What Merit Is There Really to the Strauss-Howe Generational Hypothesis?

The Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis is a non-scientific hypothesis that was first set forth in 1991 by the American authors William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations. It was later expanded in their 1997 book The Fourth Turning. Although William Strauss died in 2007 of pancreatic cancer, Neil Howe has continued expanding and revising the hypothesis while giving lectures on it across the country.

Essentially, in its most basic form, the hypothesis holds that there is a recurring cycle of four generations that recurs roughly every eighty to ninety years, a period which Strauss and Howe call a “saeculum.” The cycle always begins with a period of crisis. Then there is a period of prosperity, known as a “high.” Then there is an “awakening.” Finally, there is an “unraveling,” leading to another crisis.

According to the hypothesis, as part of this cycle, there are four generations. Each generation is supposedly shaped by the events that were happening when members of that generation were growing up and, supposedly, these events result in each generation belonging to a certain recurring “archetype.”

All in all, I find the hypothesis amusing and kind of fun to read about in a crackpot sort of way, but it has virtually no credible evidence whatsoever to support it and it is mostly pseudoscience. Indeed, the kinds of predictions it makes are actually strongly reminiscent of astrology in a lot of ways, since they are vague enough that they sound meaningful without actually being meaningful.

A summary of the hypothesis

In case you are unfamiliar with the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis, here is a quick summary of it: Straus and Howe posit that there are four generational archetypes that recur every eighty to ninety years. The hypothesis claims that the first archetype is the “idealist generation,” which grows up during a time of prosperity. When this generation grows up, its young members lead an “awakening” in which they attack the current social order and push for reform. In middle age, members of an idealist generation focus on morals and principles. In old age, they serve as elders during a time of crisis.

The next archetype according to the hypothesis is the “reactive generation,” whose members grow up as under-parented children during the time of “awakening” when the idealist generation is attacking the social order. The members of the reactive generation come of age alienated and cynical during a time of “unraveling,” but, in middle age, they become pragmatic leaders during the time of crisis. In old age, they serve as post-crisis elders.

The hypothesis claims that the third archetype is the “civic generation,” whose members grow up as overparented children of the idealist generation in a post-awakening period of “unraveling.” They come of age as team-oriented optimists during a time of crisis. They resolve the crisis and, in middle age, they become energetic, but overconfident leaders. In old age, they become the powerful, conservative-minded elders attacked by the idealist generation.

Finally, the fourth archetype according to the hypothesis is the “adaptive generation,” whose members grow up as overprotected children during a time of crisis and chaos, when the very fabric of society seems to be under threat. They then come of age as young conformists during a post-crisis period of prosperity. During the next awakening, they serve as process-minded leaders. Finally, in old age they become thoughtful elders during the time of the next unraveling.

ABOVE: Table taken from this article from Politico showing the alleged features of each generation, according to Strauss and Howe

The hypothesis as applied to recent history

According to the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis, the Baby Boomer generation is an idealist generation, Generation X is a reactive generation, the Greatest Generation and the Millennial generation are both civic generations, and the Silent Generation and my own generation, Generation Z, are both adaptive generations.

The Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis holds that the last period of crisis was in the 1930s and early 1940s—the era of the Great Depression and World War II. The last “high” was the late 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, the era of prosperity when the Baby Boomers were growing up.

According to the hypothesis, the last “awakening” was in the late 1960s and 1970s when the Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation, and Hippie Movements were in full swing. The period of the 1980s and 1990s was a period of “unraveling.” According to the hypothesis, the period of the 2000s and 2010s that we are currently towards the end of is a time of crisis and we are about to enter a time of prosperity.

ABOVE: Chart I made to illustrate the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis (using the conventional modern names for generations)

The hypothesis debunked

The Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis doesn’t really have any credible evidence to support it. In fact, there are major problems with nearly all its classifications. In many cases, Strauss and Howe identify various historical events as being of a certain kind simply because of when they happened and not on account of their characteristics.

For instance, in the Strauss-Howe hypothesis, World War I was not a “crisis,” but rather an “unraveling.” Why? Because it didn’t happen at the right time for it to have been a “crisis.” Meanwhile, Strauss and Howe also classified the 1980s and 1990s as a time of “unraveling,” even though nothing remotely comparable to the scale of World War I in terms of devastation took place during that time.

Sometimes the authors have to make up almost insane justifications. For instance, Strauss and Howe claim that the Civil War came about ten years too early and that this caused the generations of that period to display their worst archetypal features and the Progressive Generation, who grew up during the Civil War, to come out “scarred” rather than “ennobled.” To anyone other than Strauss and Howe, this sort of excuse sounds more like evidence that their hypothesis is bunkum and they’re just making things up.

