The boomlet is redefining motherhood, baby.
The United States has experienced a small, short-term baby boom, what demographers call a “boomlet,” demonstrating that the U.S. is one of the most fertile wealthy industrialized nations in the world. The year 2006 introduced 4.3 million new babies to the country, mainly courtesy of a growing population, especially Latinos, said a report from the Associated Press (AP).
While one-quarter of the boomlet was due to high Latino birth rates, women from a variety of other ethnicities also got busy with the babymaking. However, says the AP, the fertility rates for the Latino cohort is about 40 percent higher than for the rest of the population. The U.S. seems to be leading the boomlet way, ahead of every country in continental Europe, Australia, Canada, and Japan, says the AP.
Media watchers have long commented on the Hollywood baby boom, with seemingly every celebrity from Nicole Richie to Halle Berry to Christina Aguilera showing off their baby bumps. Meanwhile, celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, former wife of film star and new baby daddy Brad Pitt, have become victims of rumor and suspicion. During the Aniston-Pitt divorce, one celebrity magazine speculated that Aniston was reluctant to get pregnant, thus changing her famous figure and causing tension between the two. (Aniston vehemently denied these rumors, stating that she really does want children).
“One of the huge changes over the last 10 or so years is that all the celebrities have been having babies and their pregnancies and recoveries have been all over the media,” Michal Ann Strahilevitz, marketing professor at San Francisco’s Golden Gate University, says. “It is getting to the point that when a celebrity hits 35 and has not had a child, you start to see stories speculating as to why she is not trying to become a mom. Baby bumps and babies have become the new accessory every female celebrity needs to get ‘before it is too late.’”
“Having babies not only brings media attention, but it makes many (not all) celebrities seem more human and likable. Of course, the effect that having a baby will have on a celebrity's image depends enormously on that celebrity's age and how responsible she seems to be both as an expectant mother and as a mother.”“Age is another huge factor in how we react to celebrity motherhood. Women over a certain age who are trying to have a child are inspired by celebrities who are having children into their late 30's, 40s and even 50's. These celebrities who have struggled with challenges and then pulled it off are seen as inspirational to other women who want to become mothers at an older age.”
For later-in-life mamas, hip mommy site Planet Mom features a tee announcing, “Like wine, moms improve with age.” Similar items touting so-called “older moms” have proliferated in recent years.
“One final effect worth thinking about—when expectant mothers and new moms are seeing all these celebrities having babies in the media, it creates the illusion that having a baby is no excuse for not staying fit and glamorous,” Strahilevitz tells demo dirt. “This means expectant mothers…feel they should be elegant. There are lots of high-end fashions for expectant moms. The baby bump is no longer something to hide, but something to highlight and proudly display.”
During her recent pregnancy, tough television newswoman Nancy Grace donned a witty shirt quoting Al Pacino’s famous Scarface line: “Say Hello to my Little Friend.” Once baby comes, sassy moms may enjoy sporting Planet Mom message tees saying things like “PTA Reject,” “Juicebox for them, Cocktail for me,” and “I need a playdate.”
“Then there is the post-birth pressure to look fabulous. So many celebrities parade their flat stomachs just weeks or months after giving birth,” Strahilevitz says. “Of course some of them have personal trainers, personal chefs and a full time nanny. Still, moms feel the pressure to follow their example.”
This leads to a range of products, Strahilevitz states, which will target moms-to-be and new moms. “Marketers are hitting both pregnant woman and women who gave birth with a huge range of products to make them feel beautiful and sexy from the start of their pregnancy to the first year or so after they deliver. It is not just about the unborn child or the baby anymore.”
Nutrisystem Weight Loss System used one of it famous spokespeople to recount her first weight loss experience with them, then her post-baby success, which enabled her to return to her pre-baby (post Nutrisystem) weight. Look for more post-partum success stories in all avenues of the weight loss business, as this boomlet reveals more post-baby bodies.
And, for moms who achieve the coveted hot babe body, Planet Mom offers a tee just for them: “Trophy Wife.”
Monday, April 21, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Generation CrY
Gen Yers are “least happy” demographic at work. They crave praise. Wah!
Millennials crave praise at work, while their Boomer and Mature co-workers merely want clear directions to do their jobs right, a study by Leadership I.Q., a Washington D.C. firm which specializes in employee motivation states. In a survey of 11,244 workers, only less than a third (30 percent) of employees between 21 and 30 years old recommended their workplace as a place to work. However, nearly half (47 percent) of those aged 61 to 70 stated that they were happy at their current place of employment.
