This Baby Boom Caught Most Americans by Surprise. for More Than a Century, the Nation

The year 1946 was one second old when Kathleen Casey was born in Philadelphia.Seconds later in Chicago, Mark Bejcek was born.Of course, babies are born in the United States every day.But these two births were special.They marked the beginning of the greatest population boom in American history. Historians call it America’s baby boom.

This baby boom caught most Americans by surprise. For more than a century, the nation’s birth rate—the number of new babies born in proportion to the size of the population—had been falling.Suddenly, there were babies everywhere.In 1954, the number of births topped 4 million for the first time.There were now more new babies each year than the entire population of the United States in 1790.

The baby boom lasted about 20 years.Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the boom ended.By 1967, the birth rate had dropped to the lowest level in the nation’s history.

About 79 million Americans were born during the baby boom.Over the past five decades, this army of baby boomers has been called many things.In the 1950s, the first boomers to hit their teens became the “rock and roll generation.” By the mid-1960s, young boomers were the “love generation.” In the 1970s, the next wave of boomers became the “me generation.” In the 1980s, young adult boomers were labeled “yuppies,” short for “young urban professionals.”

Labels such as these can be misleading, because they never fit everyone.In addition, history doesn’t always divide neatly into decades.Still, the names given to baby boomers reflect some of the important changes that took place in the United States over the past 60 years.In this lesson, you will read about how these changes shaped the lives of baby boomers and their children—and the world you know today.

Interactive Student Notebook1

1. Important events of each decade from the 1950s through the 2000s are described below. Match each description with the decade in which the events occurred by writing the correct letter in each box on the timeline.

Section 2

Thebaby boomwas linked to an era of affluence in the United States.For large numbers of Americans, the 1950s were a time of prosperity and progress.

From War to PeacePresident Harry S Truman welcomed the end of World War II by announcing a set of reforms known as the Fair Deal. He called on Congress to increase the minimum wage, increase aid to agriculture and education, build new public housing, and create a new national health insurance program.Complaining that Truman was "out-New Dealing the New Deal," Republicans in Congress stalled many of his reforms.However, Truman helped to increase the minimum wage, improve Social Security benefits, and construct new housing projects.

Meanwhile, the economy was going through a difficult period of change.As the war came to a close, the government canceled billions of dollars worth of war contracts.As a result, millions of defense workers lost their jobs.However, the shortage of consumer goods during the war, coupled with full employment and high wages, allowed Americans to save billions of dollars that they were now eager to spend.This increased spending created new jobs in the United States and introduced a period of prosperity.

Good TimesFor many businesses and industries, the baby boom was an economic boom as well.Demand for housing soared as millions of young couples looked for homes for their growing families.Developers kept up with the demand by building large tracts of affordable houses in suburbs outside major cities.

Congress helped many families buy their first home by passing a law known as the GI Bill.This law provided veterans with inexpensive loans to buy homes.It also gave veterans help with tuition if they chose to attend college.Aided by the GI Bill, war veterans could buy a home with no money down.All they needed was a steady job and a promise to keep up with the house payments.Economic growth and increased access to education led to an expansion of the American middle class.

The baby boom was good for other businesses as well.Factories worked overtime to produce consumer goods—everything from cars to diapers to washing machines.New fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s provided young families with inexpensive and convenient meals.

Americans were spending more money than ever before.They were also spending it in different places.In the past, most people had bought their goods in stores lining the main street of town.By the mid-1950s, however, suburban shopping centers were luring consumers away from downtown shopping districts.Shopping centers offered suburban customers a more convenient location, easy parking, and a wide array of shops to browse, often in air-conditioned comfort.By 1964, there were more than 7,600 shopping centers across the United States.

For many Americans, only two shadows fell over these happy times.The first was the Cold War and the never-ending fear of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. The second was the growing conflict over the demand of African Americans for equal rights and social justice.The first wave of baby boomers would struggle with issues of peace and equal rights when they reached young adulthood in the 1960s.

Traditional FamiliesMost baby boomers grew up in traditional families.Fathers left home each day to support their families.Mothers stayed home to keep house and take care of their children.One popular book advised women, “The family is the center of your living.”

Despite this emphasis on marriage and family, during the 1950s the number of women attending college increased.Some college educated women pursued careers after graduation.Others dropped out early to get married or headed straight into marriage after graduation.

Women with young children were often stay-at-home moms, but many of these women joined the workforce after their children were old enough to start attending school.Women who worked outside the home were usually limited to traditionally female jobs, such as nursing, teaching, or working as secretaries and clerks.

Automobile CultureFor families living in the suburbs, the automobile quickly became a necessity.Many suburban homes had two cars parked in their driveways.Men used one to drive to work in the city.Women used the other to do their shopping and take their children from place to place.

Cars made people more mobile, and thriving businesses needed to ship goods by truck.As a result, the country badly needed more highways.To meet this need, in 1956 Congress passed the Interstate Highway Act.This ambitious law called for the construction of 41,000 miles of highways.The project took more than 25 years to complete and cost over $100 billion.

The new interstate highways changed the look of the country forever.Restaurants and motels popped up to feed and house travelers. Businesses, shopping centers, and new towns also grew up along interstate highways.

As people spent more and more time in their cars, many businesses began offering drive-in services.Drive-in banks, restaurants, and theaters allowed people to do their banking, eat meals, and watch movies without leaving their cars.At drive-in restaurants, a server, often on roller skates, took orders and then brought the food to the car.At drive-in theaters, viewers parked their cars in front of a huge screen and hooked a speaker onto the car window to hear the movie.

