![]() However, the term "baby boomer" has tended to be used most commonly in reference to those born in the United States -and they are the focus of this entry. ![]() Similar baby booms occurred during the same period in many other western industrialized nations, with peak fertility rates in Canada, New Zealand, and Iceland even higher than those in the United States. That imprint included the creation of an "echo boom" of births during the 1980s and 1990s.īecause the baby boom lasted nearly twenty years, many have objected to treating the baby boomers as a single cohort, associating younger baby boomers more with " Generation X" than with older baby boomers -but the original appellation has held through the years, and tends still to refer to the entire population bulge produced during the boom. The baby boom is defined as having occurred during the peak years of this roller coaster ride: its legacy was a population bulge destined to leave its imprint on each phase of the life cycle. Total births per year during that period grew from 2.3 million to 4.3 million and then fell to 3.2 million. All races, religions, and ethnic groups participated in the boom. As illustrated in Figure 1, in the post – World War II period the General Fertility Rate (GFR) in the United States rose from what had been an all-time low in 1936 of 75.8 children per 1,000 women of childbearing age to a high of 122.7 in 1957 -and then fell to a new all-time low of 65.0 in 1976. Nin iniated change through her powerful words and the way she brought women together.Baby boomers are all those born in the United States between 19. Nin was not a feminist per se, although I have heard that she was often invited to speak at feminist rallies and events. Her writings empowered and guided women to help them define themselves. She shared her insightful views of the role of women in the world, from the standpoint of being an intellectual, intuitive, sexual, and erotic spirit. Nin's journals empowered her and by sharing them with the world, she empowered many other women. Her journals began as a letter to him and as time went on, those pages became her best friend, confidant and ultimately a crucial part of her everyday life. When she was 11 years old, her father left the family for a younger woman. Like myself, a traumatic event turned her onto writing. As a French-Cuban author, she was best known for her published journals spanning 60 years. In many ways she could have been viewed as a Renaissance woman, interested and interesting in many areas. And for this, I thank you."Īnaïs Nin was many things to many people - friend, confidant, lover, author, philosopher, psychologist and diarist. The book opens with a letter to Nin which includes this sentence: "You have taught me the intrinsic value of the written word, how to dig deeper into my emotional truth, and the importance of having love in my life. It was, therefore no surprise that when gathering the poems for my first poetry collection that I dedicated the volume to her, and called that book Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You. She liberated me by offering me permission to express the sentiments nestled in the depths of my soul - all those feelings which had been locked inside for so many years - the sentiments crushed by the concept of my parents telling me that children should be seen and not heard. ![]() Reading Nin's journals deeply empowered me as a human being and as a woman. Nin cherished her relationships with the opposite sex, but also held that women should be loved and respected for their independence. Many of her beliefs in this regard rubbed off on me, and in turn on my three adult children, who are extremely driven and became empowered by self-development and growth.Īs a middle-aged adult, I returned to graduate school for my MFA in writing, and devoured all the journals of Anais Nin, a woman whom I deeply admire. She believed that those who were multi-dimensional and worked outside of the home tend to be more intellectually interesting, and thus in the long run, hopefully more content. She often voiced her respect for women who had jobs outside the home, whether it was for financial reasons or for personal development. While my Austrian immigrant mother never spoke to me about de Beauvoir, many of her beliefs were similar in that she believed women should be educated and interesting. And while that was still an era when women stayed home to raise children and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, de Beauvoir did advocate that women should be inspired to be self-sufficient and able to look after themselves. As a child of the '60s, I was exposed to a fair amount of empowering feminine literature, including Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, which was originally published in the 1950s. Many baby boomers have been quite impactful in initiating change in their communities and in society-at-large, and as a result affect history.
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