These Teenage Baby Boomers DIDN'T Rebel In The '60s. They Were Rich & Privileged

The Hippies were the minority. They just got the most media attention.

Hearing "Normie" in a documentary thats 50 years old really hit me hard

I graduated in 1972. There were the popular kids, attractive, football players, cheerleaders, prom kings and queens. There were the hippies, journalism, school newspaper, year book. There were the greasers, black clothes, greased hair, ratted hair, heavy eye makeup. And then there was the rest of us, most of us I'd say. No strong identity, no labels. We just were who we were. We weren't nonconformists, but we weren't Stepford kids either.

So interesting that the police officer was the most rebellious adult interviewed.

It's interesting how staying in your home town when you grow up has only recently become synonymous with "failure". For millennia our ancestors were born, had families, and died in roughly the same place unless they were forced out by some calamity. And for some reason hearing these kids say, "I'm happy here. Why would I leave? I already picked out my dream house across the street from my parents," just absolutely blows my mind.

“We asked all the 16 year olds at Webster High to answer a THIRTY-SIX PAGE questionnaire. After this, all of them wanted to rebel.”

I am exactly this age, and the documentary is absolutely right. Our parents grew up in the depression, and our fathers' were in WWII, and the focus was then on stability, on money, and education which our parents never had.

I am a 74 year old lady boomer who finds this interesting. I never saw views like these when i was in school, graduating in 1967. I was from a predominately working class area. Modern young people seem to have the same get ahead values as the kids in this video. I wish yountube would show videos on how the majority of boomer kids lived, not just the upper middle class ones. I am getting tired of the younger generation thinking that my life was as privileged as the life of these kids. My family and others near me just got by, snd our expectations were limited.

"It's important to have a car, so you can go out and park." nice

Is it just me or do most of these 16 year olds look like they’re in their mid 20s by today’s standards of appearance?

I had 3 older sister who were all teens in 66, two were twins. One (a twin) married a Naval aviator who was in Nam for two years. They were obviously conformers, but both were killed in a 69 plane crash in the Sierra Nevada's. The other twin was a conformer as well and married a law student who became a successful Tax Attorney. They had 4 kids and are still together. My third older sister, youngest of the 3, was a hippy rebel. She left home a month before her 17th birthday and went to SF with 5 friends. She stayed there for a year and a half before calling my father and crying that her boyfriend had beaten her and thrown her from the apartment. There were 6 of us kids, but my hard working middle class father got in the car and drove from our Chicago home to San Francisco to bring home his daughter ...... She hadn't called once since she left. She came back and got a job with a dental office. About 6 months later a rich and handsome young doctor was looking at the office for rent next the one my sister worked in, and they met. The hippy is now a grandmother of 3 and still living in Bel Aire, CA with her retired cosmetic surgeon husband. He is a great guy. The lesson is that the hippy life was okay if you were a beautiful blonde that could afford to spend what should have been your junior and senior years of high school in San Fran smoking dope and dropping acid.

Interesting documentary. I graduated in 1966 and grew up in a military family. At 13 years old, I went to work as a carhop while attending middle school. Having a job gave me a feeling of freedom and independence. The values instilled in my siblings and myself were important life skills that have served us throughout our lives.....

"I don't think any 16 year old child should be burdened with the problems of the world" oh buddy, do I have news for you

YouTube is the closest thing we got to a time machine.

Wow!! I went to high school in Los Angeles in late 1960's. What a world of difference between the kids at this Missouri high school and where I went to high school. My friends and I were hanging out at night at coffeehouses and the Sunset Strip and all over Hollywood. Lived in that area so I was close to everything. It was a lot of fun!!! I wasn't a hippy but more of a flower child. We had love-ins on Sunday afternoons in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. People just hanging out in this huge park, singing, dancing, playing guitars, tambourines; dressed in all kinds of unusual garb and burning incense. It was a weekly happening! Mostly teenagers and young people in their 20's or early 30's.

Thank you David Hoffman for recording all of these videos in the past for us to watch now. That was very smart and considerate of you to think of us future kids who would be curious of these things. You are a miracle and an inspiration.

I wasn't a rebel. I had a full time job after school starting at 15. I wasn't from a wealthy family. Ended up married at 18 and had two kids. Bought a house and cars. I still live in the house I bought in a lovely suburb of NY. My husband passed young. I worked all my life. I raised great kids I'm very proud of and also proud I was a 60s teen. I would change the fact that we all married too young back then. Old before our time. I danced. I should have danced more.

"What 16 year old child has any real convictions?" 2-3 years later that child is getting married, having kids, and expected to act like an adult.

This was really interesting to watch. And your commentary added a lot to the experience, helping to put things into perspective. You helped to shape the perspective we should take on to be able to appreciate this some 60yrs later. Thank you for this.

Many of these parents lived through the Great Depression, and either saw or experienced first hand what real poverty is like: a roof over their head and three meals a day wasn't a given: a good job, a house, and security is something to be appreciated, and they wanted that for their kids. These aren't rich kids: they're middle class in middle America in the 1960s. It was the children of the true elites, bored trust fund kids mostly from big East Coast cities, who drove the hipster/hippie movement, and they had utter contempt for middle class, middle Americans.