Silent because they don't talk about the mental health problems they suffered as a result of war, poverty and deprivation?

No idea tbf

don’t they?

Most of them are dead so they don't talk about much of anything these days.

They’ve been ‘cancelled’?

Silently getting on with the work of making loads of babies. No chit chat just a cup of tea and a fag. 

The name seems to be a nod to their remarkable social conservatism and even regression (particularly around gender roles) but I guess that is quite a white centric view of things when you consider that Dr King and Malcolm X were both part of that generation. 

My father in law just sneaks in to that generation. The difference between his attitudes and those of my parents (who are roughly 10 years younger) is genuinely remarkable.  That's to do with class as well as age but age is definitely a big part of it. 

Wot davos said laz. Is in Caro, surely?

even the white ones weren’t actually especially socially conservative and they voted in with handsome majorities inter alia Lyndon B Johnson and Harold Wilson

what davos said is ahistorical guff, cookie

I think the point is that it was the last generation that did not significantly differentiate itself from its parents generation (as indeed most generations before it did not and arguably, Gen Z has stopped doing).

The last gen that at its senior end just STFU, having RTFM, and got on with stuff. 

Don't agree with that at all Guy. Their social conservativism was an active rebellion against the 1930s and wartime rebalancing of gender roles. I reckon you had a lot of very insecure men coming into adulthood having lived pretty insecure lives and also finding themselves in a 'boys against men' race with older returning veterans getting jobs and college places (particularly in the US with the effect of the GI Bill). The proportion of women going to college fell pretty dramatically after the war compared to the 1930s even as the overall number of places went up significantly. Essentially the men of that generation were being pushed by the greatest generation and so they pushed their female peers back into the home and out of the way to make room for themselves. 

Too young to fight in the war, too old to be young in the sixties.

When society changes quickly there can be sharp generational differences. Ireland went from 15-20% unemployment and significant emigration right through the 1980s into the early 1990s to a boom economy in the late 1990s through to 2007. There's a very sharp difference between my older sister born in 1974 and my younger sister born in 1981 who only ever experienced a boom economy with probably better money for even student part time work than is the case now.  

Mobile phones becoming ubiquitous for adults around 2000 (% of households with one went from 26% in 1999 to 64% in 2002) and smartphones becoming ubiquitous around 2013 were quite sharp changes. 

I think it's suggesting that they don't have a voice, such is the fast pace of technological change and the indifference towards old folk.

dux the term doesn't just refer to them as they are now as old folk, it refers to their entire life spans.   Culturally I believe they were quite silent.      They wore the clothes of their parents and did what their parents did.  It was the boomers who created a different  culture for themselves distinct from their parents.

and future generations followed suit, up to I think the current young generation who seem far less distinct from their gen x  and early millennial parents.

Of course all attempts to divide up people into "generations" are inherently arbitrary.

The distinctions discussed here are worse:  meaningless unless you are American.  Completely irrelevant in the UK. 

I suggest you all make things up about something else.

Not entirely. Read what Rob Cannon said. 

It's hardly an insight that people born at different times might have different experiences.  

It's hardly an insight. We need far more insight into this sort of thing. Hesiod was good. 

Silent? In the UK these people including my parents were born during WWII with bombs falling on them as teenagers. They reframed the UK after the War after rationing and national service, they had contraception probably the thing that has most unsilenced women, they were the 1960s, Beatles, free love, pro or anti nuclear enlightened generation who grew up utterly fixated on ensuring never again would we allow what happened in Germany to happen. They were an amazing generation who were nothing like silent.

In the US they were fighting in Vietnam or were anti - certainly not silent.

Born during WWII with bombs falling on them as teenagers?  Not unless they went to Korea

Well the boomers never fooking shut up about how great they were, despite riding on the coattails of the silent generation for most of their claimed achievements, so perhaps it works as a relative term.  

We used to be out on our bikes all summer, drank water from the hosepipe, didn't need avocado on toast or fancy coffee and we still turned out fine, went round from shop to shop to find work, bought a house for £30, didn't make our wives work etc etc

[We then created conditions that made all of this impossible and pulled the ladder up behind us before sweating our children's generation to fund out retirement and slow death]

I don’t buy that there is any reason for the application of the term that is remotely historically valid sorry 

If you had to invent a name for this type of crass generalisation describing the generation before the baby boom what would be apt? 

well, as you imply, I don’t really believe in labelled generations, but in the west anyway (and all these tags are occidocentric) I’d go for the rock n roll generation

“Well the boomers never fooking shut up”

Haven’t you met any millennials?

heh @ cookie’s robust belief in the validity of stereotype

This is my parents, stepparents and in laws generation.

They enjoyed the swinging sixties thats for sure and JFK remember sweets coming off the ration.

It was rock n roll for a bit but then Elvis had to join the army and write mush. Bad dentistry, austerity, cold war, pint of bitter in a seedy jazz club in Soho, back street abortions, schoolchildren fearing the belt, the same heavy suit worn each day, sweat, paraffin heaters, drowning kittens, shooting the dog. 

The 'silent' generation, imo, are the US white boomers who hold to the 'replacement' theory.

The equivalent in the UK are the same generation who never fought in WW2 (usually because they weren't even born) but still think Britain's 'greatness' is defined by Victory In Europe 1945 and the Empire.

The Trump-Brexit axis.