Editing Baby boomers (section)

== As adolescents and young adults ==

=== Standards of living and economic prospects ===
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| image1 = Spelende kinderen - Children playing with toys (6437678745).jpg
| caption1 = Two Dutch children playing with toys (1958): The 1950s and 1960s were an economically prosperous time in the West.
| image2 =The Ladies' home journal (1948) (14765206281).jpg
| caption2 = A household refrigerator ([[Frigidaire]]) drawn for the [[Ladies' Home Journal]] (1948)
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| caption3 = About 21 million [[Volkswagen Beetle]]s were sold, and they are a generational icon of the 1960s and 1970s.<ref>{{cite news|date=June 6, 2003|title=End of the road for the Beetle|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2969734.stm|access-date=October 10, 2020|archive-date=August 6, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070806043625/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2969734.stm|url-status=live}}</ref>
| image4 = Factory Hand at Ford 10,Phtograh Taken by Jun Miki,1954.jpg
| caption4 = An automotive factory worker with his family, car, and home in 1954
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After the Second World War, the United States offered massive financial assistance to Western European nations in the form of the [[Marshall Plan]] to rebuild themselves and to extend U.S. economic and political influence. The Soviet Union did the same for Eastern Europe with the [[Comecon|Council for Mutual Economic Assistance]]. Western Europe had considerable economic growth, due to both the Marshall Plan and initiatives aimed at European integration, starting with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community by France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg in 1951 and the European Community in 1957–58.<ref>{{Cite book|last=National Geographic|title=Essential Visual History of the World|publisher=National Geographic Society|year=2007|isbn=978-1-4262-0091-5|pages=424–5}}</ref><ref name="Zeihan-2016" /> As a matter of fact, the Anglo-Americans spoke of the 'Golden Age' and French of '30 glorious years' (''les trente glorieuses'') continued economic growth. For the United States, the postwar economic expansion was a continuation of what had occurred during the war, but for Western Europe and Japan, the primary economic goal was to return to prewar levels of productivity and prosperity, and many managed to close the gap with the United States in productivity per work hour and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Full employment was reached on both sides of the Atlantic by the 1960s. In Western Europe, the average unemployment figure stood at 1.5% at that time. The [[Car|automobile]], already a common sight in North America, became so in Western Europe, and to a lesser extent, Eastern Europe and Latin America. At the same time, governments around the world undertook the construction or expansion of [[public transport]]ation networks at a rate never before seen.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" />

Many items previously deemed luxurious, such as the [[Washing machine|laundry machine]], the [[dishwasher]], the [[refrigerator]], and the [[telephone]], entered mass production for the average consumer. The average person could live like the upper class in the previous generation. Technological advances made before, during, and after the war, such as plastics, television,  [[magnetic tape]], [[transistor]]s, [[integrated circuit]]s, and [[laser]]s, played a key role in the tremendous improvements in the standards of living for the average citizen in the developed world.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" /><ref name="Kakalios-2010">{{Cite book |last=Kakalios |first=James |title=The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A Math-free Exploration of the Science that Made Our World |publisher=Gotham Books |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-592-40479-7 |location=New York |chapter=Afterword: Journey into Mystery |author-link=James Kakalios}}</ref> This was a time of optimism, economic prosperity, and a growing middle class.<ref name="Twenge-2023a">{{Cite book |last=Twenge |first=Jean |title=Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What The Mean for America's Future |publisher=Atria Books |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-9821-8161-1 |location=New York |chapter=Chapter 2: Silents}}</ref> In some instances, the rate of technological change was so rapid even when compared to optimistic projections, so much so that some social theorists of the day warned of boredom for the [[housewife]].<ref name="Kakalios-2010" /> In reality, it paved the way for a more individualistic culture and women's emancipation, something the Baby Boomers would push for when they came of age during the late 1960s and 1970s. It was also one of the reasons why the baby boom lasted for as long as it did; housekeeping and child-rearing became less onerous for women.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" /> Nevertheless, after 1945, because [[Child labour|child labor]] had been virtually eradicated in the West, married women from families of modest means had to join the work force.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> As [[Louise A. Tilly|Louise Tilly]] and [[Joan Wallach Scott|Joan Scott]] explain, "in the past children had worked so that their mothers could remain at home fulfilling domestic and reproductive responsibilities. Now when families needed additional income, mothers worked instead of children."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Tilly |first1=Louise |title=Women Work & Family |last2=Scott |first2=Joan |publisher=Rutledge |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-415-90262-5 |location=London |pages=219}}</ref>

Demand for housing exploded. Governments both in the East and the West massively subsidized housing with many [[public housing]] projects in urban areas in the form of high-rise apartment buildings. In many cases, this came at the cost of destroying historical sites.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" /> As standards of living continued to climb, decentralization took root, and [[suburb]]an communities began developing their own entertainment quarters and [[shopping mall]]s.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

Public health improved, too, with vaccination programs playing an important role. In the United Kingdom, for example, the introduction of vaccines against [[poliomyelitis]], [[measles]], and [[Whooping cough|pertussis]] (whooping cough) in the 1950s and 1960s caused infection rates to plummet, albeit with some upticks due to [[vaccine hesitancy]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Pollard |first1=Andrew J. |last2=Bijker |first2=Else M. |date=December 22, 2020 |title=A guide to vaccinology: from basic principles to new developments |journal=Nature Reviews Immunology |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=83–100|doi=10.1038/s41577-020-00479-7 |pmid=33353987 |pmc=7754704 }}</ref> In the United States, vaccination against measles resulted in not only falling childhood mortality rates but also other positive life outcomes such as rising family income.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Chuard |first1=Caroline |last2=Schwandt |first2=Hannes |last3=Becker |first3=Alexander D. |last4=Haraguchi |first4=Masahiko |date=July 2022 |title=Economic vs. Epidemiological Approaches to Measuring the Human Capital Impacts of Infectious Disease Elimination |url=http://www.nber.org/papers/w30202 |journal=NBER Working Papers |series=Working Paper Series |publisher=National Bureau of Economic Research |issue=30202|doi=10.3386/w30202 |hdl=10419/263636 }}</ref> In the West, average life expectancy increased by about seven years between the 1930s and 1960s.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" />

Prosperity was taken for granted. Indeed, for many young people who came of age after 1945, the interwar experience of mass unemployment and stable or falling prices was confined to the history books. Full employment and inflation were the norm.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995">{{Cite book|last=Hobsbawn|first=Eric|title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991|publisher=Abacus|year=1995|isbn=978-0-349-10671-7|chapter=Chapter Nine: The Golden Years|author-link=Eric Hobsbawm}}</ref> The new-found wealth allowed many Western governments to finance generous welfare programs. By the 1970s, all industrialized capitalist nations had become welfare states. Six of them—Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, West Germany, and Italy—spent more than 60% of their national budgets on welfare. When the 'Golden Age' came to an end, such government largess proved problematic.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" />

In fact, the 'Golden Age' finally petered out in the 1970s,<ref name="Zeihan-2016" /> as automation started eating away jobs at the low to medium skill levels,<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> and as the first waves of people born after the Second World War entered the workplace en masse.<ref name="Macunovich-2015">{{Cite news|last=Macunovich|first=Diane J.|date=September 8, 2015|title=Baby booms and busts: how population growth spurts affect the economy|work=The Conversation|url=https://theconversation.com/baby-booms-and-busts-how-population-growth-spurts-affect-the-economy-46056|access-date=November 14, 2020|archive-date=November 14, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201114162256/https://theconversation.com/baby-booms-and-busts-how-population-growth-spurts-affect-the-economy-46056|url-status=live}}</ref> In the United States, at least, the onset of a recession—as defined by the [[National Bureau of Economic Research]]—typically occurred within a few years of a peak in the rate of change of the young-adult population, both positive and negative, and indeed, the recession of the early 1970s took place shortly after the growth of people in their early 20s peaked in the late 1960s.<ref name="Macunovich-2015" /> Western capitalist nations slid into recessions during the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. Although the collective GDP of these nations continued to grow until the early 1990s, so much so that they became much wealthier and more productive by that date, unemployment, especially youth unemployment, exploded in many industrialized countries. In the European Community, the average unemployment rate stood at 9.2% by the late 1980s, despite the deceleration of population growth. Youth unemployment during the 1980s was over 20% in the United Kingdom, more than 40% in Spain, and around 46% in Norway. Generous welfare programs alleviated the potential of social unrest, though Western governments found themselves squeezed by a combination of falling tax revenue and high state spending.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996c">{{Cite book|last=Hobsbawn|first=Eric|title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991|publisher=Abacus|year=1996|isbn=978-0-349-10671-7|chapter=Chapter Fourteen: The Crisis Decades}}</ref> People born during the baby bust due to the Great Depression in the 1930s found themselves in an abundance of employment opportunities as they entered the workforce in the 1950s. In fact, they could expect to achieve parity with their fathers' wages at the entrance level. This, however, was not the case for the postwar generation. By the mid-1980s, people could only expect to make a third of what their fathers made as new entrants to the labor force.<ref name="Macunovich-2015" />

The pace of economic growth in the 1960s was understood to be unprecedented. In the long-term view, though, it was just another upswing in the [[Kondratiev wave|Kondratiev cycle]] (see figure), much like the mid-[[Victorian era|Victorian]] boom or the ''[[Belle Époque]]'' from around 1850 to 1873 in Britain and France, respectively. Globally, agricultural output doubled between the early 1950s and early 1980s—more than that in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia—while the fishing industry tripled its catches.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" />[[File:Kondratieff Wave-HQ.png|thumb|440x440px|Schematic diagram of the Kondratiev wave|right]]Communist nations, especially the Soviet Union and the Eastern European states, grew considerably, too. Heretofore agrarian states such as Bulgaria and Romania began to industrialize. By the 1960s, though, the growth of the communist states faltered compared to the capitalist industrialized countries.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" /> By the 1980s, the economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe became stagnant. This was, however, not the case in the newly industrializing economies such as China or South Korea, whose process of industrialization began much later, nor was it in Japan.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996c" />

