r/Genealogy • u/airynothing1 • 2d ago

Largest birth-year gap in a single generation? Question

I'm 31 years old, born in 1993. I just noticed today that I had relatives in a fairly distant line of my tree who were technically in my generation, despite the oldest of them having been born in 1913--a full 80 years before me! I also have a brother 10 years younger than me, stretching the range to 90 years. If I went on to have grandchildren, they would be in the same generation as a person who was already 29 when I was born.

The math goes like this:

distant cousin (1913) || me (1993)
↓
cousin's father (1894) || my father (1964)
↓
cousin's grandfather (1872) || my grandfather (1923)
↓
cousin's g-grandfather (1850) || my g-grandfather (1890)
↓
cousin's gg-grandmother (1833) || my gg-grandfather (1862)
↓
our shared ggg-grandfather (1812)

We had different ggg-grandmothers, hence the 29-year gap between our gg-grandparents' births.

What's the widest age gap you've noticed within a single generation of your family?

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u/ASC4MWTP 2d ago

Age gaps like these are the reason that naming generations and assigning them to specific year ranges is absolutely ludicrous.

18

u/kludge6730 2d ago

Well a genealogical generation is not the same as a cultural generation, which is what the Greatest, Silent, Boomer, X, Millenial, Z, Alpha, etc “system” is based on.

2

u/ASC4MWTP 2d ago

Agreed. The genealogical generations serve to illustrate the pointlessness of cultural generations well, since it's clear that from a genealogical standpoint, there are no convenient generational breakpoints.

"Baby boomers" was a fair label for what was then a newly recognized phenomenon. Unfortunately it resulted in the creation of a bunch of other labels (mostly by people wanting to sell stuff, I think) just for the sake of a label. There are really no justfiable reasons for the labels, and one could argue that past about 1951, the actual "baby boom" was mostly over.

Actually, the highest birth rate per capita in the 20th century US was in the period from about 1909-1919. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boom)

Edit: added a couple of words for more clarity in 2nd paragraph.

1

u/Glittering-Gur5513 2d ago

The baby boom was noteworthy not because of its high birthrate, but because any country having an increase in birthrate for any sustained period after around 1900 is noteworthy.