based on research, social media influencers and their corresponding Gen X audience, and by living in this generation for several decades. I also offer some personal reflections. Please see my qualifiers written to fellow Gen Xers as well as our parents in the closing section.

Alright Gen Xers, let’s buckle up our seatbelts and…wait!  There were no seatbelts back when we were growing up!  So instead of buckling up, watch out for the “mom arm” that will come flying out in the event of a sudden stop, take another sip of the Orange Julius you bought at the mall because you did your chores, quietly roll down the window in the backseat because your dad just lit one up and you can’t stand it, and read this post. 

I want to start with two stories that encapsulate the reality of growing up Gen X from two of my closest friends.  I am changing their names for their privacy and awarding them two of the most popular Gen X girls names of all times!  I will bold some of the common themes of growing up Gen X.  Please note that in the second story, Lisa’s father was the one who paid for the country club membership for Lisa and her brother, as his way of providing for his children.    

Jennifer’s story:

I was born in 1971 in a small southern town with Civil War historic roots.  My teenage parents divorced in the 1980s and my mom had to work at Pizza Hut and the garment factory to support my sister and me. We were poor and lived paycheck to paycheck.  My sister and I were latch-key kids, and we missed the bus on numerous occasions because our mom was not there to see us off to school.  Prior to the divorce there were good times: playing in the woods, creek, cow pasture, and a forest fire lookout.  We were unsupervised and often gone all day.  My mom would blow the horn of our vehicle in order to alert us that it was time to come home.  If we were home and seemingly bored, we were told to “get on outside” and the front door would lock behind us as we exited.  We were gone all day. I grew up in a cloud of cigarette smoke and riding while standing up in the back of a truck bed.  At one point during the middle of my parents’ separation, we left our home to stay with a family friend, but there was no communication about what was happening, and it made me feel insecure because we didn’t talk about our feelings.  My dad just “disappeared” from my life, and no one really sat down to communicate with us about the fact that our parents were in the process of getting a divorce.  This left scars of insecurity deep within me. In addition, due to lack of supervision, I was also sexually abused by a few men. I also developed some unhealthy eating patterns at that time as well.  Looking back on my childhood and after becoming a mom myself, I realize that we were talked at but not talked to or talked with.  

Lisa’s story:

My brother and I are definitely products of the ’80s. Our parents divorced when we were four and six respectively, making us one of two families in our entire school with divorced parents. Seemingly our family was the beginning of the end of the nuclear family, in our area at least. We were typical latchkey kids, being left at home for several hours up to all day on Saturdays while my mom worked from the age of seven on. Just like most kids of the ’80s, we were out all day with our friends, only having to come home before dark unless we were going to be punished…which we often chose instead of leaving our friends early. But perhaps not typical were our summers. Beginning at the ages of seven and nine respectively, six days a week, my mom dropped us off at our country club at 7:30 in the morning– two and a half hours before the country club even opened. We had to entertain ourselves for those hours and did so in multiple ways to include joining the swim team, the dive team, taking tennis lessons, golf lessons, exploring the entire 176-acre country club to include the golf courses and sneaking into the tennis courts to play before everything opened. We played hide and seek, created our own scavenger hunts, and frankly just survived the boredom until my mom picked us back up at 5:30 pm. Again, my mom was a single mom having to work full time and did the best she could. But I guess the word neglect doesn’t begin to cover what we experienced. We also were the house cleaners, the dishwashers, the clothes washers. And everything had to be done to perfection, or we had to redo it. Our mom was Mommy Dearest on steroids. I remember telling her once, “You only had kids because you wanted servants!” That didn’t sit well. But like most Gen Xers, we not only survived, we thrived, and we are who we are because of this upbringing. Would I trade it? That is a question for another day. 

Gen X kids were free to come and go as we pleased and enjoyed many adventures on our bikes or in the woods with our amazing group of friends. In the summer, we drank from the hose and had to be home when the streetlights came on.  We interacted face to face with our peers and parents on the regular.  Minus about four hours on Saturday morning, we enjoyed the glow of the sunshine on our faces versus the glow of the computer or the television screen throughout our entire childhood(s).  