The results came as no surprise to sales and marketing professional Bud Boughton, author of Dad’s Last Letter—Leadership Principles for the Next Generation. Naturally older workers are more satisfied at work, he says. “Those who are 61-70 in this day and age are just happy to be working and receiving a paycheck,” Boughton states. “With issues related to loss of job security, potential deteriorating health, questionable healthcare coverage, and living on a fixed income, why wouldn’t they be happy to be working?”
Writer, consultant, trainer and organizational development specialist Les McKeown also names life stage issues as influences on Boomers’ and Matures’ job satisfaction levels. “Most of what the [Leadership I.Q. study] is alleging about Gen Yers is simply a matter of time and experience,” McKeown maintains. “Of course workers in the older age groups are more satisfied and more likely to recommend their place of work—by the time you are [between] 60 and 70, you've learned through experience what real job satisfaction is and lost the fevered idealism of youth that imagines a paradise at the end of every job search.”
McKeown adds that Boomers and Matures have “discovered what real satisfaction is” for themselves, and they have carved their careers in a fashion to ensure that they have ended up somewhere where they are happy. “What sort of an idiot 60-year-old is still wandering around trying to find out what job might make them happy?” McKeown jokes.
The survey examined satisfaction levels of employees in the public and private companies, and at health-care institutions. Leadership I.Q. Chairman Mark Murphy stated publicly that results indicate that those under age 30 require more praise than their older counterparts, and encouraged doing so, adding that giving praise boosts job satisfaction, productivity, and costs nothing.
Boughton, whose twenty year career includes experience at companies including Procter & Gamble, Xerox and IBM, bristles as these conclusions. “Maybe [Millennials are] unhappy because from their birth they’ve been coddled and cajoled into thinking that they would never have to meet anyone else’s expectations in life as long as they did their best,” Boughton argues. “Many of these young people are the same kids who grew up playing in youth soccer leagues where every kid got a trophy at the end of the season just for putting a uniform on! They weren’t told to go out there and win, they were told to have fun and do their best, that winning wasn’t important,” Boughton, a coach and former college athlete, contends.
“It is never fair to generalize,” concedes Boughton, “but this is a generation that grew up with a better lifestyle than any previous generation in America and unfortunately, in too many cases, had parents who were more interested in being their friends than in being their parents.”
What about the natural trappings of this young life stage? “Life stages are clearly part of the difference here, but many Millennials entering the workforce have a misperception about some of the realities of life,” Boughton says. “They are the epitome of the ‘instant gratification’ syndrome having grown up on microwave food and having lived a third of their lives at Internet speed. Now, combine this with the idealism that typifies any young person in their twenties or early thirties, and one can understand why they are less than satisfied in the workplace today.”
McKeown takes another approach to understanding Millennials. “There is clearly a mixture of both—'Generation Y' singularities and simple life cycle realities,” McKeown states. “However, I believe the second (simple life cycle realities) is a much stronger contributing factor than most analysts give credence to—primarily because it isn't as good a 'read,' and doesn't feed into the cult of the consultant.”
McKeown is critical of research that perpetuates the notion that specialized consultation is required to understand every new crop of employees that enters the workforce. “I really think this latest Leadership I.Q. survey is a crock, as much of the Gen Y nonsense is,” McKeown says. “Yes, they are a distinguishable group, and yes, they do have distinct characteristics, but the conclusions the survey practitioners have drawn are laughably simplistic, and frankly, designed to perpetrate the myth that high paid consultants are needed to 'educate' employers into how to treat this 'new generation.’”
Generation Y Care Instructions
Les McKeown, organizational specialist, concedes that there are ways to best understand the workplace dynamics of Generation Y. He sent his top tips to demo dirt via email. Here they are, verbatim. Enjoy:
To manage Gen Y, and to get the highest productivity out of them, there are some distinguishing characteristics that need to be taken into account. Here are the top five:
1. They're a meritocracy. Boomers “drew within the lines,” “played the game” and arduously worked their way up social and ladders. Xers ignored the “system” and broke (or tried to break) social and career paradigms. Gen Y accepts the need for order and structure, but it needs to be open, transparent and based on merit.
Try to play “dead men's shoes” with Gen Y, use favoritism or make unfathomably weird promotion decisions, and they'll be gone in a heartbeat.