The developing world achieved significant growth during the 1950s and 1960s, though it never quite reached the level of affluence of industrialized societies. The populations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America boomed between 1950 and 1975. Food production comfortably outpaced population growth. As a consequence, this period saw no major famines other than cases due to armed conflict and politics, which did happen in Communist China.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" /> People who experienced the [[Great Chinese Famine|Great Famine of China]] (1958–1961) as toddlers were noticeably shorter than those who did not. The Great Famine killed up to 30 million people and massively reduced China's economic output.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Gray|first=Richard|date=March 20, 2019|title=What happens when we run out of food?|url=https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190319-what-happens-when-the-food-runs-out|access-date=October 1, 2020|website=BBC Future|archive-date=September 24, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200924011716/https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190319-what-happens-when-the-food-runs-out|url-status=live}}</ref> But before the Famine, China's agricultural output increased 70% from the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 to 1956, according to official statistics. Chairman [[Mao Zedong]] introduced a plan for the rapid industrialization of his country, the [[Great Leap Forward]]. Steel production, mainly from flimsy household furnaces, tripled between 1958 and 1960, but fell to a level lower than that at the start of the Great Leap Forward by 1962. Rural life—China was a predominantly rural society at this point in history—including family affairs, was collectivized. Women were recruited to the workplace, that is, the fields, while the government provided them with nursery and childcare services. In general, monetary income was replaced by six basic services: food, healthcare, education, haircuts, funerals, and movies. Mao's plan was quickly abandoned, not just because it failed, but also because of the Great Famine. Yet despite the disastrous results of [[Maoism|Maoist]] policies, by the standards of the developing world, China was not doing so poorly. By the mid-1970s, China's food consumption measured in calories was just above the global median and the nation's life expectancy grew steadily, interrupted only by the famine years.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996d">{{Cite book|last=Hobsbawn|first=Eric|title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991|publisher=Abacus|year=1996|isbn=978-0-349-10671-7|chapter=Chapter Sixteen: End of Socialism}}</ref>

Between 1960 and 1975, the Chinese mainland's growth was fast, but lagged behind the [[Japanese economic miracle|growth of Japan]] and the rise of the [[Four Asian Tigers]] ([[South Korea]], [[Taiwan]], [[Hong Kong]], and [[Singapore]]) grew even faster.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996d" />

{{Clear}}

=== Education ===
Universal literacy was a major goal for practically all governments in the developing world and many made significant progress towards this end, even if their 'official' statistics were questionably optimistic.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996">{{Cite book |last=Hobsbawm |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Hobsbawm |title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 |publisher=Abacus |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-349-10671-7 |chapter=Chapter Ten: Social Revolution 1945-1990}}</ref> In the 1980s, [[James Flynn (academic)|James R. Flynn]] examined psychometric data and discovered evidence that the [[IQ score]]s of Americans were increasing significantly between the early 1930s and late 1970s. On average, younger cohorts scored higher than their elders. This was confirmed by later studies and on data in other countries; the discovery became known as the [[Flynn effect]].<ref name="baker">{{Cite journal |last1=Baker |first1=David P. |last2=Eslinger |first2=Paul J. |last3=Benavides |first3=Martin |last4=Peters |first4=Ellen |last5=Dieckmann |first5=Nathan F. |last6=Leon |first6=Juan |date=March 2015 |title=The cognitive impact of the education revolution: A possible cause of the Flynn Effect on population IQ |journal=Intelligence |volume=49 |pages=144–58 |doi=10.1016/j.intell.2015.01.003 |issn=0160-2896}}</ref>[[File:Bourbaki congress1938.png|left|thumb|The Bourbaki school greatly influenced mathematics research and education in the postwar era.]]During the postwar era, the importance of modern mathematics—especially mathematical logic, optimization, and numerical analysis—was acknowledged for its usefulness during the war. From this sprang proposals for reforms in mathematics education. The international movement to bring about such reforms was launched in the late 1950s, with heavy French influence. In France, they also grew out of a desire to bring the subject as it was taught in schools closer to the research done by pure mathematicians, particularly the [[Nicolas Bourbaki|Nicholas Bourbaki]] school, which emphasized an austere and abstract style of doing mathematics, [[Axiomatic system|axiomatization]].<ref group="note">Thus instead of the intuitive approach which often necessitates the memorization of rules and formulas for problem-solving, one begins with definitions and axioms then derives theorems from them. Concrete calculations are de-emphasized in favor of abstract proofs.</ref> Up until the 1950s, the purpose of primary education was to prepare students for life and future careers. This changed in the 1960s. A commission headed by [[André Lichnerowicz]] was established to work out the details of the desired reforms in mathematics education. At the same time, the French government mandated that the same courses be taught to all schoolchildren, regardless of their career prospects and aspirations. Thus the same highly abstract courses in mathematics were taught to not just those willing and able to pursue university studies but also those who left school early to join the workforce. From elementary school to the [[Baccalauréat|French Baccalaureate]], [[Euclidean geometry]] and [[calculus]] were de-emphasized in favor of [[set theory]] and [[abstract algebra]]. This conception of mass public education was inherited from the interwar period and was taken for granted; the model for the elites was to be applied to all segments of society. But by the early 1970s, the Commission ran into problems. Mathematicians, physicists, members of professional societies, economists, and industrial leaders criticized the reforms as being suitable for neither schoolteachers nor students. Many teachers were ill-prepared and ill-equipped. One member of the Lichnerowicz Commission asked, "Should we teach outdated mathematics to less intelligent children?" Lichnerowicz resigned and the commission was disbanded in 1973.<ref name="Gispert">{{Cite web|last=Gispert|first=Hélène|title=L'enseignement des mathématiques au XXe siècle dans le contexte français|url=http://culturemath.ens.fr/histoiredesmaths/htm/Gispert08-reformes/Gispert08.htm|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170715164210/http://culturemath.ens.fr/histoire%20des%20maths/htm/Gispert08-reformes/Gispert08.htm|archive-date=July 15, 2017|access-date=November 4, 2020|website=CultureMATH|language=FR}}</ref> In the United States, the "[[New Math]]" initiative—under which students received lessons in set theory, which is what mathematicians actually use to construct the set of real numbers, something advanced undergraduates learned in a course on [[real analysis]],<ref group="note">See [[Dedekind cut]]s and [[Cauchy sequence]]s.</ref> and arithmetic with bases other than ten<ref group="note">See, for example, [[Binary number|binary arithmetic]], useful in computer science. Also see [[modular arithmetic]], previously known as clockwork arithmetic.</ref>—was similarly unsuccessful,<ref name="Knudson-201d" /> and was widely criticized by not just parents,<ref name="Knudson-201d" /> but also STEM experts.<ref name="Kline2">{{cite book |last=Kline |first=Morris |title=Why Johnny Can't Add: The Failure of the New Math |publisher=[[St. Martin's Press]] |year=1973 |isbn=978-0-394-71981-8 |location=New York |pages=17, 98}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Simmons |first=George F. |title=Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell: Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry: Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry |publisher=[[Wipf and Stock Publishers]] |year=2003 |isbn=978-1-59244-130-3 |page=33 |chapter=Algebra &ndash; Introduction |access-date=November 4, 2020 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dN1KAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA33 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230203081304/https://books.google.com/books?id=dN1KAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA33 |archive-date=February 3, 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Feynman |first=Richard P. |year=1965 |title=New Textbooks for the 'New' Mathematics |url=http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2362/1/feynman.pdf |url-status=live |journal=Engineering and Science |volume=XXVIII |issue=6 |pages=9–15 |issn=0013-7812 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130729023112/http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2362/1/feynman.pdf |archive-date=July 29, 2013}}</ref> Nevertheless, the influence of the Bourbaki school in mathematics education lived on, as the Soviet mathematician [[Vladimir Arnold]] recalled in a 1995 interview.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lui|first=S.H.|date=1995|title=An Interview with Vladimir Arnold|url=https://www.ams.org/notices/199704/arnold.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000930130302/http://www.ams.org/notices/199704/arnold.pdf |archive-date=September 30, 2000 |url-status=live|journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society|volume=44|issue=4|pages=432–8}}</ref>

Before World War II, the share of university-educated people in even the most advanced of industrialized nations, except the United States, a world leader in post-secondary education, was negligible. After the war, the number of university students skyrocketed, not just in the West, but also among developing countries as well. In Europe, between 1960 and 1980, the number of university students increased by a factor of four to five in West Germany, Ireland, and Greece, a factor of five to seven in Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Italy, and a factor of seven to nine in Spain and Norway.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> In West Germany, the number of university students steadily grew in the 1960s despite the construction of the Berlin Wall, which prevented East German students from coming. By 1966, West Germany had a grand total of 400,000 students, up from 290,000 in 1960.<ref name="Begehr-1998" /> In the Republic of Korea (South Korea), the number of university students as a share of the population grew from around 0.8% to 3% between 1975 and 1983. Families typically considered higher education to be the gateway towards a higher social status and higher income, or, in short, a better life; as such they pushed their children to university whenever possible. In general, the postwar economic expansion made it possible for a larger percentage of the population to send their children to university as full-time students. Moreover, many Western welfare states, starting with U.S. government subsidies to military veterans who wished to attend university, provided financial aid in one form or another to university students, though they were still expected to live frugally. In most countries, with the notable exceptions of Japan and the U.S., universities were more likely to be public rather than private. The total number of universities worldwide more than doubled in the 1970s. The rise of university campuses and university towns was a culturally and politically novel phenomenon, and one that would usher in the political turbulence of the late 1960s around the world.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

