Reply to If you were born between 1960-1964 do you consider yourself a boomer or generation Xer.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DH was born in 1958.  He remembers Michael Jackson as being awesome.  
My son is a millennial.  He remembers Michael Jackson as being really weird. 
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And your husband was too young to be eligible for the draft, so his teen years were very different from those of the Boomers, for the simple fact that he didn’t have to think about fighting in Vietnam unless he chose to join the military.

People born in the late 50s and early 60s did not have to concern themselves with Vietnam the way those born from 1945-55 did. That’s one of the biggest defining characteristics of Boomers. 
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Not true. I was born in ‘62 and my father was in Vietnam for a year as an officer. We had a very difficult year without him and he came home to jeers and protests. We had to move from our house on the highway because the sounds would trigger my father’s PTSD. Our nanny’s father came home from Vietnam and killed himself ten years later. There were many repercussions from Vietnam besides being of age to be drafted to the war. [/quote]

Yes, that is true and you are right that I worded that badly. I do realize that there were more repercussions from Vietnam than those caused by the draft and also experienced them in older family members whose lives were, sadly, never the same after their service there.

I was more specific in the first paragraph above and should have used the same phrase again in that I meant to indicate that young men born in the late 50s and early 60s didn’t need to worry about being drafted themselves. They and their female peers knew that they would not have to go to Vietnam unless they chose to serve. It made a huge difference to not have to think about being drafted as a teen.

One of the most defining characteristics of the Boomers is that the males were eligible for the draft. That eligibility had a huge effect on many of the choices they made about how they lived their lives and affected how they viewed the world around them. Those born after 1955 did not have to worry about being drafted and that fact made their lives very different from those born 1945-55. [b]They just don’t qualify as Boomers in large part because they didn’t have the experience of having to think about the possibility of being drafted and plan accordingly.[/b] 
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I don't think that is necessarily true.  Those boys born in 1956, 57, 58, 59 still grew up expecting that the draft would affect them.  The Vietnam era draft ended in 1972, but until 1975, the selective service was still telling young men to expect to be drafted.   
Of course, being told to expect to be drafted is very different than actually being drafted, but there was still that looming cloud over a teen boy's existence, even if they were born a few years after 1955. 
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DP-  You have stretched the goalpost years. This discussion was about people born between 1961-1964, not people born in the 50's[/quote]

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