Cohorts and Generations

A few years ago I found (in a Rockland antique store) a set of portraits of members of the Class of 1929 from Lynn English High School, a marvelous example of an age cohort caught at a liminal moment, just as they were about to enter the workforce ...little expecting that the Depression would break over them only months later, and change their lives utterly.

What was the life space of these people, born ca. 1911 and passing through adolescence in the 1920s? How does it compare to and diverge from the life space we have enjoyed?

Age cohorts and the Generations they are pinioned in continue to fascinate me. We are swept along through Time in an envelope that contains (and gently leaks...) our contemporaries — the cohort into which we were born, and the adjacent cohorts which are (or seem to be, or not) of the same Generation.

Those of us of the Class of 1943 were 20 when Jack Kennedy was shot, and 58 when the Twin Towers fell, and OMG 80 in 2023... We occupy a (shrinking) SLICE of the American age pyramid

So here's the Question, to be parsed as most pleases you:

What do we SHARE with others of our cohort, and with members of our Generation? What makes us distinctive/different from other Generations and cohorts? Looking back from the perspective of 80 (or wherever you are), what have WE accomplished — or not?

As usual, I've been at work on this Question for a while, and there's an overstuffed and still-accreting Page tracking my explorations, for your amusement if so inclined.

Happy Homemakers, 1942 (from Shorpy)