After World War I, the goal of primary education in the United States shifted from using schools to realize social change to employing them to promote emotional development. While it might have helped students improve their mental welfare, critics pointed to the de-emphasizing of traditional academic subjects leading to poor work habits and plain ignorance. Such a system became less and less tenable because society increasingly demanded rigorous education. In his book ''[[The American High School Today]]'' (1959), former Harvard president [[James B. Conant]] laid out his critique of the status quo. In particular, he pointed to the failure of English classes in teaching proper grammar and composition, the neglect of foreign languages, and the inability to meet the needs of gifted and slow students alike. People like Conant rose to prominence due to the successful launch of the ''[[Sputnik 1|Sputnik]]'' satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957.<ref name="Garraty-1991" /> As a matter of fact, the passages of the artificial satellite were recorded by the Boston newspapers and viewed with the naked eye from rooftops.<ref name="Stroke-2013">{{Cite journal|last=Stroke|first=H. Henry|date=August 1, 2013|title=''Electricity and Magnetism''|url=https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.2085|journal=Physics Today|volume=66|issue=8|pages=48–50|doi=10.1063/PT.3.2085|bibcode=2013PhT....66R..48S|access-date=October 11, 2020|archive-date=October 24, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221024143016/https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.2085|url-status=live}}</ref>
[[File:University of Chicago Law School, 1955-63. Law School - 00441v.jpg|thumb|300x300px|Large numbers of Americans pursued higher education after World War II. ''Pictured'': the [[University of Chicago Law School]] (1955–63)]]
This surprising Soviet success demonstrated to the Americans that their education system had fallen behind.<ref name="Knudson-201d">{{Cite news|last=Knudson|first=Kevin|date=2015|title=The Common Core is today's New Math – which is actually a good thing|work=The Conversation|url=https://theconversation.com/the-common-core-is-todays-new-math-which-is-actually-a-good-thing-46585|access-date=September 9, 2015|archive-date=September 15, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150915194402/http://theconversation.com/the-common-core-is-todays-new-math-which-is-actually-a-good-thing-46585|url-status=live}}</ref> ''Life'' magazine reported that three quarters of American high-school students took no physics at all. The U.S. government realized it needed thousands of scientists and engineers to match the might of its ideological rival. On President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]'s direct orders, science education underwent major reforms and the federal government started pouring enormous sums of money into not just education but also research and development. Private institutions, such as the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford Foundation provided funding for education, too.<ref name="Garraty-1991" /><ref>{{Cite book|last=Farmelo|first=Graham|title=The Strangest Man: the Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom|publisher=Basic Books|year=2009|isbn=978-0-465-02210-6|pages=363|chapter=Twenty-six: 1958-1962}}</ref> Authors felt inspired to cater to the physics textbook market, and one of the results was the ''[[Berkeley Physics Course]]'', a series for undergraduates influenced by MIT's [[Physical Science Study Committee]], formed right before the launch of ''Sputnik''. One of the most famous of textbooks from the ''Berkeley'' series is ''[[Electricity and Magnetism (book)|Electricity and Magnetism]]'' by Nobel laureate [[Edward Mills Purcell]], which has gone through multiple editions and remains in print in the twenty-first century.<ref name="Stroke-2013" />

In any case, academic performance reclaimed its importance in the United States. At the same time, large numbers of young people desired to go to college due to population growth and the needs of society for specialized skills. Prestigious institutions were able to handpick the very best of students from massive pools of applications and consequently became the training centers for a growing class of cognitive elites. Indeed, the share of college graduates among 23-year-olds steadily rose after World War II, first due to veterans returning to civilian life and later due to people born after the war. In 1950, there were 2.6 million students in American institutions of higher learning. By 1970, that number was 8.6 million, and by 1980, it became 12 million.<ref name="Garraty-1991">{{Cite book|last=Garraty|first=John A.|title=The American Nation: A History of the United States|publisher=Harper Collins|year=1991|isbn=978-0-06-042312-4|location=United States of America|pages=896–7|chapter=Chapter XXXII Society in Flux, 1945-1980. Rethinking Public Education}}</ref> In the 1970s, there was a seemingly infinite number of Baby Boomers applying for admissions at institutions of higher learning in the U.S., so much so that many schools became extremely difficult to get into. This cooled off by the 1980s, though.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Gray|first=Eliza|date=October 21, 2019|title=Are Liberal Arts Colleges Doomed?|work=The Washington Post Magazine|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2019/10/21/downfall-hampshire-college-broken-business-model-american-higher-education/|access-date=November 3, 2020}}</ref> In the end, about a quarter of Baby Boomers had at least a bachelor's degree.<ref>{{Cite news|date=September 12, 2020|title=Younger Americans feel their voting weight|newspaper=The Economist|url=https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/09/12/younger-americans-feel-their-voting-weight|url-status=live|access-date=September 11, 2020|archive-date=September 10, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200910211847/https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/09/12/younger-americans-feel-their-voting-weight}}</ref> More women earned university degrees than ever before, and became professionals at an unprecedented rate.<ref name="Twenge-2023b">{{Cite book |last=Twenge |first=Jean |author-link=Jean Twenge |title=Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What The Mean for America's Future |publisher=Atria Books |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-9821-8161-1 |location=New York |chapter=Chapter 3: Boomers}}</ref> Because so many Baby Boomers pursued higher education, costs started to rise, making the Silent Generation was the last cohort to benefit from tuition-free public universities anywhere in the United States.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" /> The number of women pursuing higher education grew in other countries, too, including those on the other side of the Iron Curtain.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

American physicist [[Herbert Callen]] observed that even though a survey conducted by the American Physical Society Committee on the Applications of Physics reported (in the ''Bulletin of the APS'') in 1971 that industry leaders desired a greater emphasis on more practical subjects, such as thermodynamics as opposed to the more abstract statistical mechanics, academia subsequently went the other way.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Callen|first=Herbert|title=Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics|title-link=Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|year=1985|isbn=978-0-471-86256-7|location=United States of America|chapter=Preface}}</ref> British physicist [[Paul Dirac]], who had relocated to the United States in the 1970s, opined to his colleagues he doubted the wisdom of educating so many undergraduates in science when so many of them had neither the interest nor the aptitude.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Farmelo|first=Graham|title=The Strangest Man: the Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom|publisher=Basic Books|year=2009|isbn=978-0-465-02210-6|pages=393|chapter=Twenty-eight: February 1971-September 1982}}</ref> Having a youth bulge can be seen as one factor among many in explaining social unrest and uprisings in society.<ref name="cfr.org">{{cite web |title=The Effects of 'Youth Bulge' on Civil Conflicts |url=http://www.cfr.org/society-and-culture/effects-youth-bulge-civil-conflicts/p13093 |last=Beehner |year=2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130527020909/http://www.cfr.org/society-and-culture/effects-youth-bulge-civil-conflicts/p13093 |archive-date=May 27, 2013 |url-status=dead |access-date=April 21, 2018}}</ref> Quantitative historian [[Peter Turchin]] noted intensifying competition among graduates, whose numbers were larger than what the economy could absorb, a phenomenon he termed [[elite overproduction]], led to political polarization, social fragmentation, and even violence as many became disgruntled with their dim prospects despite having attained a high level of education. Income inequality, stagnating or declining real wages, and growing public debt were contributory factors. Turchin argued that having a [[Population pyramid#Youth bulge|youth bulge]] and massive young population with university degrees were the key reasons for the instability of the 1960s and 1970s and predicted that the 2020s would see the pattern repeat itself.<ref name="Turchin-2010">{{Cite journal |last=Turchin |first=Peter|date=February 3, 2010|title=Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade|journal=Nature|volume=403|issue=7281|pages=608|doi=10.1038/463608a|pmid=20130632|bibcode=2010Natur.463..608T|doi-access=free}}</ref>

Because the baby boomers were a huge demographic cohort, when they entered the workforce they took up all the jobs they could find, including those below their skill levels. As a result, wages were depressed and many households needed two streams of income in order to pay their bills.<ref name="Zeihan-2016" />
In China, even though the Central Government made plans for increasing the people's access to education, school attendance, including at the elementary level, dropped by 25 million due to the Great Famine, and another fifteen million due to the Cultural Revolution. Yet despite all this, by the mid-1970s almost all Chinese children went to elementary school (96%), up six times from the early 1950s. Although Chinese figures for the people deemed illiterate or semi-literate appeared high—a quarter of Chinese over twelve years of age fell into these categories in 1984—the peculiarities of the Chinese language made direct comparisons with other countries difficult.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996d" />

Ignoring the skepticism of his comrades, Chairman Mao introduced the [[Hundred Flowers Campaign]] of 1956-57 encouraging intellectuals and elites from the old era to share their thoughts freely with the slogan, "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred school of thoughts contend". Mao thought that his revolution had already transformed Chinese society for good. The result was an outburst of ideas deemed unacceptable by the CCP and above all, Mao himself, which fueled his distrust of intellectuals. Mao responded with the Cultural Revolution, which saw the intelligentsia being sent to the countryside for manual labor. Post-secondary education was almost completely abolished in mainland China. There existed only 48,000 university students in China in 1970, including 4,260 in the natural sciences and 90 in the social sciences, 23,000 technical school students in 1969, and 15,000 teachers in training in 1969. Data on post-graduate students was not available, presumably because there were no such students. China had a population of around 830 million in 1970.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996d" />

In China, the baby boomers grew up during the Cultural Revolution, when institutions of higher learning were closed. As a consequence, when China introduced some elements of capitalist reforms in the late 1970s, most of this cohort found itself at a severe disadvantage as people were unable to take the various jobs that became vacant.<ref name="Woodruff-2016" />

