Generation (from the Latin generāre, meaning "to beget"), also known as procreation in biological sciences, is the act of producing offspring.
In kinship terminology it is a structural term designating the parent-child relationship. The term is also often used synonymously with cohort in social science, even though some researchers believe that this usage is misleading; under this formulation the term means "people within a delineated population who experience the same significant event within a given period of time." Generation in this sense of birth cohort is widely used in popular culture, and has been the basis for much social analysis.
Read more about Generation: Familial Generation, Social Generation, Other Generations
Famous quotes containing the word generation:
“The world is never the same as it was.... And that’s as it should be. Every generation has the obligation to make the preceding generation irrelevant. It happens in little ways: no longer knowing the names of bands or even recognizing their sounds of music; no longer implicitly understanding life’s rules: wearing plaid Bermuda shorts to the grocery and not giving it another thought.”
—Jim Shahin (20th century)
“In colonial America, the father was the primary parent. . . . Over the past two hundred years, each generation of fathers has had less authority than the last. . . . Masculinity ceased to be defined in terms of domestic involvement, skills at fathering and husbanding, but began to be defined in terms of making money. Men had to leave home to work. They stopped doing all the things they used to do.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Doubtless, we are as slow to conceive of Paradise as of Heaven, of a perfect natural as of a perfect spiritual world. We see how past ages have loitered and erred. “Is perhaps our generation free from irrationality and error? Have we perhaps reached now the summit of human wisdom, and need no more to look out for mental or physical improvement?” Undoubtedly, we are never so visionary as to be prepared for what the next hour may bring forth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)