1937 Birth Cohorts: The Epicenter of the Silent Generation
1937: Historical Highlights
The broadcast in 1937 of the crowning of George VI, following his brother Edward’s abdication announcement, was the first worldwide radio program heard in the United States, and it can be presumed that many in the United States tuned in for the broadcast. In addition, 1937 saw the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge, the death of millionaire-philanthropists Andrew Mellon and John D. Rockefeller, the Hindenburg dirigible disaster by fire, and the loss of Amelia Earhart on a flight over the Pacific. It also is marked as the year of the first true supermarket, which opened in Queens, New York.
Our Arrival
Arriving as depression babies, we were dramatically fewer in number than in previous or following years. In 1933 the birthrate for women in their prime childbearing years had dropped to the lowest ever recorded in the United States and remained there for several years, including 1937 when 2,413,000 babies were born, the first American generation to be born mainly in hospitals. We were also part of a group that increased the population by only seven percent, the lowest decennial growth rate in American history. And the life expectancy for those of us born this year was 60 years of age. (Eighty percent of our graduation class survive at this date in 2013; however, only sixty percent of our eighth grade cohort are still living.)
Of the more than two million 1937 birth cohorts, 101 would become graduates of the Class of 1955 of Curwensville High School located in the central hills of Pennsylvania. While a few of our class members had been born prior to 1937 and one not until late 1938, all were in the same class by eighth grade and are being counted in this cohort. Approximately a third of us would have spent all 12 years of public school together.
In our eighth grade year (the year when Curwensville High School became Curwensville Joint High School) the Class of 1955 became 142 in number.
[1] In ninth grade we held a similar number at 145
[2] (including five sets of twins). In tenth grade we numbered 128
[3] and in eleventh grade, 106.
[4] We were 101 as graduating seniors (reduced to three sets of twins, one male set, one female, and one mixed).
There were various groupings of these 101 classmates during these twelve years, both during the school day and in spending time together in sports, musical groups, dancing lessons, scouts, and church activities. There were different pairings of friends, several short-lived “secret clubs,” many combinations of best friends (although there were some coteries who pretty well stayed together for the 12 years), a few best friends who never varied or wavered, and some dating pairs. We were each other’s teammates, competitors, steadies, nemeses, and, perhaps later, lovers. We laughed, shared private jokes, harbored secrets, kept things from each other, but rarely if ever betrayed one another.
We are a generation and of representatives of a generation, of children who for the most part were cherished, who were watched over by the town, who were cared for, taught, and guided by the same teachers, who were influenced by peers and adults, and who, for the most part, remained true to themselves and true to one another.
We were, like all cohorts, shaped by our time and we share the destiny of that time and place. As a cohort we were unique in that all of us, from the time of our birth, encountered the same national events, moods, and trends at the same time. We developed a sense of collective identity and, in many ways, a common personality with boundaries “fixed” by that personality. And, like any cohort, as we aged, our inner beliefs retained a consistency, a collective inner compass, much like the personality of an individual growing older.
[5] We held a common age location and we reacted to history as a cohort, that is, we generally all responded in the same way, but in a way that was different from another age cohort. For example, while D-Day empowered those of the GI generation, it intimidated us. GIs remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor as the call to their country’s service; we saw this same event through the eyes of the awe-struck children we were, trying to figure out just who Pearl Harbor was. Boomers regard Pearl Harbor as the possible reason for their large number (fathers returning home from the war eager to procreate), while Generation Xers view Pearl Harbor Day as simply a part of past history.
We born in 1937 were the unobtrusive children of the Depression and World War II and would become the conformist “Lonely Crowd,” Peace Corps volunteers, and middle managers of an expanding public sector. We later came to realize that we had come of age too late for combat in Korea and too early to feel the heat of the Vietnam draft. Notably, where practically every society can recognize a discrete coming-of-age moment (historic rite of passage), we did not have one. We did not experience any social moment when we perceived that a single historic event was radically altering our social environment and would impact everything around us forever after.
All points of reference for us are in terms of our next elders, the Greatest Generation. Their benchmarks of World War II are our benchmarks as well, because the Korean War was not historically important enough to qualify to be ours. The members of the Greatest Generation were our unmatched heroes in all regards—war heroes we adulated, football players and majorettes we emulated, and later, the country’s leaders we followed.
George Arnold, himself a child in the mid-fifties, c
alls us “The In-Betweeners,” whose members, in market research studies, tend to display remarkable similar tendencies, but tendencies unlike any other demographic group of this century.[6] Arnold, a marketer and publicist, also notes that this is a demographic group that consistently displayed irreverent, if not outlandish, tendencies in study after study of attitudes and usage.
Strauss and Howe (
Generations) placed us in their generational category of Recessive Adaptive, characterized as a generation that grows up overprotected, is suffocated in youth during a secular crisis, matures into risk-averse conformists, produces indecisive midlife leaders who act as arbitrators, and who maintain influence (but garner less respect) as elders.