Television and Rock and RollThe baby boomers were the first generation to grow up with a new form of news and entertainment—television.The first practical television system began operating in the 1940s, and by the end of the decade, the price of television sets fell to a point where middle-class families could afford them. The new technology soon swept the nation.By 1955, about 67 percent of American families owned television sets.

Besides providing fun and entertainment, television allowed Americans to see the world in a new way.For the first time, people could see events happening thousands of miles away within just a few hours of the event.The world suddenly seemed much smaller, and events in distant places became more important.

Although radio stations were threatened by the popularity of TV, many stations thrived by offering baby boomers a new form of popular music.In 1951, a radio disc jockey in Cleveland, Ohio, began playing African American rhythm and blues music that he called "rock and roll." Teenagers loved the new sound.Starting in 1955, the rock and roll singer Elvis Presley became a national star, greeted everywhere he went by screaming fans."Rock" became the music that the baby boomer generation adopted as its own.

Section 3

By the time the first baby boomers graduated from high school in 1964, the relative stability of the 1950s were giving way to a decade of social change and unrest.During the 1960s, the country divided bitterly over the Vietnam War and issues of social injustice.The decade was marked by violence, from race riots in big cities to the shocking assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. Baby boomers were caught up in these dramatic tensions just as they were beginning to question their parents’ traditional values.

A New FrontierWhile running for president, John F. Kennedy described the beginning of the 1960s as a New Frontier, full of “unknown opportunities and perils.”Once in office, Kennedy created a set of national goals for this New Frontier.To expand opportunity, he called for an increase in aid to education and new programs to end poverty.To promote equality, he wanted to raise the minimum wage and make cities more livable.To guarantee civil rights, he hoped to ban racial discrimination.To fight communism, he called for an increase in defense spending.

However, tragedy struck in late 1963 while President Kennedy was building support for his reelection campaign.On November 22, Kennedy joined Texas governor John Connally in a motorcade that drove through downtown Dallas.The motorcade took the president’s car past the Texas School Book Depository.Lee Harvey Oswald, a worker in the building, was waiting on its sixth floor.Oswald opened fire on the motorcade, striking Kennedy in the neck and head.Doctors worked to revive Kennedy, but at 1:00 p.m., they declared him dead.

Across the nation and around the world, people mourned Kennedy’s death.To this day, most Americans old enough to remember it can recall exactly where they were when they heard the news of Kennedy’s assassination.A poll taken at the time reported that around 75 percent of Americans felt the death of the president as “the loss of someone very close and dear.”

The Great SocietyTwo hours after the shooting, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson met Jacqueline Kennedy and the president’s coffin at the Dallas airport. Together they would return to Washington.Before the plane took flight, however, a local Texas judge swore Johnson in as the nation’s 36th president.

Once in office, President Johnson outlined his plans for a set of social reforms that he called theGreat Society.As president, Johnson wanted to do far more than simply continue Kennedy’s programs.Long before the election, he had begun work on civil rights and antipoverty programs.Now he was ready to move forward with plans to improve life for all Americans.

By increasing federal funding of schools and welfare programs, Johnson’s Great Society expanded the role of the government in American society.Many reforms in the Great Society, such as Medicare, still remain as major programs in the federal government to this day.

The CountercultureAs a group, the baby boomers who reached young adulthood in the 1960s were very idealistic.Seeing injustice and violence in the world, many of them openly challenged their society’s values and sources of authority.

Many of these young people rejected the pursuit of money and possessions.Calling themselves “hippies,” they began “dropping out” of school, jobs, and suburban life.Journalists described the hippie movement as acounterculture.

Hippies dreamed of starting a new era of peace, love, and freedom.They let their hair grow long and dressed in jeans, beads, and tie-dyed T-shirts.Many experimented with drugs.Some banded together in communes, groups of people who work together and share everything.

One of the counterculture’s favorite expressions was, “Do your own thing.” Doing your own thing meant doing what was right for you, not what the majority wanted you to do.Looking back on this time, a Newsweek journalist wrote,

The most critical lesson of the 1960s was that it’s OK to “do your own thing.” ...It is OK to be black, OK to be female, OK to be Christian or Jew—which is no small gain for the nation and its increasingly diverse population.

The Antiwar MovementThe United States began sending troops to Vietnam in 1964 to combat the spread of communism.As the war effort grew, hundreds of thousands of young people were sent to fight in Southeast Asia.Meanwhile, many of those who remained behind began to vigorously protest the Vietnam War.

Antiwar protests took many forms.On college campuses, students organized “teach-ins” in which speakers questioned the government’s account of events in Vietnam.In major cities, young people organized antiwar marches and demonstrations.When the government began drafting young men to fight in Vietnam, protesters burned their draft cards.Thousands of young men tried to dodge the draft by moving to Canada or Mexico.

One woman in particular helped to inspire this movement.In 1963, Betty Friedan published a best-selling book calledThe Feminine Mystique.Friedan attacked the picture of happy homemakers shown on television and in women’s magazines. Although many women felt great satisfaction in running a home and caring for a family, others wanted more choices.Friedan urged women to “break out of the housewife trap and truly find fulfillment ...by fulfilling their own unique possibilities as human beings.”

Encouraged by Friedan, many women across the country began coming together to work for change.Some groups focused on ending discrimination against women in the workplace.Others were more interested in education, child care, or women’s health issues.People who supported these causes called themselves feminists.

In 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed “to take action to bring American women into full participation in ...American society.”With Betty Friedan as its president, NOW launched anambitiouscampaign to fight discrimination against women in many areas of life.Between 1966 and 1968, NOW’s membership soared from about 300 to 175,000.