{{Clear}}

=== Cultural and sociopolitical identities ===

==== Popular culture ====
[[File:Family watching television 1958 cropped2.jpg|thumb|An American family gathering to watch television (1958)|alt=An American family gathering to watch television (1958)]]
The arrival of the [[television set]] made it possible for a family of modest means to be entertained in ways previously reserved for the wealthy.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> [[Soap opera]]s—characterized by melodramatic plots focused on interpersonal affairs and cheap production value—are a genre that was named after being sponsored by soap and detergent companies. They proved to be popular in the 1930s on radio and migrated to television in the 1950s. Again successful in the new broadcast environment, many of their viewers from the 1950s and 1960s grew old with them and introduced them to their children and grandchildren. In the United States, soap operas often dealt with the various social issues of the day, such as abortion, race relations, sexual politics, and inter-generational conflicts,<ref>{{Cite news|last=Shaath|first=Sarah|date=March 27, 2019|title=Decline of soap operas: Was OJ Simpson to blame?|work=BBC News|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47585335|access-date=November 3, 2020|archive-date=November 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201107231628/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47585335|url-status=live}}</ref> and they often took positions that were, by the standards of their day, progressive.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Ali|first=Lorraine|date=March 2019|title=For 70 Years, the Soap Opera Has Shaped American Pop Culture|work=Smithsonian Magazine|department=Arts and Culture|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/for-70-years-soap-opera-shaped-american-pop-culture-180971439/|access-date=November 3, 2020|archive-date=October 30, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201030232547/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/for-70-years-soap-opera-shaped-american-pop-culture-180971439/|url-status=live}}</ref> In Europe, and especially in the United Kingdom, the top soap operas typically featured working- or middle-class people, and most soap operas promoted post-war [[Social democracy|social-democratic]] values.<ref>{{Cite news|last=O'Donnell|first=Hugh|date=February 17, 2015|title=Why the soap opera is in terminal decline|work=The Conversation|url=https://theconversation.com/why-the-soap-opera-is-in-terminal-decline-37669|access-date=November 3, 2020|archive-date=April 14, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414125110/https://theconversation.com/why-the-soap-opera-is-in-terminal-decline-37669|url-status=live}}</ref>[[File:Londons Carnaby Street, 1966.jpg|thumb|Young people in London (circa 1966). Prosperity played a role in shaping the youth culture of the 1960s.|left]]Following the Second World War, the United States was not just a land of peace and prosperity but also of anxiety and fear, of cultural deviancy and ideological subversion. And one victim of said paranoia was comic books.<ref name=":0" /> Comic books were blamed for the rise in [[juvenile delinquency in the United States|juvenile delinquency in that country]] because a number of juvenile offenders admitted to reading them.<ref name="Mooney">{{cite web |last=Mooney |first=Joe |date=April 19, 1987 |title=It's No Joke: Comic Books May Help Kids Learn to Read |url=http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1987/8701100104.asp |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20100117192458/http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1987/8701100104.asp |archive-date=January 17, 2010 |access-date=September 23, 2008 |work=[[Seattle Post-Intelligencer]]}}</ref> This culminated in the book ''[[Seduction of the Innocent]]'' (1954) by [[Fredric Wertham]],<ref name="Mooney" /> causing a decline in the comics industry.<ref name="Mooney" /> To address public concerns, in 1954 the [[Comics Code Authority]] was created to regulate and curb violence in comics, marking the start of a new era, the [[Silver Age of Comic Books|Silver Age of American comics]], which lasted until the early 1970s.<ref name="Blumberg">{{cite journal |last=Blumberg |first=Arnold T. |date=Fall 2003 |title='The Night Gwen Stacy Died': The End of Innocence and the Birth of the Bronze Age |url=http://reconstruction.eserver.org/034/blumberg.htm |url-status=dead |journal=Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture |issn=1547-4348 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100116034408/http://reconstruction.eserver.org/034/blumberg.htm |archive-date=January 16, 2010 |access-date=February 20, 2009}}</ref> Unlike those of the Golden Age, stories from the Silver Age moved away from horror, and crime.<ref>See, e.g. {{Cite book |last=Robbins |first=Trina |author-link=Trina Robbins |title=From Girls to Grrrlz |publisher=[[Chronicle Books]] |year=1999 |location=[[San Francisco, California]] |pages=45, 52–54, 67, 69–70, 76–77 and throughout}}</ref> Plots shifted towards romance and [[science fiction]], deemed acceptable by the Code.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Simonson |first=Louise |title=DC Comics Covergirls |publisher=Chartwell Books |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-7858-3436-6 |location=New York |chapter=Introduction}}</ref> For a variety of stories and characters, scientific-sounding concepts replaced magic and gods.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Callahan |first=Timothy |date=August 6, 2008 |title=In Defense of Superhero Comics |url=http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=17623 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090429080152/http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=17623 |archive-date=April 29, 2009 |access-date=September 5, 2008 |website=Comic Book Resources}}</ref> Many plots were [[Escapism|escapist]] fantasies and reflected the cultural zeitgeist of the day, featuring traditional [[family values]] (with an emphasis on gender roles and marriage) as well as gender equality.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Walker |first=Landry Q. |title=Wonder Woman: The Ultimate Guide to the Amazon Warrior |publisher=DK |year=2017 |isbn=978-1-4654-6072-1 |location=New York |pages=68–71 |chapter=The Silver Age}}</ref>

[[J. D. Salinger]]'s ''[[The Catcher in the Rye]]'' (1951) attracted the attention of adolescent readers even though it was written for adults. The themes of adolescent angst and alienation in the novel have become synonymous with [[Young adult literature|young-adult literature]].<ref name="Owen">{{cite journal |last1=Owen |first1=Mary |date=Mar 2003 |title=Developing a love of reading: why young adult literature is important |url=https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=200305405;res=IELAPA |journal=Orana |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=11–17 |issn=0045-6705 |access-date=23 May 2020}}</ref> But according to [[Michael Cart]], it was the 1960s that saw the maturing of novels for teenagers and young adults.<ref>Cart, p. 43,</ref> One early example of this genre was [[S. E. Hinton]]'s ''[[The Outsiders (novel)|The Outsiders]]'' (1967). The novel features a truer, darker side of adolescent life that was not often represented in works of fiction of the time.<ref>Jon Michaud, [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/hinton-outsiders-young-adult-literature "S. E. Hinton and the Y.A. Debate"], ''[[The New Yorker]]'', 14 October 2014</ref><ref>Constance Grady,"[https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/6/26/15841216/outsiders-harry-potter-ya-young-adult-se-hinton-jk-rowling The Outsiders reinvented young adult fiction. Harry Potter made it inescapable.]," ''[[Vox (website)]]'', 26 January 2017</ref> Written during high school and written when Hinton was only 16,<ref name="penguin">{{cite web |title=''The Outsiders'' |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/536555/the-outsiders-by-se-hinton |access-date=18 November 2019 |publisher=Penguin Random House}}</ref> ''The Outsiders'' also lacked the nostalgic tone common in books about adolescents written by adults.<ref name="Peck">{{Cite news |last=Peck |first=Dale |date=2007-09-23 |title='The Outsiders': 40 Years Later |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/books/review/Peck-t.html |access-date=2024-05-09 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> ''The Outsiders'' remains one of the best-selling young-adult novels of all time.<ref name="Peck" /> ''[[Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.]]'' (1970) by [[Judy Blume]] was another major success.<ref name="holmes">{{cite magazine |last=Holmes |first=Anna |date=March 22, 2012 |title=Judy Blume's Magnificent Girls |url=http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/judy-blumes-magnificent-girls |access-date=April 5, 2016 |magazine=The New Yorker}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |date=April 13, 2023 |title=Time 100 |url=https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2023/ |access-date=April 15, 2023 |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]}}</ref> Blume was one of the first novelists who focused on such controversial topics as masturbation, menstruation, teen sex, birth control, and death.<ref name="hclib">{{cite web |year=2015 |title=Pen Pals with Judy Blume in conversation with Nancy Pearl |url=http://www.supporthclib.org/event/pen-pals-with-judy-blume-in-conversation-with-nancy-pearl/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160504232033/http://www.supporthclib.org/event/pen-pals-with-judy-blume-in-conversation-with-nancy-pearl/ |archive-date=May 4, 2016 |access-date=April 5, 2016 |publisher=Friends of the Hennepin County Library}}</ref><ref name="edwards">{{cite web |year=1996 |title=1996 Margaret A. Edwards Award Winner |url=http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklistsawards/bookawards/margaretaedwards/maeprevious/1996awardwinner |access-date=April 5, 2016 |publisher=Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). American Library Association}}</ref>
{{Clear}}

==== Cultural influences ====
{{See also|Teen idol}}

[[File:Beauvoir Sartre - Che Guevara -1960 - Cuba.jpg|thumb|(Left to right) [[Simone de Beauvoir]], [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], and Ernesto Che Guevara meeting in Cuba, 1960. They were some of the radical icons of the 1960s.]]
In the West, those born in the years before the actual boom were often the most influential people among boomers. Some of these people were musicians such as [[The Beatles]], [[Bob Dylan]], and [[The Rolling Stones]]; writers like [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Allen Ginsberg]], [[Betty Friedan]], [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], [[Herbert Marcuse]], and other authors of the [[Frankfurt School]] of Social Theory; and political leaders such as Mao Zedong, [[Fidel Castro]], and [[Che Guevara]].<ref name="Suri-2009" /><ref name="Owram1997xiv" /><ref name="Gaddis-2005" /><ref name="Garraty-1991c1" /> As romanticists and idealists safe from political retribution, radical youths did not care for competency or results as much as ideology. To this end, revolutionary icons such as Mao, Castro, or Guevara proved to be potent symbols.<ref name="Gaddis-2005" /> Parents, by contrast, saw their influence greatly diminished. This was a time of rapid change, and what the parents could teach their children was less important than what the children knew and what their parents did not. For young people, life was vastly different from what their parents experienced during the interwar and war years. Economic depression, mass unemployment, war, and chaos were a distant memory; full employment and material comfort were the norm. Such a drastic difference in outlook and experience created a rift between the generations. As for the peers, they did have a significant influence on young people, for while the ''modus operandi'' of youth culture at the time was to be oneself and to disregard the opinions of others, in practice, [[peer pressure]] ensured conformity and uniformity, at least within a given subculture.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

[[File:Betty Friedan 1960.jpg|thumb|256x256px|Betty Friedan's ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'' (1963) triggered the [[second wave of feminism]] from the 1960s to the 1980s<ref name="Drucker-2018">{{Cite web |last=Drucker |first=Sally Ann |date=April 27, 2018 |title=Betty Friedan: The Three Waves of Feminism |url=http://www.ohiohumanities.org/betty-friedan-the-three-waves-of-feminism/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201026035930/http://www.ohiohumanities.org/betty-friedan-the-three-waves-of-feminism/ |archive-date=October 26, 2020 |access-date=December 18, 2020 |website=Ohio Humanities}}</ref> by questioning the era's social norms, in particular its insistence on traditional gender roles.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" />|left]]
In the United States, the Baby Boomers lived through a period of dramatic cultural cleavage between the left-leaning proponents of change and the more conservative individuals. Analysts believe this cleavage has played out politically from the time of the Vietnam War to the present day,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Jones |first=Landon |date=August 24, 2016 |title=This Election Is the Baby Boomers' Last Hurrah |url=https://time.com/4463495/election-baby-boomers/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200808090542/https://time.com/4463495/election-baby-boomers/ |archive-date=August 8, 2020 |access-date=June 28, 2020 |publisher=Time}}</ref> to some extent defining the divided political landscape in the country.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sullivan |first=Andrew |date=November 6, 2007 |title=Goodbye to all of that |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100103235533/http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama |archive-date=January 3, 2010<!--DASHBot--> |access-date=August 27, 2010 |publisher=Theatlantic.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Broder |first=John M. |date=January 21, 2007 |title=Shushing the Baby Boomers |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/weekinreview/21broder.html |url-status=live |access-date=March 31, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190402104446/https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/weekinreview/21broder.html |archive-date=April 2, 2019}}</ref> Leading-edge boomers are often associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, the later years of the [[civil rights movement]], and the [[second-wave feminism|"second-wave" feminist cause]] of the 1970s.<ref name="Isabel Sawhill, Ph.D 2007" /><ref name="Steuerle-2013" /> Conversely, many trended in moderate to conservative directions opposite to the counterculture, especially those making professional careers in the military (officer and enlisted), law enforcement, business, blue-collar trades, and Republican Party politics.<ref name="Isabel Sawhill, Ph.D 2007">{{cite web |author=Isabel Sawhill, Ph.D |author2=John E. Morton |year=2007 |title=Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well? |url=http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/sawhill/200705.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130529155632/http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/sawhill/200705.pdf |archive-date=May 29, 2013 |access-date=March 22, 2013}}</ref><ref name="Steuerle-2013">{{cite web |last=Steuerle |first=Eugene |author2=Signe-Mary McKernan |author3=Caroline Ratcliffe |author4=Sisi Zhang |year=2013 |title=Lost Generations? Wealth Building Among Young Americans |url=http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412766-Lost-Generations-Wealth-Building-Among-Young-Americans.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141116072709/http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412766-Lost-Generations-Wealth-Building-Among-Young-Americans.pdf |archive-date=November 16, 2014 |access-date=March 22, 2013 |publisher=Urban Institute}}</ref> On the other hand, trailing-edge boomers (also known as [[Generation Jones]]) came of age in the "[[malaise era]]" of the 1970s with events such as the [[Watergate scandal]], the [[1973–1975 recession]], the [[1973 oil crisis]], the [[United States Bicentennial]] (1976), and the [[Iran hostage crisis|Iranian hostage crisis]] (1979). Politically, early boomers in the United States tend to be Democrats, while later boomers tend to be Republicans.<ref>{{Cite web |website=Pew Research Center |last=Geiger |first=Abigail |title=The Whys and Hows of Generations Research |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/09/03/the-whys-and-hows-of-generations-research/ |date=September 3, 2015 |access-date=December 31, 2022 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221231025902/https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/09/03/the-whys-and-hows-of-generations-research/ |archive-date=December 31, 2022 |language=en-US}}</ref>