2. They're social extremists. [Gen Yers] flock well. They use social networking skills and tools all day long (after all, they invented it), and the workplace environment needs to reflect this: Lots of cross-functional activity, kaizens (continuous improvement) and communication.
Silo-d, plodding, communication-starved environments scare them, and won't keep Gen Y employees.
3. They're 'default-agnostic'. Boomers were by default 'pro the organization'. Xers were by default anti-the organization.
[Gen Yers] start as agnostics. If it's a good idea, they'll do it. If it's a bad idea, they'll say so. They're not big-eyed optimists like the Boomers, or bitter malevolents, like the Xers (there's a hint of generalization, there) they are genuinely open to simply do what's best.
That means office politics turns them off. So does any expectation that they “swallow the company line.” Yers drink the Kool-Aid a lot less than Wired and Fast Company would have us believe.
4. They're information-driven. They can get it all on Wikipedia and fringe, niche sites (Google and Youtube are so Gen-X!) that they expect exactly the same at work.
For many Yers, their first day in a large organization is like trying to get an Internet connection in China. It's possible to get information, but the quality of it is so thin as to be laughable.
Managing Yers means giving them the information they need to get the job done. Make them plead for it, or don't give it to them, and they'll find somewhere else.
5. They're curious. Yers won't sit in that box you want them to work in. They want to get out and about, ask about stuff, see how stuff works. They're an “open-source” generation who are used to cracking and hacking stuff all the time.
They are wary of anyone who tells them they “can't go there” or they “don't need to know that.” Managing Yers on a “need to know” basis is an oxymoron.
Now, that doesn't mean that they don't understand boundaries—a Gen Yer will understand as well as anyone why they don't need to know the Coca Cola special recipe to work on the bottling plant, but the boundaries have to be reasonable, transparent and based on common sense.
What does this all mean? Workplace solutions are simple. To boost productivity and ensure happy Millennials, give them clear direction, access to the information they need to do their job, encourage and provide the infrastructure for them to collaborate with others, build good amounts of discretion and room for initiative into their job description, and managers should be prepared to make their case and not expect unquestioning loyalty.
Millennials crave praise at work, while their Boomer and Mature co-workers merely want clear directions to do their jobs right, a study by Leadership I.Q., a Washington D.C. firm which specializes in employee motivation states. In a survey of 11,244 workers, only less than a third (30 percent) of employees between 21 and 30 years old recommended their workplace as a place to work. However, nearly half (47 percent) of those aged 61 to 70 stated that they were happy at their current place of employment.
The results came as no surprise to sales and marketing professional Bud Boughton, author of Dad’s Last Letter—Leadership Principles for the Next Generation. Naturally older workers are more satisfied at work, he says. “Those who are 61-70 in this day and age are just happy to be working and receiving a paycheck,” Boughton states. “With issues related to loss of job security, potential deteriorating health, questionable healthcare coverage, and living on a fixed income, why wouldn’t they be happy to be working?”
Writer, consultant, trainer and organizational development specialist Les McKeown also names life stage issues as influences on Boomers’ and Matures’ job satisfaction levels. “Most of what the [Leadership I.Q. study] is alleging about Gen Yers is simply a matter of time and experience,” McKeown maintains. “Of course workers in the older age groups are more satisfied and more likely to recommend their place of work—by the time you are [between] 60 and 70, you've learned through experience what real job satisfaction is and lost the fevered idealism of youth that imagines a paradise at the end of every job search.”
McKeown adds that Boomers and Matures have “discovered what real satisfaction is” for themselves, and they have carved their careers in a fashion to ensure that they have ended up somewhere where they are happy. “What sort of an idiot 60-year-old is still wandering around trying to find out what job might make them happy?” McKeown jokes.
The survey examined satisfaction levels of employees in the public and private companies, and at health-care institutions. Leadership I.Q. Chairman Mark Murphy stated publicly that results indicate that those under age 30 require more praise than their older counterparts, and encouraged doing so, adding that giving praise boosts job satisfaction, productivity, and costs nothing.
Boughton, whose twenty year career includes experience at companies including Procter & Gamble, Xerox and IBM, bristles as these conclusions. “Maybe [Millennials are] unhappy because from their birth they’ve been coddled and cajoled into thinking that they would never have to meet anyone else’s expectations in life as long as they did their best,” Boughton argues. “Many of these young people are the same kids who grew up playing in youth soccer leagues where every kid got a trophy at the end of the season just for putting a uniform on! They weren’t told to go out there and win, they were told to have fun and do their best, that winning wasn’t important,” Boughton, a coach and former college athlete, contends.
