Contents.Almost exactly nine months after World War II ended, “the cry of the baby was heard across the land,” as historian Landon Jones later described the trend. More babies were born in 1946 than ever before: 3.4 million, 20 percent more than in 1945. This was the beginning of the so-called “baby boom.” In 1947, another 3.8 million babies were born; 3.9 million were born in 1952; and more than 4 million were born every year from 1954 until 1964, when the boom finally tapered off. By then, there were 76.4 million “baby boomers” in the United States. They made up almost 40 percent of the nation’s population. The Baby BoomWhat explains this baby boom?
Watch a brief video on the hugely influential Baby Boomers — the generation of Americans born during the post-World War II period between 1946 and 1964. At age 3 she moved into the White. Their size exceeds that of the 75.4 million baby boomers, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates released today. Overall, millennials are more diverse than the generations that preceded them, with 44.2 percent being part of a minority race or ethnic group (that is, a group other than non-Hispanic, single-race white).
Some historians have argued that it was a part of a desire for normalcy after 16 years of depression and war. Others have argued that it was a part of a campaign to fight communism by outnumbering communists. Did you know? In 1966, Time magazine declared that “the Generation Twenty-Five and Under” would be its “Persons of the Year.”Most likely, however, the postwar baby boom happened for more quotidian reasons. Older Americans, who had postponed marriage and childbirth during the and, were joined in the nation’s maternity wards by young adults who were eager to start families. (In 1940, the average American woman got married when she was almost 22 years old; in 1956, the average American woman got married when she was just 20. And just 8 percent of married women in the 1940s opted not to have children, compared to 15 percent in the 1930s.).
Many people in the postwar era looked forward to having children because they were confident that the future would be one of comfort and prosperity. In many ways, they were right: Corporations grew larger and more profitable, labor unions promised generous wages and benefits to their members, and consumer goods were more plentiful and affordable than ever before.
As a result, many Americans felt certain that they could give their families all the material things that they themselves had done without. Moving to the SuburbsThe baby boom and the suburban boom went hand in hand. Almost as soon as World War II ended, developers such as William Levitt (whose “Levittowns” in, and would become the most famous symbols of suburban life in the 1950s) began to buy land on the outskirts of cities and use mass-production techniques to build modest, inexpensive tract houses there. The subsidized low-cost mortgages for returning soldiers, which meant that it was often cheaper to buy one of these suburban houses than it was to rent an apartment in the city.These houses were perfect for young families–they had informal “family rooms,” open floor plans and backyards–and so suburban developments earned nicknames like “Fertility Valley” and “The Rabbit Hutch.” By 1960, suburban baby boomers and their parents comprised one-third of the population of the United States. The Baby Boom & The “Feminine Mystique”The suburban baby boom had a particularly confining effect on women.
Advice books and magazine articles (“Don’t Be Afraid to Marry Young,” “Cooking To Me Is Poetry,” “Femininity Begins At Home”) urged women to leave the workforce and embrace their roles as wives and mothers. The idea that a woman’s most important job was to bear and rear children was hardly a new one, but it took on a new significance in the postwar era. First, it placed the baby boomers squarely at the center of the suburban universe. Second, it generated a great deal of dissatisfaction among women who yearned for a more fulfilling life. (In her 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique,” women’s-rights advocate argued that the suburbs were “burying women alive.”) This dissatisfaction, in turn, contributed to the rebirth of the feminist movement in the 1960s.