[[File:Listening to is Yes' self-titled debut album from 1969 (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|An American university student listening to a [[British rock]] record on campus while sporting (then–recently popularized) blue jeans, 1970]]
During the 1960s and 1970s, the music industry made a fortune selling rock records to people between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. This era was home to many youthful stars—people like [[Brian Jones]] of the Rolling Stones, [[Jimi Hendrix]], or [[Janis Joplin]]—who had lifestyles that all but guaranteed [[27 Club|their early deaths]].<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /><ref group="note">Also see [[life history theory]].</ref>

Across the Anglosphere, and increasingly in many other countries, middle- and upper-class youths started adopting the popular culture of the lower-classes, in stark contrast with previous generations. In the United Kingdom, for instance, young people from wealthy families changed their accents to approximate how working-class people spoke, and were not averse to the occasional use of profanities.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /> In France, the fashion industry discovered that trousers could outsell skirts in the mid-1960s.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /> Blue jeans, made popular by the likes of actor [[James Dean]], steadily became a common sight across the Western world, even outside of college campuses.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

A remarkable characteristic of youth culture from this period is its internationalism. Whereas previous generations typically preferred cultural products from their own countries, those who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s readily consumed the music of other countries, above all the United States, the cultural hegemon of the era. English-language music was normally left untranslated. Musical styles from the Caribbean, Latin America, and later, Africa also proved popular.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

In Roman Catholic countries such as Ireland and Italy, the 1960s and 1970s saw a schism between the Church and the young on issues such as divorce or abortion. In the Canadian province of Quebec, religious attendance plummeted in the same period.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

In China, despite the passage of the National Marriage Law in 1950, which prohibited having concubines, allowed women to file for divorce, and banned arranged marriages, arranged marriages in fact remained common, and the notion of marrying for [[Romance (love)|romantic love]] was considered a capitalist invention to be opposed during the period of the Cultural Revolution.<ref name="Nectar-2021">{{Cite news|last=Nectar|first=Gan|date=January 30, 2021|title=Chinese millennials aren't getting married, and the government is worried|work=CNN|url=https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/29/china/china-millennials-marriage-intl-hnk/index.html|access-date=February 1, 2021|archive-date=October 13, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211013180533/https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/29/china/china-millennials-marriage-intl-hnk/index.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

==== Counterculture ====
[[File:Prenez vos désirs pour des réalités - 1968.jpg|left|thumb|A graffiti telling students to "take your desires for reality" at [[University of Paris|the Sorbonne]], May 1968.]]
In the decades following the Second World War, cultural rebellion became a common feature in urbanized and industrialized societies, both East and West. In the context of the ideological competition of the [[Cold War]], governments sought to improve the material standards of living of their own citizens but also to encourage them to seek meaning in their daily lives. However, young people felt a sense of alienation and sought to assert their own "individuality,"  "freedom," and "authenticity". By the early 1960s, elements of the [[Counterculture of the 1960s|counterculture]] had already entered public consciousness on both sides of the Atlantic, but were not yet viewed as a threat. But even then, West German Chancellor [[Konrad Adenauer]] acknowledged that the "most important problem of our epoch" was what many youths viewed as the empty [[Economic materialism|materialism]] and superficiality of modern life. In the Soviet Union, the official youth periodical, ''[[Komsomolskaya Pravda|Komsomol'skaia pravda]]'', called for attention to the "psychology of contemporary young people". By 1968, counterculture was considered a serious threat. In the United States, the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA) reported to the President that counterculture was a highly disruptive force not just in the nation but also abroad. In the CIA's view, it undermined societies East and West, from U.S. allies like West Germany, Japan, and South Korea to Communist nations like Poland, the Soviet Union, and China.<ref name="Suri-2009" /> Long-time director of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] (FBI) J. Edgar Hoover suspected that students' protests and counterculture were instigated by Communist agents. However, the CIA subsequently found no evidence of foreign subversion.<ref name="Isaacs-1998">{{Cite book |last1=Isaacs |first1=Jeremy |title=Cold War: An Illustrated History |last2=Downing |first2=Taylor |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |year=1998 |isbn=0-316-43953-3 |chapter=Culture Wars (1960-1968)}}</ref> Counterculture also affected Third World nations—those that chose to remain unaligned in the Cold War. In the Soviet Union, director of the Committee for State Security ([[KGB]]) [[Yuri Andropov]] became paranoid about the internal security. Under General Secretary [[Leonid Brezhnev]], the KGB amplified its efforts to suppress politically dissident voices, though the Soviet Union never quite returned to [[Joseph Stalin]]'s style of governance.<ref name="Suri-2009">{{Cite journal|last=Suri|first=Jeremi|date=February 2009|title=The Rise and Fall of an International Counterculture, 1960-1975|journal=American Historical Review|volume=114|issue=1|pages=45–68|doi=10.1086/ahr.114.1.45|jstor=30223643|doi-access=free}}</ref>

With hindsight, the CIA's assessments proved overly pessimistic. These youth movements had a bark that was worse than their bite. Despite sounding radical, the proponents of counterculture did not exactly demand the complete destruction of society in order to build it anew; they only wanted to work within the confines of the ''[[status quo]]'' to bring about the change they desired. Changes, if they came, were less well-organized than the activists themselves. Moreover, the loudest and most visible participants of counterculture often came from privileged backgrounds—with heretofore unheard-of access to higher education, material comfort, and leisure—which allowed them to feel secure enough in their activism. Counterculture was therefore not about material desires.<ref name="Suri-2009" /><ref group="note">Also see [[virtue signalling]].</ref>

Counterculture did, however, come with an entire pharmacopeia, including [[Cannabis (drug)|marijuana]], amphetamines (such as "[[Dexamyl|purple hearts]]"), and [[Psilocybin mushroom|magic mushrooms]]. But perhaps the most notorious was a substance known as "acid" or [[LSD|lysergic acid diethylamide]] (LSD). Synthesized in 1938 by chemist [[Albert Hofmann|Albert Hoffmann]] in his quest to cure  migraine, its use as a psychedelic drug was promoted in the 1960s by psychologist [[Timothy Leary]]. Attempts to ban it in 1966 made the substance [[Streisand effect|even more popular]]. A number of cultural icons of the late 1960s, such as poet Allen Ginsberg were known for using this drug.<ref name="Isaacs-1998" />

During the 1960s, conservative students objected to the counterculture and found ways to celebrate their conservative ideals by reading books such as [[J. Edgar Hoover]]'s ''A Study of Communism'', joining student organizations like the [[College Republicans]], and organizing [[Fraternities and sororities|Greek events]] which reinforced [[Gender role|gender norms]].<ref name="rollandiamondanotherside">{{cite journal |last1=Rolland-Diamond |first1=Caroline |date=2016 |title=Another Side of the Sixties: Festive Practices on College Campuses and the Making of a Conservative Youth Movement |url=http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=RFEA_146_0039&WT.mc_id=RFEA_146 |journal=Revue Française d'Études Américaines |volume=1 |issue=146 |pages=39–53 |doi=10.3917/rfea.146.0039 |url-access=registration |access-date=October 24, 2016 |via=[[Cairn.info]] |archive-date=April 20, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190420104318/https://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=RFEA_146_0039&WT.mc_id=RFEA_146 |url-status=live }}</ref> While historians disagree over the influence of the [[Counterculture of the 1960s|countercultural movements of the 1960s]] in American politics and society, they tend to describe it in similar terms. For instance, sociologist [[Todd Gitlin]] calls it self-indulgent, childish, irrational, narcissistic, and even dangerous.<ref>{{cite web |last1=George |first1=Jason |date=2004 |title=The Legacy of the Counterculture |url=http://caho-test.cc.columbia.edu/pcp/14203.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120328235327/http://caho-test.cc.columbia.edu/pcp/14203.html |archive-date=March 28, 2012 |access-date=May 23, 2014 |website=columbia.edu |publisher=Columbia University}}</ref> Moreover, it is possible that this movement did no more than creating new marketing segments for the specific sectors of the population, the "hip" crowd.<ref>{{cite web |date=May 6, 2005 |title=The selling of the counterculture (Book Review: The Rebel Sell) |url=http://www.economist.com/node/4027702 |access-date=May 23, 2014 |website=economist.com |publisher=The Economist Newspaper Limited |archive-date=May 23, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140523230634/http://www.economist.com/node/4027702 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref group="note">Also see [[conspicuous consumption]].</ref>

