The Good Men Project Become a Premium Member We have pioneered the largest worldwide conversation about what it means to be a good man in the 21st century. Your support of our work is inspiring and invaluable. Generation X: Iconoclastic, Stressed Out, Sentimental, and Resilient Generation X resides in one of the core ways we define ourselves: ambivalence. As the middle child nestled between two larger generations, we tend to shy away from attention, yet yearn to be recognized. By Tom Pace, Ph.D. and Elwood Watson, Ph.D. Americans of previous generations, when they were in their 40s and 50s, were often viewed as being in charge, as leaders of government, at the height of their earning power, and largely as setting the agenda for the larger, dominant culture. Contrast this with the Americans currently in their 40s and 50s — Americans of the generation known as Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980). To declare them as leaders or setters of any agenda cannot be further from the truth. Indeed, the broader society, at least at the current moment, appears to be dictated by the long arm of the Baby Boomers and the even longer reach of their mostly Millennial children. Gen X, meanwhile, continues to labor in the shadows.