Conversely, Gen X kids went through their early years during a unique time in American history: right during and after the cataclysmic social, cultural, and moral shifts of the 1960s through 80s including the hippie movement, the sexual revolution, the women’s liberation movement, the spike of the serial killer movement, and the ongoing threat of nuclear war. The traditional, two parent nuclear family began to unravel, the divorce rate skyrocketed, and half of all married couples parted ways.  This led to many single parent households, with (usually) moms as the primary caregiver.  Single mom parenting led to much fatherlessness, which is proven to be detrimental for children growing up. 

According to Wikipedia, a 2004 marketing study conducted by Reach Advisors stated that Gen X kids “went through its all-important, formative years as one of the least parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history.” As previously mentioned, latchkey kids were prevalent during this time, a result of increased divorce rates and increased maternal participation in the workforce at a time before childcare options outside the home were widely available. In addition, Gen Xers were children at a time when society was less focused on children and more focused on adults. Researchers described a cultural shift where the long-held societal value of staying together for the sake of the children was replaced with a societal value of parental and individual self-actualization.

As we were the first generation of latchkey children, this often led to loneliness, boredom, fear, giving into peer pressure, substance experimentation and abuse, sexual activity, depression, and behavioral problems.  Divorce was hard on us kids.  According to a longitudinal study, children whose parents later divorced exhibited higher levels of depression, anxiety, antisocial substance abuse, addictions, mental and physical health problems, and poor educational outcomes.

Due to the above mentioned research, there appeared to be a rise of absentee parenting in our generation.  Children were allowed to roam freely all day (and sometimes at night) with no adult supervision.  The whole “I had to come home when the streetlights came on” is a very real thing for many Gen Xers. Many kids had to “drink from the hose” on the weekends or during the summer as their parents would not allow them back inside their homes for hours at a time. I read many comments about parents “dropping off kids” here and there all day long with no adult supervision.  Many came home for dinner only to head back out again.  While all this freedom was exciting for us, and a lot of fun, we didn’t always make the best decisions with all that freedom, and sometimes we ended up in unsafe situations because our society was less safe than it was during previous generations. 

Vehicle safety support was nonexistent back in the day.  Drinking beer while holding an infant in one’s lap in the front seat of a pickup truck with no seatbelt on was sadly the norm.  My sister remembers driving down the New York state thruway in the back of one of my parents’ trucks, laying down with a large tarp draped over the bed of the truck traveling at a high rate of speed. 

There was very little support in many categories growing up. Here are just a few of the support deficiencies: child support payments were not commensurate with inflation and cost of living for the custodial parent, mental health supports were not in place, nor were substance abuse supports, medication supports, childcare supports for the working parent, and the list goes on.  One of the saddest comment threads I read was about the time when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in mid-flight in January of 1986.  Many of us kids were watching that whole episode on TV from school when it happened in live time.  Unfortunately, because emotions were not always handled properly back in the day, teachers would move the class right along as if nothing happened.  Kids were stunned and traumatized, but since mental health supports for kids were not available, everything was swept under the rug and “moved on from.”  In addition, there were also no child abuse reporting supports in place.  Sexual abusers were generally not reported, so they were free to move along and continue to abuse children. That’s why there was so much “passing the trash” at schools, churches, and universities back in the day.

Many of us grew up in a smoke cloud. I remember literally everyone in my family smoked, both in the house and in the car.  I remember some members of my family would actually roll the windows UP (not down) while driving, so that the car was filled with a raging smoke cloud. 

Gen X kids and their parents seemed to have a lot of trouble with displaying healthy emotions.  Our parents seemed to emotionally express themselves either too much or too little in the form of too much yelling and screaming, or too little in the form of suppressing emotions.  This led to many of us kiddos going to our bedrooms to cry and figure out emotions on our own. Many kids were taught that emotions were bad.

And finally, I’m not even going to touch the way Gen X kids were disciplined with a ten-foot pole, a leather belt, a hairbrush, a clothes hanger, a wooden spoon, or any other firm weapon of choice within grabbing distance of a very angry, red-faced parent.  Not gonna touch it.  

