"Because the peer personality of each generational type shows new manifestations in each phase of life, and because it is determined by the constellation into which it is born (a pattern that is forever shifting), the ongoing interplay of peer personalities gives history a dynamic quality. How children are raised affects how they later parent. How students are taught affects how they later teach. How youths come of age shapes their later exercise of leadership - which, in turn, substantially defines the coming-of-age experiences of others. This push and pull between generations moves synchronously with other alternating patterns in American history: for example, between periods of public action and private introspection, secularism and spiritualism, cultural suffocation and liberation, fragmentation and consensus, overprotective and underprotective nurture of children." (p. 32-33)

"Almost by design, America's present-day social institutions accentuate the power of age location. The more tightly age-bracketed the social...