==== Protests and riots ====
{{multiple image
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| header = 
| image1 = 1968-05 Évènements de mai à Bordeaux - Rue Paul-Bert 1.jpg
| caption1 = Barricades in Bordeaux, May 1968
| image2 = Graffito in University of Lyon classroom during student revolt of 1968.jpg
| caption2 = A wall graffiti made during student movements in May 1968 in a classroom at the University of Lyon
| image3 = Ludwig Binder Haus der Geschichte Studentenrevolte 1968 2001 03 0275.0008 (16474725704).jpg
| caption3 = West German youth protesters, 1968, with photos of Ho Chi Minh, Vladimir Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg
| image4 = Ludwig Binder Haus der Geschichte Studentenrevolte 1968 2001 03 0275.0148 (17076461192).jpg
| caption4 = Protesters clash with police in West Germany, 1967-68
| image5 = 010891 R433-005 LETREROS DE INSULTOS EN EL MITIN AGOSTO 27 1968 (33458252566).jpg
| caption5 = Protest signs read, "Mom, see you in court!" and "It is forbidden to forbid!" Mexico City, 1968.
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| image7 = Monument to the hippie era. Tamil Nadu.jpg
| caption7 = A monument to the Hippie Trail, Tamil Nadu, India
| image8 = Anti-abortion_protest,_1986.jpg
| caption8 = Some anti-abortion protestors in San Francisco, California, 1986
| image9 = Demonstration, with Gay Liberation Front Banner, c1972 (7374381322).jpg
| caption9 = Members of the [[Gay Liberation Front]] protesting in London, 1972
| total_width = 
}}

When they came of age during the late 1960s and 1970s, Baby Boomers immediately became politically active and made themselves heard due to the sheer size of their demographic cohort.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> Violent crime and protests increased markedly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many proponents of counterculture idealized violence and armed struggle against what they considered oppression, drawing inspiration from conflicts in the Third World and from the [[Cultural Revolution]] in Communist China, a creation of [[Mao Zedong]] intended to thoroughly sever the ties of society to its history, with deadly results. Some young men and women simply refused to engage in dialogue with mainstream society and instead believed that violence was [[Status symbol|a sign of their status]] as resistance fighters.<ref name="Suri-2009" /> In [[May 68|May 1968]], French youths launched massive protest demanding social and educational reforms, while labor unions simultaneously initiated a general strike, prompting countermeasures by the government. This led to a general mayhem in a manner similar to a civil war, especially in Paris. Finally, the government acquiesced to the demands of the students and workers; [[Charles de Gaulle]] stepped down as president in 1969.<ref>{{Cite book|last=National Geographic|title=Essential Visual History of the World|publisher=National Geographic Society|year=2007|isbn=978-1-4262-0091-5|pages=438–9}}</ref>

In the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), the 1950s was a period of strong economic growth and prosperity. But like so many other Western nations, it soon faced severe political polarization thanks to youth revolts. By the 1960s there was a general feeling of stagnation, which stimulated the creation of the primarily student-backed [[Extra-parliamentary opposition|Extra-parliamentary Opposition]] (APO). One of the goals of the APO was reforms to the university system of admissions and registration. One of the most prominent APO activists was [[Rudi Dutschke]], who declared "the [[long march through the institutions]]" in the context of recruitment for the civil service. Another major student movement of this era was the [[Red Army Faction]] (RAF), a militant [[Marxism|Marxist]] group most active in the 1970s and the 1980s. Members of the RAF believed the West German economic and political systems to be inhumane and [[Fascism|fascist]]; they looted stores, robbed banks, and kidnapped or assassinated West German businessmen, politicians, and judges. The RAF's reign of terror lasted until around 1993. It disbanded itself in 1998.<ref>{{Cite book|last=National Geographic|title=Essential Visual History of the World|publisher=National Geographic Society|year=2007|isbn=978-1-4262-0091-5|pages=430–1}}</ref> The RAF turned out to be deadlier than its American counterpart, the [[Weather Underground]], which declared itself a "movement that fights, not just talks about fighting."<ref name="Suri-2009" />

Many West German youths in the late 1960s were suspicious of authority. Student demonstrators protested West Germany's rearmament, [[NATO]] membership, refusal to recognize the Democratic Republic of Germany ([[East Germany]]), and the role of the United States in the Vietnam War. On the other hand, the construction of the [[Berlin Wall]] (starting in August 1961, after the [[Berlin Crisis of 1961|Berlin standoff]]) by East Germany boosted anti-communist sentiments in the West, where there was growing demands for high academic standards and opposition to communist indoctrination. A sort of civil war erupted in German academia. The [[Free University of Berlin]] was the heart of West German student movements. Many leading professors left because of the asphyxiating political atmosphere. However, by the mid-1970s, things calmed down. Students were more interested in academics and career preparation.<ref name="Begehr-1998">{{Cite book|last=Begehr|first=H. G. W.|title=Mathematics in Berlin|publisher=Birkhäuser Verlag|year=1998|isbn=978-3-7643-5943-0|editor-last=Begehr, H. G. W.|location=Germany|pages=155–57|chapter=Freie Universität Berlin, A Summary of Its History|editor-last2=Koch, H|editor-last3=Krammer, J|editor-last4=Schappacher, N|editor-last5=Thiele, E.-J}}</ref> Indeed, counterculture had by this time invited stern public backlash. Resistance to change heightened. Major governments around the world implemented various policies intended to ensure "[[Law and order (politics)|law and order]]".<ref name="Suri-2009" />

Some well-known slogans among youth rebels were, "When I think of revolution I want to make love," "I take my desires for reality and I believe in the reality of my desires," and "We want everything and we want it now!" These were evidently not what would normally be recognized as political slogans; rather, they were subjective expressions of the private individual.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

In general, though, no major government was overthrown by the protests and riots of the 1960s; indeed, governments proved rather stable during this turbulent period in history. Growing demands for change stimulated resistance to change.<ref name="Suri-2009" /> Frustrated with the lack of revolutionary results despite their protests, which some skeptical observers such as [[Raymond Aron]] dismissed as no more than '[[Psychological fiction|psychodrama]]' and '[[Street theatre|street theater]]', some students became radicalized and opted for violence and even terrorism to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, other than publicity they achieved little. Doing one's "revolutionary service"—as the joke goes in Peru—[[Careerism|did wonders for one's future career]], though. From Latin America to France, students were aware that the civil service recruited university graduates and in fact, many had a successful career working for the government after leaving radical groups (and in some cases, becoming completely apolitical). Governments understood that people became less rebellious as they aged.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

In the United States, protests against American participation in the War in Vietnam shook college campuses and cities across the nation, even though the U.S. Armed Forces were deployed for similar (anti-communist) reasons they were during the Korean War, a conflict that provoked little political headwind. This was a time of growing focus on the self and mistrust of authority. Young people were no longer interested in military service the way their forebears were. [[Draft evasion in the Vietnam War|Draft evasion]] grew, and many took to the streets to demand the abolition of [[Conscription in the United States|conscription]], which became a reality. Some of these student demonstrations grew violent, with fatal consequences.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> Among counties that saw only peaceful demonstrations, the chances of the Democratic Party winning elections were unharmed. But in those that had riots, the Republican Party was able to attract new votes by appealing to the desire for security and stability. In fact, the backlash against the civil unrest of the late 1960s and early 1970s was so strong that even politicians in the 1990s like [[Bill Clinton]] had no choice but to endorse tough policies regarding public security in order to win elections.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Chait|first=Jonathan|date=May 21, 2015|title=New Study Shows Riots Make America Conservative|work=New York Intelligencer|url=https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/05/new-study-shows-riots-make-america-conservative.html|access-date=November 3, 2020|archive-date=November 3, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201103041739/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/05/new-study-shows-riots-make-america-conservative.html|url-status=live}}</ref> High-profile protestors such as the hippies who confronted the police were the target of public hostility and condemnation.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=January 30, 2023 |title=When Americans Lost Faith in the News |magazine=The New Yorker |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/06/when-americans-lost-faith-in-the-news |access-date=April 4, 2023 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230206062732/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/06/when-americans-lost-faith-in-the-news |archive-date=February 6, 2023}}</ref>

As a group, Western left-wing activists and radicals of the 1960s were intellectuals, and this was reflected in the ways their variants of political action and beliefs, primarily drawn from the experience in the classroom rather than on the factory floor. Many of these remained in academia and consequently became an unprecedentedly large cadre of cultural and political radicals on campus.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hobsbawn|first=Eric|title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991|publisher=Abacus|year=1996|isbn=978-0-349-10671-7|chapter=Chapter Fifteen: Third World and Revolution}}</ref>

One side effect of the student revolts of the late-1960s was that it made unions and workers realize they could demand more from their employers. Nevertheless, after so many years of full employment and growing wages and benefits, the working class was simply uninterested in starting a revolution.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> To the contrary, some Americans even took to the streets to denounce counterculture and anti-war activists in the context of the War in Vietnam.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Isaacs |first1=Jeremy |title=Cold War: An Illustrated History |last2=Downing |first2=Taylor |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |year=1998 |isbn=0-316-43953-3 |chapter=Détente (1969-1975)}}</ref>

In China, Chairman Mao in 1965 created the [[Red Guards]], which initially consisted mainly of students, to purge dissident CCP officials and intellectuals in general, as part of the Cultural Revolution. The result was general mayhem. Mao eventually opted to deploy the People's Liberation Army against his own Red Guards to restore public order.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996d" /> Mao disposed of millions of Red Guards by sending them to the countryside.<ref name="Gaddis-2005">{{Cite book |last=Gaddis |first=John Lewis |title=The Cold War: A New History |publisher=Penguin Books |year=2005 |isbn=978-0143038276 |chapter=IV: The Emergence of Autonomy |author-link=John Lewis Gaddis}}</ref>

==== Hippies and the Hippie Trail ====
The youthful proponents of counterculture, known as the [[hippie]]s, disapproved of the modern world so much they sought refuge from it in [[Intentional community|communes]] and [[Mysticism|mystical religions]]. During the 1960s and 1970s, large groups of them could be found in any major European or American city. Male hippies wore long hair and grew beards, while female hippies eschewed anything that women traditionally wore to make themselves attractive, such as [[Cosmetics|makeup]] and [[bra]]s. Hippies were iconoclasts to varying degrees and rejected the traditional work ethic. They preferred love to money, feelings to facts, and natural things to manufactured items. They engaged in [[casual sex]] and used various [[hallucinogen]]s. They were generally pacifists and pessimists. Many disliked politics and activism, though they were influenced by the political atmosphere of the time.<ref name="Garraty-1991b">{{Cite book|last=Garraty|first=John A.|title=The American Nation: A History of the United States|publisher=HarperCollins Publishers|year=1991|isbn=978-0-06-042312-4|location=United States of America|pages=900–1|chapter=Chapter XXXII Society in Flux, 1945-1980. The Counterculture}}</ref> A significant cultural event of this era was the [[Woodstock]] Festival in August 1969, which drew huge crowds despite bad weather and a general lack of facilities.<ref name="Garraty-1991b" /> Although it is commonly asserted that some half a million people attended, the actual figure is difficult to determine, even with aerial photography, as crowd experts would attest.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Henshaw|first=John M.|title=An Equation for Every Occasion|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|year=2014|isbn=978-1-4214-1491-1|location=Baltimore|chapter=Chapter 12: Woodstock Nation}}</ref>