Additionally, even though Strauss and Howe predicted that a major crisis was supposed to occur in the 2000s and 2010s that Millennials would resolve, the various crisis candidates that have emerged have nothing in common with previous “crises.” The previous “crises” identified by Strauss and Howe include the period of the American Revolution, the period of the Civil War, and the period of the Great Depression and World War II.

While we have undoubtedly seen crises of various sorts in the past twenty years, none of them rise to the same level as those previous crises. In other words, the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis has no real predictive value. The whole hypothesis is actually a lot like astrology; it makes a lot of predictions, but those predictions are all so vague that just about anything could qualify as fulfilling them.

ABOVE: Photograph of soldiers in the trenches in World War I and an American anti-drug propaganda flyer. Strauss and Howe consider both World War I and the culture wars of the 1980s and 90s signs of “unraveling.” What exactly do they have in common, though?

Diversity within generations and generational stereotyping

Another problem with the Strauss and Howe generational hypothesis is that the whole thing is basically dependent on generational stereotyping. Strauss and Howe assume that all—or at least most—members of each generation must behave in a certain way simply because of when they were born.

In truth, members of each generation are diverse and the only thing they all have in common is when they were born, which doesn’t really count very much when you consider all the other factors that have influence over someone’s personality (e.g. religious beliefs, political affiliations, other ideologies, etc.). There is at least as much division within each generation as there is between generations. That is a crucial detail that Strauss and Howe fail to notice.

In fact, members of each so-called “generation” may not necessarily have lived through the same historical events, since Strauss and Howe define the members of each “generation” as having been born over the course of time periods sometimes spanning more than two whole decades, meaning the people born towards the beginning of that period will have inevitably grown up in a drastically different historical timeframe from the people born towards the end.

For example, Strauss and Howe define the Millennial generation as including everyone born from 1984 to 2008. That’s a time span of twenty-four years. Anyone can tell that a person born in 1984 and a person born in 2008 will have grown up in vastly different worlds.

If you were born in 1984, then you are currently thirty-five years old; you are old enough to remember a time before the internet and you were probably either in college or just entering the workforce when the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 happened. If you were born in 2008, on the other hand, then you are currently eleven years old; you probably can’t remember a time before smartphones, let alone the internet, and the events of 9/11 happened years before you were born.

It is almost insane to suggest that a current thirty-five-year-old and a current eleven-year-old are somehow members of the same generation, yet this is how Strauss and Howe define the Millennial generation. This is part of the reason why more reputable analysts have taken a much more selective definition of who qualifies as a “Millennial.”

For instance, Pew Research Center, one of the most respected centers on demographic research in the country, defines a “Millennial” as a person born between 1981 and 1996, a span on only fifteen years, rather than twenty-four years. That means, according to Pew, the oldest Millennials are currently thirty-eight years old and the youngest Millennials are currently twenty-three years old, which seems like a much more reasonable age gap.

ABOVE: Chart from Pew Research Center showing how they define each generation. Pew Research Center takes a much stricter definition of “Millennial” than Strauss and Howe.

Why this hypothesis has such appeal

Even though there is very little evidence to support the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis, it still has had tremendous pop cultural appeal. It has attracted something of a cult following and, as I shall note in a moment, some of its True Believers are very influential people.

I think there are three main reasons why the hypothesis is so appealing. The first reason is because people like to find order, meaning, and patterns in history. Since the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis portrays history in terms of an easily understandable recurring pattern, it appeals to our innate human longing for pattern and meaning.

The second reason why I think the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis has such great appeal is because it makes the future seem less frightening. If the crises of the present are simply part of a grand cycle that has been recurring ever since time immemorial, that makes them less frightening because it means we have overcome similar crises many times before in the past and that gives us hope that we will overcome the present obstacles as well.

The third reason why the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis has such appeal is because it predicted that Millennials would belong to the same archetype as the Greatest Generation and that, soon, we will enter an age of prosperity comparable to the 1950s. Both conservatives and progressives like to look back to the 1950s as in power as a sort of “Golden Age.” Conservatives admire the social conservativism of the 1950s, while progressives admire the fiscal progressivism of that era. (If you don’t believe me, just listen to how progressives like Bernie Sanders speak of Dwight D. Eisenhower.)

ABOVE: Photograph of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Lots of people, both liberal and conservative, seem to have something of a nostalgia for the Eisenhower Era.

The dark side of Strauss and Howe

According to this article from Politico, written by David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University, one of the most prominent believers in the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis is Steve Bannon, the co-founder of the right-wing media outlet Breitbart and former chief strategist to President Donald Trump. Bannon no longer has a position in the White House, but he, unfortunately, still has a disturbing degree of political influence.