I had my mom proofread this article prior to publication as I didn’t want to hurt or offend her, plus I was interested in her feedback.  She told me that many of the supports listed above were not in place for her Boomer generation either, including but not limited to that fact that her dad was gone a lot, she played unattended until the streetlights came on, there was no vehicle safety, lots of looming cigarette smoke clouds, and emotions were not expressed in her home.  I thought long and hard about her points, which I found to be very good.  I told her that I thought the difference for Gen X was the high divorce rate, the dissolution of the nuclear family, and the huge changes in society and our culture which made our world less safe.  All of this made our growing up years potentially very difficult for some in our generation.

I am sure many Boomer and Silent Gen readers will resonate with her comments.  I admit I am still figuring out this topic and evolving as I go.   

Gen X tends to overcompensate:

Now that Gen X kids are all grown up, some of us overcompensate with our kids due to the lack of attention and nurturing we experienced as children.  Sometimes we swing too far on the pendulum and end up helicopter parenting or snow-plow parenting.  Here is a blurb on Gen X as parents of school aged children, and how we are pushy and powerful at times as we advocate on behalf of our own kiddos:

We’ve been taking care of ourselves since we started going to school, and we don’t trust authority figures, because they weren’t trustworthy when we were growing up. Our parents didn’t know what was going on at school, and our teachers didn’t know what was going on at home. We’re not going to let this happen to our children — not even for a second. We’ll do whatever we have to do to make sure our kids get what they need.  (source: https://www.edutopia.org/generation-x-parents-relationships-guide)

If we don’t find ourselves overcompensating at parenting, maybe we overcompensate at working, being successful, and making money so that we will be able to have all the stuff that we never had as kids. Maybe we overcompensate with our emotions by over explaining to our kids that it’s ok to have feelings and to express them.  Maybe we tell our kids we love them all the time because we didn’t hear those words growing up. 

Or, maybe you do as the title of this article indicates: you are just quietly working hard, raising your kids, making a living, and ruling your corner of the world.

Gen X adults are leaders:

As of 2023, the Boomers and the Silent Generation still represent the majority in the U.S. House and Senate and represent the leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (President Biden is a member of the Silent Generation).  However, as the years tick by, Gen X will be stepping up to the plate in many leadership roles worldwide. 

Notable political Gen Xers include former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his arch nemesis Matt Gaetz, current House Speaker Mike Johnson, Governor Gavin Newsome, Governor Ron DeSantis, former governor Nikki Haley, and Justin Trudeau, to name just a few.  Other influential Gen Xers include Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (the two richest men in the world – to be fair Bezos was born in 1964), Larry Page, Sergey Brin (two more rich guys), Tom Brady, Reese Witherspoon, Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Tiger Woods, Dan Bongino, and David Muir, the newscaster for ABC World News tonight. I went to school with David, and we were friendly acquaintances. 

I find it interesting and ironic that on the cusp of this leadership turnover, the United States is going through cataclysmic changes both in our economy, our culture, our government, our technology, and our moral values as a nation. Our borders are out of control; our economy is not doing well (cereal is double the price where I live); our cities are experiencing a huge spike in crime; we no longer trust our political leaders; we are dealing with weather events like never before; the world is on fire (Ukraine, Israel); and the list goes on.  Things have dramatically changed in the United States culturally and morally. I have spoken to many Boomers and Silent Gen folks, and they are mourning the loss of the country they once knew and loved.  One of my parents, who is not even a person of a Christian faith, recently told me that they thought we might be going through what the Bible refers to as the “End Times.”  This parent went on to say that they had never seen anything like this in all their years.

I don’t know where we are as a nation, or where we are on the Biblical timeline, but I do know that Gen X is the generation that is going to have to manage it, govern it, and repair it (if possible).  I have been pondering if there is a connection to how we were raised, which formed and shaped us into these strong and independent adults, and how we are now on the brink of running the entire show, in much of the same cultural craziness as was experienced while we were being raised (but worse, in my opinion). 

Here is the question I am currently pondering:

Is it possible that God used the freedom and difficulties of our childhood experiences to shape us into the adults we are today, so that we are set to be leaders during this unique time in world history?

