Book Description

From the Blurb: Great Expectations is the story of 75 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, a baby boom so extraordinary that it has affected every aspect of our society, from fads, fashions and music, to education, crime rates and Social Security. From the first, the post-World War II baby boomers were endowed with great expectations: they would be the biggest, richest, best educated generation America has ever known. They made the '50s a child-oriented society, the '60s a period of stormy adolescence, and now their adult concerns have become national obsessions. Their shared experience has shaped them like no other generation. They have transformed the way America looks at work, women, divorce, and parenting (nearly one-half of their children are expected to grow up in single-parent households). But today they are a generation of uncertainty, unsure about their role in society and marriage, unsure even about reproducing themselves. Great Expectations is the story of a generation whose numbers are at once its greatest strength and its tragic limitation, and of a society unprepared to meet the demands of the explosion in its midst.