The so-called [[Hippie trail|Hippie Trail]] probably started in the mid-1950s, as expeditions of wealthy tourists and students traveling in small groups. They started from the United Kingdom, heading eastwards. As [[Western Europe]]an economies grew, so did demand for international travel; many bus services sprang up to serve tourists. The first hippies—initially used to refer to men with long hair—joined the trail in the late 1960s. Many young people were beguiled by [[Eastern religions]] and mysticism, and they wanted to visit Asia to learn more. Others wanted to escape the conventional lifestyles of their home countries or saw opportunities for profit. Some smoked [[Cannabis (drug)|marijuana]] and wished to visit the Middle East and [[South Asia]], where their favored products came from. But air travel was in its infancy at this time in history and was beyond the reach of most. For those seeking an adventure, traveling by long-distance bus and trains from Western Europe to Asia became an affordable alternative. But not all who traversed the Hippie Trail were from Europe. In fact, many hailed from Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Visas were easily obtained and in some cases were not required at all.<ref name="Gregory-2020" /> Many young and naive Western tourists fell victim to scammers, tricksters, and even murderers, taking advantage of the nascent global drug culture at the time.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Saksena|first=Abhishek|date=May 28, 2015|title=12 Things You Didn't Know About The Infamous Charles Sobhraj|work=India Times|url=https://www.indiatimes.com/culture/who-we-are/12-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-infamous-charles-sobhraj-233025.html|access-date=November 4, 2020|archive-date=November 8, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201108124117/http://www.indiatimes.com/culture/who-we-are/12-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-infamous-charles-sobhraj-233025.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|date=August 12, 2004|title=The 'bikini-killer' linked to murders throughout Asia|work=BBC News|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3867791.stm|access-date=November 4, 2020|archive-date=May 12, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090512185834/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3867791.stm|url-status=live}}</ref> The Hippie Trail ended in 1979 with the [[Iranian Revolution]] and the start of the [[Soviet–Afghan War]] (1979–1989).<ref name="Gregory-2020">{{Cite web|last=Gregory|first=Richard|title=A Brief History of the Hippie Trail|url=https://www.richardgregory.org.uk/history/hippie-trail.htm|access-date=November 1, 2020|website=Richard Gregory|archive-date=November 11, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111215149/https://www.richardgregory.org.uk/history/hippie-trail.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>

==== Sexual revolution and feminism ====
In the United Kingdom, the [[R v Penguin Books Ltd|Lady Chatterley trial]] (1959) and the first long-play of the Beatles, ''[[Please Please Me]]'' (1963) were to begin the process of altering public perception of [[Human mating strategies|human mating]], a cause subsequently taken up by young people seeking personal liberation.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /><ref group="note">See this [[R v Penguin Books Ltd#Legal and cultural consequences|1974 poem]] by the poet [[Philip Larkin]].</ref>

In the United States, the [[Food and Drug Administration|Food and Drugs Administration]] (FDA) in May 1960 approved the first contraceptive pill, a drug that has had a huge impact on the nation's history.<ref>{{Cite web|last=American Experience|date=February 24, 2003|title=The Pill|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/pill/|access-date=January 9, 2021|website=PBS|archive-date=March 2, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210302171009/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/pill/|url-status=live}}</ref> Invented by [[Gregory Goodwin Pincus|Gregory Pincus]] in 1956, [[Combined oral contraceptive pill|the pill]], as it is commonly called, marked the first time in human history when sexuality and reproduction can be reliably separated.<ref name="Brenot-2017">{{Cite book |last1=Brenot |first1=Philippe |title=The Story of Sex: A Graphic History through the Ages |last2=Coryn |first2=Laetitia |publisher=Black Dog & Leventhal |year=2017 |isbn=978-0-316-47222-7 |location=New York |translator-last=McMorran |translator-first=Will |chapter=Chapter 11 - The 20th Century: Sexual Liberation}}</ref> The pill and antibiotics capable of curing various venereal diseases eliminated two leading arguments against extra-marital sex, paving the way for the [[sexual revolution]].<ref name="Garraty-1991c2" /> But the revolution did not happen right away; it was not until the 1980s that the pill become widely available in the United States and other Western nations.<ref name="Brenot-2017" /> In fact, the first wave of Baby Boomers married and had children early, following the footsteps of their parents.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" /> Eventually, though, political attitudes towards human sexuality altered dramatically in the late 1960s because of young people. Although the behavior of most Americans did not change overnight, the heretofore mainstream beliefs on issues such as [[premarital sex]], birth control, abortion, homosexuality, and pornography were openly challenged and no longer considered automatically valid. Individuals no longer feared social consequences when they expressed deviant ideas.<ref name="Garraty-1991c2" /> Indeed, the 1960s and 1970s were the most consequential in the history of human sexuality. While there was a backlash on moral or religious grounds, the sexual mores in Western societies were forever changed.<ref name="Brenot-2017" /> Nevertheless, there were concerns over possible abandonment or disrespect among (older) teenage girls and young women if they were to offer themselves to their boyfriends, a sentiment captured by the song "[[Will You Love Me Tomorrow]]?" from 1960.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> [[Going steady]]—the practice of dating one person exclusively (as opposed to "playing the field")—rose in popularity among young Americans following the Second World War<ref name="flc">{{cite journal |last1=Poffenberger |first1=Thomas |date=Jan 1964 |title=Three Papers on Going Steady |journal=The Family Life Coordinator |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=7–13 |doi=10.2307/581501 |jstor=581501}}

* {{Cite journal |date=1964 |title=Errata: Three Papers on Going Steady |journal=The Family Life Coordinator |volume=13 |issue=3 |pages=78 |doi=10.2307/581440 |issn=0886-0394 |jstor=581440}}</ref> and was part of mainstream youth culture through the 1980s, with teenagers beginning to go steady at progressively earlier ages.<ref name="spurlock">{{Cite book |last=Spurlock |first=John C. |title=Youth and sexuality in the twentieth-century United States |date=2016 |isbn=9781138817487 |location=New York |pages=63–116 |oclc=898926426}}</ref>

Sexologist [[Alfred Kinsey|Alfred C. Kinsey]]'s books, ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Male'' (1948) and ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Female'' (1958), employed confidential interviews to proclaim that sexual behaviors previously deemed unusual were more common than people thought. Despite triggering a storm of criticisms, the [[Kinsey Reports]] earned him the nickname the "Marx of the sexual revolution" due to their revolutionary influence. Many men and women celebrated their newfound freedom and had their satisfactions, but the sexual revolution also paved the way to new problems.<ref name="Garraty-1991c2"/> Many young people were under peer pressure to enter relationships they felt they were ill-prepared for, with serious psychological consequences. Illegitimate births ballooned, as did sexually transmitted diseases. Public health officials raised the alarm on an epidemic of [[gonorrhea]] and the emergence of the lethal acquired immune deficiency syndrome ([[HIV/AIDS|AIDS]]). Because many had strong opinions on various subjects relating to sexuality, the sexual revolution exacerbated sociopolitical stratification.<ref name="Garraty-1991c2">{{Cite book|last=Garraty|first=John S.|title=The American Nation: A History of the United States|publisher=Harper Collins|year=1991|isbn=978-0-06-042312-4|location=United States of America|pages=901–3|chapter=Chapter XXXII Society in Flux, 1945-1980. The Sexual Revolution}}</ref>

Coupled with the sexual revolution was a new wave of feminism, as the relaxation of traditional views heightened women's awareness of what they might be able to change. Competition in the job market led many to demand equal pay for equal work and government-funded daycare services. Some groups, such as the [[National Organization for Women]] (NOW) equated women's rights with civil rights and copied the tactics of black activists, demanding an [[Equal Rights Amendment]], changes to the divorce laws making them more favorable to women, and the legalization of abortion.<ref name="Garraty-1991c1" />

In her book ''The Feminine Mystique'', Betty Friedan discussed what she called "the problem that has no name"—namely, that married women with children were unhappy as housewives because "There is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no way she can even dream about herself, except as her children’s mother, her husband’s wife."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Mukhopadhyay |first=Samhita |date=August 5, 2020 |title=One Legacy of the Pandemic May Be Less Judgment of the Child-Free |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/08/pandemic-changing-my-mind-about-having-kids/614896/ |archive-url=https://archive.today/20200830000523/https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/08/pandemic-changing-my-mind-about-having-kids/614896/ |archive-date=August 30, 2020 |access-date=November 3, 2024 |work=The Atlantic}}</ref> "[[The personal is political]]" became the motto for the [[Second-wave feminism|second wave of feminism]].<ref name="Drucker-2018" /> But the feminist movement splintered, because some became radicalized and thought that groups such as NOW were not enough. Such [[Radical feminism|radical feminists]] believed that people should start using [[gender-neutral language]], marriage should be abolished, and that the traditional family unit was "a decadent, energy-absorbing, destructive, wasteful institution," rejected [[heterosexuality]] as a matter of principle, and attacked "not just capitalism, but men." At the other extreme, staunch [[Social conservatism|social conservatives]] launched a major backlash, for example, by starting [[anti-abortion movement]]s after the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] declared abortion constitutional in ''[[Roe v. Wade]]'' (1973). Yet despite their best efforts, mainstream American society changed. Many women entered the workforce, taking a variety of jobs and thus altered the balance of power between the sexes.<ref name="Garraty-1991c1">{{Cite book|last=Garraty|first=John S.|title=The American Nation: A History of the United States|publisher=Harper Collins|year=1991|isbn=978-0-06-042312-4|location=United States of America|pages=903–6|chapter=Chapter XXXII Society in Flux, 1945-1980. Women's Liberation}}</ref>

Although the new feminist movement germinated in the United States in the 1960s, initially to address the concerns of middle-class women, thanks to the appearance of the word 'sex' in the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]], which was primarily intended to prohibit racial discrimination, it quickly spread to other Western nations in the 1970s and especially the 1980s. More women realized how much power they had as a group and they made use of it immediately, as can be seen in reforms regarding divorce and abortion laws in Italy, for example.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