[7] Among the few children’s books we had, favorites were the Little Golden Book
Tootle, the train who always stayed on track, and
Paddle to the Sea about a little boat that floated safely with the current. We were both pampered and commanded, our worlds regulated with the “heaviest hand of the twentieth century,”
[8] but we enjoyed the lowest child labor rate. We also were the earliest marrying and earliest-baby-producing generation in American history, but marked less by what we ourselves did than by what those older and younger did.
[9]We were the last generation of Americans to suffer the dread diseases of childhood—and to survive them without antibiotics, penicillin, or even the sulfa drugs then needed for the “war effort.”
[10] Feeling disquieted by our lack of connectedness, we were less successful in forging a sense of national or personal direction than any other generation in living memory, leaving us with what Gail Sheehy calls “resignation, a vague dissatisfaction with jobs, families, our children, and, most of all, ourselves.”
[11] The result is a wounded collective ego, what Daniel Levinson described as a silent despair and fear of becoming irrelevant.
[12] The board game “Sorry” that was so popular with us may serve as an appropriate metaphor for what we were.
[13] And, perhaps most telling is that our cohort group has scored highest of all groups in geometric reasoning, second in logical reasoning, but last in “word fluency.”
[14] It is troubling to consider that it was believed there was no need for us to have language fluency, only acquiescence resulting in silence.
Of course we didn’t know all of this in 1937. If we were hungry, we were fed, although fewer at the breast than at any other time in history. We were kept clean, and we were loved; however, according to conventional wisdom that child rearing should focus on building discipline and that babies should not be "spoiled" by picking them up when they cried, we were not cuddled and coddled. Did that make us more stoic? Perhaps. Is that why we as a generation are less demonstrative? Most likely. Is this a reason we didn’t speak out? Very probably this is a contributing factor.
This was the era of playpens (caged), harnesses (confined), and sometimes ropes (leashed)—all, as it was said, so we would not get hurt. Yet, since it was still the era of mothers who did not work outside the home, what was the need for restraints?
Our parents wanted their children to be obedient, to behave courteously, to feel close to the family group, and to be religious. Character training was a deliberate parental task with the focus on keeping the child from being a nuisance to the adult world. Our parents were strict about manners, toilet training, sex education (or lack thereof), and gender behavior. Children were “brought up” rather than, as some would say, “loved up,” then continued to bring themselves up, feeling throughout life that their characters were something to be worked on.
[15] There was an insistence by all adults that we be “normal” children, with normal being defined as cooperative, congenial, well-adjusted, conforming, and adaptable.
There were regulations on both our language and our appearance. Certain words, like “stinker,” were off-limits in many households
[16] (and many of us still are uncomfortable using such words). Mothers spelled the words they couldn’t make themselves speak, and they avoided terms for sexual matters as if such matters simply did not exist. They conscientiously kept a child clothed at all times because nudity was “not nice.” This, of course, resulted in prudishness, particularly in little girls.
As might be expected, there was also a stricter prohibition regarding sexual activity in children that was stronger among mothers of girls. Boys were allowed more aggressive behavior, but girls were expected to be clearly feminine. The emphasis on daughters needing to be “ladylike” was united with a strong emphasis on good manners, especially table manners. Chores were gender-geared and, in general, boys were held to a higher expectation than were girls to achieve scholastically.
In retrospect it becomes clear just how much alike we all were and are. While not all of us had the same family background or day-to-day experiences, our lives were very similar. The family rules that governed all of us were very much the same, the holidays we shared were spent in much the same way, and events were framed by the same parameters.
Our houses were of various styles, most of them plain boards or clapboard, some unpainted; some were fronted by sidewalks, some houses set back and some had porches as the first step up from the abutting walkways. Sidewalks allowed for a place to skate, ride bicycles, and pull wagons. Most houses were two-storied, most with excavated cellars, some of these with concreted floors, most with furnaces. Some exteriors were covered with shingles, typically gray or red, some of octagonal shape. These shingled houses we viewed as “old fashioned,” although that may have been only because the older, more run-down homes on our streets were predominantly of this covering. Street lights in neighborhoods were not typical—nor are they yet in many towns.
Those homes that were set back from the street prided themselves on the large trees that provided shade for the requisite porches, preferably large enough for a porch swing or glider (or a lawn swing in the front yard) where families sat on summer evenings, looking out and down the street. Lawns were mowed and a few backyards contained a sandbox and/or a swing set. (We had a sand/dirt pile and a swing hanging from a limb of a tree.) The house I was brought into, following the usual week’s stay in the hospital where I was born, had been purchased by my parents whose growing family had led to the decision to move from Hill Street, which was one of the few streets in Curwensville not built on a hill.
[1] counted from a class picture in the high school yearbook [2] the number given in the yearbook [3] pictured in the yearbook (likely about 130 or so enrolled) [4] pictured in the yearbook (likely at least 108 enrolled) [5] Strauss and Howe, Generations, p. 66. [7] Strauss and Howe, Generations, p. 74. [8] Strauss and Howe, Generations, p. 286. [9] Strauss and Howe, Generations, p. 281. [11] Sheehy, in Strauss and Howe, Generations, p. 292. [12] Levinson, in Strauss and Howe, Generations, p. 292. [13] Strauss and Howe, Generations, p. 292. [14] Strauss and Howe, Generations, p. 50.