Healing my Gen X childhood:

I have written about my childhood in previous posts, and I will link them at the bottom of this article.  The bottom line is that I had a loving and stable childhood in some ways, and a difficult and dysfunctional childhood in other ways.  

I have been on a healing journey since I was a teenager. At 13, during a youth church service, I was healed from the sexual abuse I experienced as a child.  Later, I forgave the man who molested me and ended up leading him to Christ.  In my twenties, I was healed from the wound of rejection I experienced as a child by taking my walk-man and several cassette tapes (remember those?) to a coffee shop and listening to sermons on rejection by Pastor Charles Stanley. 

Forgiveness and grace are other themes I have worked on for many decades. I try to understand that my parents are imperfect people who parented and loved me in the best way they knew at that time.  Most of the way they parented me probably came from their own parents, for better or for worse. They did a very good job in many ways, and I am who I am today because of them.  Thank you to my four parents.  I love you! 

I also decided that it’s ok to communicate with my parents about ways they may have hurt me growing up.  Many years ago, I took a walk with one of my parents one night and told them (kindly, and with respect) that I didn’t feel that they made me a priority when I was younger, and that their inattention hurt my feelings.  I went on to tell this parent that, although they had hurt me deeply, I forgave them, as God has forgiven me.  I was shocked at their response, which was:

“That’s all in the past, and we need to move forward.”  

I was momentarily crushed at this parents’ response.  I went back to the drawing-board and had to re-forgive this parent and give them grace.  This parent was most likely repeating what they had learned from their own parents. After this interaction, I immediately made an inner vow that I would not make this same mistake with my own kids, and I have been a quality-time, present, loving, and relational parent ever since. 

I want to be the best, healthiest, and most spiritually mature adult I can be.  I want to be greatly used by God in this challenging season. My hope and prayer for you, fellow Xer, is that you will receive the healing you may need from your childhood wounds, if healing is needed. My other prayer for you is that you would realize how much God loves you and that He desires you to come into His family. God created you for a purpose, and He longs for you to know that He sent his only Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for your sin and moral shortcomings, so that you can have a relationship with Him on earth and then go to heaven when you leave this earth (and, Gen Xers, we are half-way there). 

God has great plans for you and wants to use you in this unique time in world history!

On a practical note, I also hope you will find balance in every area of your life, forgive and give grace to your parents if you haven’t already, and look for ways to serve your fellow man in these very strange times we are living in!

Closing thoughts:

I want to end this deep post on a lighter note with a couple of funny stories. 

One of the things that Gen X is known for is being the “forgotten middle child” or the “forgotten generation.”  One of my girlfriends recently told me that, as they were scrolling through Facebook one day, she noticed that her stepmom had celebrated National Daughter’s Day on Facebook.  This put a smile on her face, as she expected to see a picture of herself and her sister on this post along with her stepmom’s other three daughters.  But lo and behold, there were only two girls out of five on the celebratory photo post.  It seemed that this parent had completely forgotten about my friend, her sister, and her other stepdaughter.  Go figure!

And finally, when the Chinese Spy Balloon was making its rounds all over the United States, Slim Sherry had a funny video on Instagram that made me laugh out loud.  

In it, she showed Gen X’s reaction to the spy balloon.  Each of the four Gen Xers in her video looked up to the sky, took out their bottle of alcohol, took a swig of it, and then promptly gave the spy balloon the middle finger!

When I relayed that story to my daughter’s boyfriend, who himself has Gen X parents, he started laughing and blurted out: 

“Are you serious?  That’s exactly what my parents did when they heard about the spy balloon! They went outside with a drink in hand and gave that spy balloon the finger!”

So to my Gen X brethren who have read this entire post, let the world continue to forget that we exist.  We are used to being forgotten, overlooked, and underestimated.

We like it that way.

We will quietly keep ruling the world by looking up to the sky in our strong, independent, sarcastic, and resourceful way.  My prayer is that we will look up to God for wisdom, healing, connection, forgiveness, and leadership during this unique time in world history.

But don’t be surprised if we also look up to the sky and give the middle finger to our enemy, because that’s also who we are as a generation. 

