Hi {{ subscriber.first_name or "Friend" }},
In an opinion letter in The Washington Post Philip Cohen, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, shared that 150 demographers recently wrote to the Pew Research Center asking them to stop promoting the use of generation labels. Cohen wrote, “Instead of asking people which group they feel an affinity for and why, purveyors of social
‘generations’ just declare the categories and start making pronouncements about them. That’s not how social identity works.”
In the association arena, generational labels are helpful shorthand to acknowledge that members and their needs change—and that what we do and how we communicate should change as well. They are a way to combat the complacency behind “we’ve always done it this way.”
Cohen also wrote: “The supposed boundaries between generations are no more meaningful than the names they’ve been given. There is no research identifying the appropriate boundaries between generations, and there is no empirical basis for imposing the sweeping character traits that are believed to define them….The categories even fail to capture common experiences. Consider the life history of baby
boomers—the one group defined by an actual historic event (the spike in birth rates between 1946 and 1964). This includes men born in the late 1940s, 42 percent of whom served in the military, and those born in the early 1960s, who came of age after the Vietnam War and entered the military at a fraction of that rate (12 percent).”
What is helpful is recognizing that members’ experiences and expectations differ. The sweet spot for an association is understanding where these intersect and providing solutions for the “pains” members have. Innovating around pain is a way to turn suffering into opportunity. When you do this, you’ll have a strong value proposition—and that’s of interest
to all generations.
Sincerely,