Steve Bannon has reportedly read The Fourth Turning three times and keeps a marked-up copy on his shelf with his favorite books. He even made a documentary film based on the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis in 2010 titled Generation Zero. (Debunking things Steve Bannon is obsessed with seems to have inadvertently become a running theme with my articles lately; he is reportedly also obsessed with ancient Sparta and the Battle of Thermopylai, which I debunked in this article I wrote in early November 2019.)

Even worse, Bannon is far from alone in his obsession with the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis. Many business leaders and marketing executives continue to tote Strauss and Howe’s hypothesis as though it were gospel truth, allowing it to influence their business decisions and the ways they try to market to young people. Strauss and Howe’s whole “cycle of generations” shtick is just a fun and amusing crackpot theory until you realize that there are very powerful, influential, and important people who take this crackpot theory very seriously. The author of the Politico article neatly sums up as follows:

“Needless to say, no one should believe, based on The Fourth Turning, that, as the authors ominously wrote, ‘history is seasonal, and winter is coming.’ But it’s not unreasonable to worry that ideas like these are gaining traction. Over the years, the book has developed an astonishing following, tapping into some kind of popular hunger to find a tight logic within the vagaries of history or to forecast the future. It’s not too different from the cult followings of writers like Ayn Rand or Gore Vidal, or of futurists like Alvin Toffler or Hal Lindsey.”

There is also the concern that Strauss and Howe’s framework may become a self-fulfilling prophecy; if the True Believers in their hypothesis believe that a crisis must happen at a certain point because it was predicted, then they are going to be less likely to take steps to avoid causing a crisis because they already think a crisis is inevitable. I do not think that Strauss and Howe’s hypothesis has enough influence to cause World War III, but it might be influential enough to cause some other problems on a smaller scale.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Steve Bannon, co-founder of the right-wing media outlet Breitbart and former chief strategist to President Trump. Bannon is reportedly obsessed with the Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis.

A slight degree of truth?

Now, I used to think that Strauss and Howe’s whole generational theory was pure pseudoscience. I still think it is mostly pseudoscience. Nonetheless, I do think there may be a very, very slight degree of truth to their idea that generations are cyclical.

One thing I noticed is that each generation is very rarely the product of the generation that came exactly before; Instead, each generation is mostly made up of the offspring of the generation that came two previously. For instance:

• Baby Boomers are mostly children of members of the Greatest Generation.
• Gen-Xers are mostly children of the Silent Generation.
• Millennials are mostly children of the Baby Boomers.
• Gen-Zers are mostly children of Gen-Xers.

This got me thinking and it occurred to me that there may be some similarities between Silents, Gen-Xers, and Gen-Zers and some similarities between members of the Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, and Millennials. Obviously, these differences are not obvious on the individual level, since every generation is diverse. Nonetheless, I think that, on the larger societal level, there may be some broad similarities.

Let’s start out with size. The Silent Generation was a relatively small generation (compared to the ones that came after it). The Baby Boomer generation was a relatively large generation. Generation X was a relatively small generation. The Millennial generation was a relatively large generation. Now Generation Z is a relatively small generation again. You can actually see this in the population pyramid for the Untied States, which clearly shows the large Boomer generation followed by the smaller Gen X, followed by the large Millennial generation, followed by the smaller Gen Z:

ABOVE: Population pyramid for the United States from the United States Census Bureau official website

Obviously it was the Boomer generation that started this trend, but it looks to be continuing—at least for the moment. There may be a few other similarities as well. Back in the 1960s and 70s, the Silents (my grandparents’ generation) were the ostensibly “quieter,” less noticed ones caught in the middle of a widely-publicized generational conflict between the Greatest Generation and their children, the Baby Boomers. Meanwhile, now, in the 2000s and 2010s, Generation X (my parents’ generation) are the ostensibly “quieter,” less noticed ones caught in the middle of a widely-publicized generational conflict between the Baby Boomers and their children, the Millennials.

In other words, over the past century or so, there seems to be a recurring pattern of there being a smaller, “quieter,” less noticed generation sandwiched between two large generations that get a lot of attention. I reckon that, when the Millennials are older and their children are rebelling, my generation will probably be the ostensibly “quieter,” less noticed one caught in the middle of the widely-publicized generational conflict between the Millennials and their children.

I think the reason for this is actually quite simple: people generally tend to resemble their parents. Thus, each generation naturally tends to bear certain similarities to the generation that came two before it. I think that this may ultimately be the only truth behind the Strauss-Howe generational theory and, frankly, it isn’t any kind of big revelation.

Even here, though, I do not want to overstate my thoughts; what I am making here is a purely non-scientific observation that only applies to living generations. Unlike Strauss and Howe, who applied their whole framework to generations going back all the way to the Late Middle Ages, I am only making this observation about generations going back to the mid-twentieth century and no earlier.