“It is never fair to generalize,” concedes Boughton, “but this is a generation that grew up with a better lifestyle than any previous generation in America and unfortunately, in too many cases, had parents who were more interested in being their friends than in being their parents.”
What about the natural trappings of this young life stage? “Life stages are clearly part of the difference here, but many Millennials entering the workforce have a misperception about some of the realities of life,” Boughton says. “They are the epitome of the ‘instant gratification’ syndrome having grown up on microwave food and having lived a third of their lives at Internet speed. Now, combine this with the idealism that typifies any young person in their twenties or early thirties, and one can understand why they are less than satisfied in the workplace today.”
McKeown takes another approach to understanding Millennials. “There is clearly a mixture of both—'Generation Y' singularities and simple life cycle realities,” McKeown states. “However, I believe the second (simple life cycle realities) is a much stronger contributing factor than most analysts give credence to—primarily because it isn't as good a 'read,' and doesn't feed into the cult of the consultant.”
McKeown is critical of research that perpetuates the notion that specialized consultation is required to understand every new crop of employees that enters the workforce. “I really think this latest Leadership I.Q. survey is a crock, as much of the Gen Y nonsense is,” McKeown says. “Yes, they are a distinguishable group, and yes, they do have distinct characteristics, but the conclusions the survey practitioners have drawn are laughably simplistic, and frankly, designed to perpetrate the myth that high paid consultants are needed to 'educate' employers into how to treat this 'new generation.’”
Generation Y Care Instructions
Les McKeown, organizational specialist, concedes that there are ways to best understand the workplace dynamics of Generation Y. He sent his top tips to demo dirt via email. Here they are, verbatim. Enjoy:
To manage Gen Y, and to get the highest productivity out of them, there are some distinguishing characteristics that need to be taken into account. Here are the top five:
1. They're a meritocracy. Boomers “drew within the lines,” “played the game” and arduously worked their way up social and ladders. Xers ignored the “system” and broke (or tried to break) social and career paradigms. Gen Y accepts the need for order and structure, but it needs to be open, transparent and based on merit.
Try to play “dead men's shoes” with Gen Y, use favoritism or make unfathomably weird promotion decisions, and they'll be gone in a heartbeat.
2. They're social extremists. [Gen Yers] flock well. They use social networking skills and tools all day long (after all, they invented it), and the workplace environment needs to reflect this: Lots of cross-functional activity, kaizens (continuous improvement) and communication.
Silo-d, plodding, communication-starved environments scare them, and won't keep Gen Y employees.
3. They're 'default-agnostic'. Boomers were by default 'pro the organization'. Xers were by default anti-the organization.
[Gen Yers] start as agnostics. If it's a good idea, they'll do it. If it's a bad idea, they'll say so. They're not big-eyed optimists like the Boomers, or bitter malevolents, like the Xers (there's a hint of generalization, there) they are genuinely open to simply do what's best.
That means office politics turns them off. So does any expectation that they “swallow the company line.” Yers drink the Kool-Aid a lot less than Wired and Fast Company would have us believe.
4. They're information-driven. They can get it all on Wikipedia and fringe, niche sites (Google and Youtube are so Gen-X!) that they expect exactly the same at work.
For many Yers, their first day in a large organization is like trying to get an Internet connection in China. It's possible to get information, but the quality of it is so thin as to be laughable.
Managing Yers means giving them the information they need to get the job done. Make them plead for it, or don't give it to them, and they'll find somewhere else.
5. They're curious. Yers won't sit in that box you want them to work in. They want to get out and about, ask about stuff, see how stuff works. They're an “open-source” generation who are used to cracking and hacking stuff all the time.
They are wary of anyone who tells them they “can't go there” or they “don't need to know that.” Managing Yers on a “need to know” basis is an oxymoron.
Now, that doesn't mean that they don't understand boundaries—a Gen Yer will understand as well as anyone why they don't need to know the Coca Cola special recipe to work on the bottling plant, but the boundaries have to be reasonable, transparent and based on common sense.
What does this all mean? Workplace solutions are simple. To boost productivity and ensure happy Millennials, give them clear direction, access to the information they need to do their job, encourage and provide the infrastructure for them to collaborate with others, build good amounts of discretion and room for initiative into their job description, and managers should be prepared to make their case and not expect unquestioning loyalty.
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