Don’t like that aspect of Gen X? 

Sorry, but in general, we don’t give a flip about what you think of us, or even if you think of us at all. 

__________________________________________________

Hey Gen X: I just published my first book! The book is about Christian deliverance, and how to reduce demonic activity in people and places. I share the struggles of what led me to seek out a deliverance for myself, how a friend and I started our own deliverance ministry, and what I learned about creative ways to do basic spiritual warfare to reduce demonic activity in people and places. I discuss the many negative symptoms of demonic oppression and the four doorways (trauma, occult involvement, ongoing sin, and generational curses), and teach everyday Christians how to command demons to leave people and places, in Jesus’s name. If you are struggling with demonic oppression, a haunted house, or other demonic activity and you’re not sure how to handle it, check out this book!

The link is here: https://a.co/d/4kDlJwH

Please leave your Gen X story or comment below! Comments are welcome! It is very hard to encapsulate an entire generation and I am sure I have missed many angles, nuances, challenges, and joys. Feel free to share. Please be kind to me and give me grace.

A note on the research I conducted for this blog post: I did a lot of actual research for this article, but didn’t want to bog this post down with this link and that citation.  For more information, please google “Wikipedia Latch key children” and “Wikipedia Generation X.”  I also used this source:https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/21st-century-childhood/202208/the-impact-divorce-children) for the research on divorce.  I found the 70 percent of Gen X is religious on the Pew research website. I also looked at other research that I didn’t end up using for this article, which pretty much confirmed everything I wrote.  I read a lot of Gen X social media threads and perused many comments from Gen X adults.   Some of what I used is from Slim Sherry, a social media influencer.  You can find her on Instagram.  She says the f-bomb a little, so that if that offends you, I don’t give a flip.  Kidding!  (Chris Biggs is also hilarious, and he has classic videos on growing up in the 80s.) And finally, I grew up smack in the middle of this bad boy, so that’s gotta count for something. Here are some posts about my childhood: Sexual Abuse, Forgiveness, and Janie’s Got a Gun – my story of healing and freedom after sexual abuse. There is also Blue Collar Girl Trapped in a White Collar Marriage. Finally, there is this one with lots of 80s references: The 1980s called; they want their rebellious teenager back!

Here is a blurb on some of the positive aspects of my childhood: When I think back on my own childhood, it was amazing in many ways.  I remember watching the launch of MTV from my best friend Hillary’s couch. (Side note: the 1980s had some of the best music hand’s down.) Hillary and my sister Jessie were my besties growing up, and the three of us enjoyed many adventures together, just roaming freely and playing outside.  I especially looked forward to Saturday morning cartoons, because my mom would allow us to eat “sugary” cereal on Saturday and Tuesday mornings. Later, when I became a teen, my other bestie Jennifer and I would ride our bikes all over Onondaga Valley. Thankfully, my sister and I were never latchkey children, as my grandmother Inge was able and willing to provide childcare after school and all throughout the summer.  She had a swimming pool made from materials used to build farming silos, so we enjoyed swimming during my entire childhood. After swimming, I remember Jessie and I would fight over the one good armchair whenever Little House on the Prairie would come on in the afternoon. I think I will remember the first four notes of the Little House theme song until the day I die.  😊

Qualifiers and apologies: I apologize ahead of time for any oversimplification and overgeneralization of an entire generation of humanity.  Not everyone in our generation had the same Gen X experience. Secondly, I apologize in advance to my Boomer and Silent Gen readers. It’s very difficult to write about Gen X without implicating our parents who raised us or casting them in a (somewhat) negative light.  That is not my intention.  Trying to parent during the Gen X years were challenging as there were so many changes in society happening all at the same time (divorce, women entering the workforce, the threat of nuclear war, to name a few). Despite some of the deficiencies and difficulties, our parents instilled is us kids an amazing work ethic, a respect for authority, a belief in God, and a respect for finishing school (and going to college). To all of my readers, please try to see the good in my writing and give me grace, as grace is a theme that I, too, am still working on. 

A few more photos for you if you are still here:

Anyone remember My Little Pony?

Thanks for reading and have a great day!