The Class of 1985 as they looked in Kindergarten.
(I'm the first little girl on the second row if you must know.)

According to Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture, Generation X was born during the single most anti-child phase in American history. In the early 1960s, the birth control pill became widely available, and in 1973, abortion was legalized. These are two factors that are said to have contributed to the generation’s low numbers.

According to Jeff Gordinier, in his recent book, How Generation X Got the Shaft, But Can Still Keep Eveything From Sucking, Baby Boomers number 76 million and Millennials, 80 million. Generation X is sandwiched between them with 46 million.

From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, divorce rates in the United States more than doubled. In addition, between 1969 and 1996, the number of working mothers in the workforce also doubled. Consequently, many households were headed by working single moms. It’s estimated that as many as 40 percent of Gen Xers were latchkey kids who returned home from school to empty houses. Their childhoods and youth were marked by a lack of supervision, and excessive household and family responsibilities.

I think we're alone now
There doesn't seem to be anyone around.
--Tiffany, 1987

The pendulum swings wide on the consequences of the latchkey childhood. Unsupervised Gen X children and youth ran the gamut of those who watched too much TV and didn’t do their homework to those who fell into escalating levels of crime. For one Gen Xer living in Oklahoma, the pendulum didn’t just swing it spiraled downward into a heartbreaking tale of promiscuity, drugs and alcohol. And, even though her story is not the rule, many Gen Xers had friends like her.

Gina (not her real name) was born in 1967. Her parents divorced in the early 1970s, and her father lived in another state. Eventually, he became estranged. She was a latchkey kid throughout her entire childhood and youth growing up in Oklahoma City.

“When I came home I did things I wasn’t suppose to do,” the 41-year-old store clerk said. “I had to take care of my younger sister. I cooked for us.

“It was very lonesome. I filled my voids with bad things, with things I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I got into drugs, into alcohol.”

“The whole cheerleader thing,” Gina continues, “I never had a ride. I never had money for uniforms. Therefore, I never got interested in ball games. In junior high, I joined a softball team, but my mom never came to one game.”

According to Coupland, inwardly-focused Baby Boomers sometimes regarded their children as “obstacles to their self-exploration,” and thus resulted permissive parenting of grand proportion. In addition, on top of spending many hours bored and lonely, Coupland also concludes that Generation X was “rushed through childhood.”

“If she would have been home, I wouldn’t have gotten into those things,” Gina said. “I would have been more involved, more interested. I might have gone to Vo-tech, but my mom thought that was a blow-off.

“I wanted to go into nursing.”

Gina, who graduated high school in 1985, left Oklahoma City after graduation and became a dancer at a topless bar in a mid-size town about 100 miles away. Over the next 20 years, she endured multiple divorces, the heartbreak of infertility and numerous run-ins with the law. Coming to terms with her childhood has not been easy, but she’s working on it.

“I’ve always been at the base of the tree,” she continues. “I didn’t want to climb it. I didn’t want to fall, and the sudden stop at the bottom. But, I’m in the mid-branches now and heading to the higher branches.”

Today, the number of latchkey kids has declined. In 2000, Generation X parents along with school administrators helped to get federal legislation passed, which provided seed money for afterschool tutoring programs in lower income schools. Generation Xers understand firsthand how dangerous the hours between 3 to 6 p.m. can be for children.

I will be walking one day
Down a street far away
And see a face in the crowd and smile
--Amy Grant, 1991

Did you know someone like Gina? Stories like her's are not foreign to the Gen Xer, even if his or her childhood experience was dissimilar.

I didn’t just know Gina. You might say she was like a sister to me. She is just one of the reasons I blog about Generation X.