Women flooded the workforce, and by the early 1980s, many sectors of the economy were feminized, though men continued to monopolize manual labor. Due to the [[law of supply and demand]], such a surge in the number of workers diminished the prestige and income of those jobs. For many middle-class married women, joining the workforce made little economic sense, after accounting for all the extra costs, such as paid childcare and house work, but many chose to work anyway in order to achieve financial independence. But as the desire to send one's children to university became ever more common, middle-class women worked outside the home for the same reason their poorer counterparts did: making ends meet. Nevertheless, at least among middle-class intellectuals, men became much more reluctant to disrupt the careers of their wives, who were not as willing to follow their husbands wherever their jobs led them as was the case for previous generations.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

Although, in practice, the practitioners of feminism did not necessarily form an ideologically coherent group, they did succeed in creating a collective consciousness for women, something left-wing politicians in democracies were keen to acknowledge in order to court their votes. By the 1970s and 1980s, the traditional solidarity of the working class was fading away as different segments of this group began experience divergent economic prospects due to the continuation of industrial automation.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

Following the advent of a new atmosphere of sexual freedom, in the 1970s and 1980s, homosexuals were increasingly willing to demand acceptance by society and full legal rights.<ref name="Brenot-2017" /><ref name="Garraty-1991c2" /> It proved difficult to object to what consenting adults practiced in private.<ref name="Garraty-1991c2" /> Stating one's commitment to a heretofore prohibited or ostracized way of life, that is, 'coming out', was important to [[LGBT social movements|this movement]]. Homosexuality was decriminalized in England, Wales, and the United States in the late 1960s.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /> The world's first Gay Pride parade took place in 1969.<ref name="Brenot-2017" /> However, the [[HIV/AIDS]] epidemic acted as a brake on this social trend when its first victims were identified as such in the early 1980s. Writer [[Randy Shilts]], himself a gay man, noted, "HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all the shallow things we cling to, like ego and [[vanity]]. Of course, I'd rather have a few more [[T cell|T-cells]] and a little less character."<ref name="Twenge-2023">{{Cite book |last=Twenge |first=Jean |title=Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and Silents—and What The Mean for America's Future |publisher=Atria Books |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-9821-8161-1 |location=New York |chapter=Event Interlude: The AIDS Epidemic}}</ref>

==== Marriage and family ====
[[File:Families US.svg|thumb|By the final third of the twentieth century, the nuclear family was no longer the most common type of household in the United States and other Western nations.]]
Marriage in many developed countries became much less stable in the 1980s, when Baby Boomers were getting married. In the West, this manifested in rising divorce rates. But this pattern was not seen East Asia.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />{{rp|323}} Instead, the region saw declining marriage rates, particularly in Japan, where social changes led to the deterioration of Japanese men's social standing after World War II.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Coulmas |first1=Florian |title=Population Decline and Ageing in Japan - The Social Consequences |date=May 11, 2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-14500-3 |page=105 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rJt9AgAAQBAJ&pg=PT105 |language=en |quote="...as a consequence of Japan's defeat in World War II, and the social changes it brought in its wake - reduced status of household head, better education opportunities for and achievements by women, increased female labour force participation, and a shift away from marriage by arrangement to marriage by mutual choice - men's social standing has been destabilized, robbing them of their self-confidence."}}</ref> Men in East Asia were more likely to be unmarried than men in the West.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Matsuda |first1=Shigeki |title=Low Fertility in Advanced Asian Economies: Focusing on Families, Education, and Labor Markets |date=January 3, 2020 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-981-15-0710-6 |pages=29–30 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JNLHDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA30
|language=en}} Table 3, pages 29-30. "It is notable that the proportion of males who had ever married/cohabited in the three Asian
countries were lower than of males  in the same category in the European countries -- in other words, Asian men are more likely to be single."</ref>

Between 1970 and 1985, the number of divorces per thousand people doubled in Denmark and Norway and tripled in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In England and Wales, while there was only one divorce per fifty-two weddings in 1938, that number became one every 2.2 fifty years later; this trend accelerated in the 1960s. During the 1970s, Californian women visiting their doctors showed a marked decline in the desire for marriage and children. In all Western nations, the number of single-person households steadily rose. In the major metropolitan areas, half the population lived alone. Meanwhile, the "traditional" [[nuclear family]]—a phrase first coined in 1924—was in decline. In Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and West Germany, only a minority of households consisted of two parents and their children by the 1980s, down from half or more than half in 1960. In Sweden, such a family unit fell from 37% to 25% in the same period; in fact, more than half of all children in Sweden in the mid-1980s were born to unmarried women.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

In the United States, what set the Boomers apart from their parents was not their marriage rates, or that they married in their early 20s, but rather that they were much more likely to be divorced. Divorced Boomers were less likely to remarry than their counterparts from the Silent Generation.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> Statistically, marrying before the age of 25 increased the probability of divorce.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" /> The nuclear family fell from 44% of all households in 1960 to 29% in 1980. But for African Americans, the figure was higher. In 1991, single mothers had given birth to the majority of children (70%) and headed a majority of households (58%).<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b">{{Cite book |last=Hobsbawm |first=Eric |url=https://archive.org/details/ageofextremeshis0000hobs/ |title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 |publisher=Abacus |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-349-10671-7 |chapter=Chapter Eleven: Cultural Revolution}}</ref> As women's labor participation rose, rumors that career-oriented women were unhappy and unfulfilled or that mothers regretted returning to work began to spread. Mothers-in-law and medical doctors began urging women to forgo their ambitions in order to have children early to avoid problems infertility later on. Popular media frequently exhorted working women—if implicitly—to quit their jobs. Nevertheless, the share of American adults who rejected traditional gender roles steadily rose during the 1970s and 1980s.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> As more and more women became financially independent, the traditional reason for women to marry faded away.<ref name="Burn-Murdoch-2024">{{Cite news |last=Burn-Murdoch |first=John |date=March 29, 2024 |title=Why family-friendly policies don't boost birth rates |url=https://www.ft.com/content/838eeb4e-3bff-4693-990f-ff3446cac9b2 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20240329160813/https://www.ft.com/content/838eeb4e-3bff-4693-990f-ff3446cac9b2 |archive-date=March 29, 2024 |access-date=March 29, 2024 |work=Financial Times}}</ref> Marriage became increasingly viewed as an option, rather than an obligation.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> In fact, since the 1960s, marriage has stopped being primarily focused on having and raising children but instead, the fulfillment of adults.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Brooks |first=David |date=March 2020 |title=The Nuclear Family Was A Mistake |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/ |archive-url=https://archive.today/20231119143819/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/ |archive-date=November 19, 2023 |access-date=April 12, 2024 |work=The Atlantic}}</ref> Married men were noticeably less willing to disrupt the careers of their wives.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /> Unmarried women were no longer deemed as "sick" or "immoral" the way they were in the 1950s. In addition, neither working mothers nor [[single parent]]hood (what used to be called [[Legitimacy (family law)|illegitimacy]]) was socially ostracized the way they used to be.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" />
[[File:Ms. magazine Cover - Spring 1972.jpg|thumb|[[Ms. (magazine)|''Ms.'' magazine]] cover, Spring 1972.]]
Parts of the reason why marriages were delayed or avoided were economic. People who entered the workforce during the 1970s and 1980s made less than their fathers did in the 1950s. Fertility rates fell as a result.<ref name="Macunovich-2015" /> The rise in the number of cohabitating couples was also a factor. These couples claimed [[cohabitation]] helped them assess the suitability of a mate before marriage.<ref name="Kalmijn-1994">{{Cite journal|last=Kalmijn|first=Matthijs|date=September 1994|title=Assortative Mating by Cultural and Economic Occupational Status|url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230542|journal=American Journal of Sociology|publisher=University of Chicago Press|volume=100|issue=2|pages=422–52|doi=10.1086/230542|s2cid=131770740|access-date=March 3, 2021|archive-date=February 21, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220221141443/https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230542|url-status=live}}</ref>

In Italy, divorce was legalized in 1970 and confirmed by referendum in 1974. Abortion went through the same process in 1978 and 1981, respectively.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> In the Canadian province of Quebec, the birth rate fell considerably during the 1960s and 1970s as the influence of the Catholic Church declined.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

While sociologists had known for a long time that humans tend to select mates of the same ethnicity, social class, personality traits, and educational level, a phenomenon known as [[Human mating strategies#Assortative mating|assortative mating]], during the 1970s and 1980s, an even stronger correlation between the educational levels of a married couple was observed in the United States. In fact, both the age at (first) marriage and the amount of time spent in school increased in the 1970s. Whereas in the past women had typically looked for men of high social status while men had not, by the late twentieth-century, men also looked for women of high earning potential, resulting in an even more pronounced educational and economic assortative mating. More generally, higher rates of university attendance and workforce participation by women affected the marital expectations of both sexes in that both men and women became more symmetrical in what they desired in a mate. The share of marriages in which both spouses were of the same educational level rose monotonically from 47% in 1960 to 53% by the mid- to late-1980s. Similarly, the share of marriages in which both spouses differ by at most one level of schooling increased from 83% in 1940 to 88% by the 1980s.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Mare|first=Robert D.|date=February 1991|title=Five Decades of Educational Assortative Mating|journal=American Sociological Review|volume=56|issue=1|pages=15–32|doi=10.2307/2095670|jstor=2095670}}</ref>

Part of the reason why people increasingly married their socioeconomic and educational peers was economic in nature. Innovations that became commercially available in the late twentieth century such as the washing machine and frozen food reduced the amount of time people needed to spend on housework, which diminished the importance of domestic skills.<ref>{{Cite news|date=September 21, 2017|title=Marital choices are exacerbating household income inequality|newspaper=The Economist|url=https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/09/21/marital-choices-are-exacerbating-household-income-inequality|access-date=December 20, 2020|archive-date=December 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201207080341/https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/09/21/marital-choices-are-exacerbating-household-income-inequality|url-status=live}}</ref> Moreover, it was no longer possible for a couple with one spouse having no more than a high-school diploma to earn about the national average; on the other hand, couples both of whom had at least a bachelor's degree could expect to make a significant amount above the national average. People thus had a clear economic incentive to seek out a mate with at least as high a level of education in order to maximize their potential income. A societal outcome of this was that as household gender equality improved because women had more choices, income inequality widened.<ref>{{Cite news|date=February 8, 2014|title=Sex, brains and inequality|newspaper=The Economist|url=https://www.economist.com/united-states/2014/02/08/sex-brains-and-inequality|access-date=December 20, 2020|archive-date=December 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201201132501/https://www.economist.com/united-states/2014/02/08/sex-brains-and-inequality|url-status=live}}</ref>