Farther ALONG the X Axis

American Demographics, May 1, 2004

Byline: The AD Staff

PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS REPORTER MYUNG Oak Kim knew the rules of engagement. Not once, but twice, she tested them. The first time was after the August 2000 birth of her first daughter. Apart from paid maternity leave, disability and accrued vacation, the Daily News allowed for unpaid time out of up to 12 months. She stayed home with the baby, and returned to work, pregnant again, after 13 months. Daughter number two came along. To bond with her second infant, Kim stayed home 15 months.

Today, Kim's byline still shows up on the paper's front page. There were risks, however calculated, to her career arc, and there were consequences. For all those months of unpaid leave of absence, husband and fellow journalist Sam Jaffe's salary became their sole source of income. So they cut back. No dinners out. No exotic holidays. No help cleaning house. Home furnishings became a Hobson's choice: mom's living room set, a yard-sale dining room table, toddlers' rooms compliments of Ikea.

"My family at the time was more important," Kim says. "Being a hotshot reporter is only part of the equation for me."

Kim's not an anomaly. The choice she made in view of what just a short time ago would have been a certain "mommy track" stigma among her colleagues probably indicates a norm for her age group. The code of comportment, of who wins, who loses and why, grooved deep into the economy over the past quarter century as 75-plus million Baby Boomers glaciered through their mid-20s into their late 30s, is finally up for grabs. Midnight, New Year's Eve this year, history's last Boomer turns 40.

Now, it is Kim's assertion that family comes first and career second, and her conviction that home and work success don't negate one another that will likely typify a Generation X value set that never bought the American Dream Baby Boomers offer for sale. What's more, Gen Xers, particularly women in their mid-20s through their late 30s, appear to be keen to explode Boomer myths about being grown-up and empowered. Gen X women - married or not, mothers or not - seem bent on creating a new, more mature, quintessence of adulthood, of career, of home. Equal parts traditionalism, irony and iconoclasm, thirtysomethings' universe - including work and leisure - gravitates around the home.

Which makes them different consumers. The mark they will leave on society, on culture, on business, over the next 10 to 15 years is what we're seeing early indicators of in behavior like Kim's. Like an outmanned army, Gen Xers use cunning, elusiveness and conviction to turn a massive numeric disadvantage into an edge, and to turn a lifetime of being misunderstood into an opportunity to redefine what should be understood as value.

The stakes involve trillions of dollars and entire industry sectors in the balance (see charts). Generation X's 49 million cohort is about to start passing through the "pearly gates" of peak earnings, and as they also become the economy's principal family-makers, the onus of catalyzing the most important component of the gross domestic product - consumer expenditure - falls on Xers' shoulders. The U.S. economy grew accustomed to, and perhaps complacent about, Baby Boomers contributing almost half of all consumer spending over the past 25 years. That's a lot to live up to, but just as Kim tested unwritten "mommy track" rules, her generation will be challenging a core assumption of society that to spend is good and to spend more is better.

What ramifications it suggests as consumer goods and services firms market to people who've made a high art of sneering at attempts to get them to buy stuff since they were latchkey kids learning to be self-sufficient, learning to buy, learning to say no. Already, industries in the home-formation sector - home furnishings, financial services, consumer electronics, media, entertainment and others - are grappling with the need to re-cast product lines, services and marketing messages for adults whose tastes, attitudes and values contrast dramatically with those of Boomers. Boomers, after all, said one had to make a choice - family or career. Not so, say Xers.

THESE WERE "SLACKERS"

A bit of background. As Gen Xers hit their late teens and early 20s in the mid-'80s, older generations slapped them with the moniker "slackers." Gen Xers were considered unmotivated, apathetic and cynical. That's because they were misunderstood, says Ann A. Fishman, president of Generational-Targeted Marketing Corp, in New Orleans. Gen Xers had different values from the Boomers, especially work values. Gen Xers wanted to enjoy their jobs and have time for their own lives. They were willing to trade off less money for more freedom. "Boomers looked at them and said, 'They're not younger versions of me, so they must be wrong,'" she says.

As Gen Xers came of age and shrunk the new-entrant labor force starting in the late 1980s and 1990s, young women gained greater leverage with employers, observes Lynne Lancaster, a partner with Bridge Works, a generational-based consulting firm in Sonoma, Calif. "Gen X women can put some pressure on the employers and say, 'I'll take this job, but since I'm a young mother, I'm only going to work to 5 p.m., and I'm going to work four days a week,'" says Lancaster, who is also coauthor, with David Stillman, of When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work (HarperCollins, 2002). "That's leverage Baby Boomer women didn't have."