An infant, his mother, his maternal grandmother, and his great-grandmother. Thus there are four generations of one family in this photograph.
Generation (from the Greek γενεά), also known as procreation, is the act of producing offspring.
A generation can also be a stage or degree in a succession of natural descent as a grandfather, a father, and the father's son comprise three generations.
A generation can refer to stages of successive improvement in the development of a technology such as the internal combustion engine, or successive iterations of products with planned obsolescence, such as video game consoles or [mobile phones.
In biology, the process by which populations of organisms pass on advantageous traits from generation to generation is known as evolution.
Familial generation[]
It is important to distinguish between familial and cultural generations. A familial generation is defined as the average time between a mother's first offspring and her daughter's first offspring. The generation length is 25.2 years in the United States as of 2007[1] and 27.4 years in the United Kingdom as of 2004[2].
Cultural generation[]
A cultural generation refers to the cohort of people whose youth was shaped by a particular set of events and trends. 20th-century cultural generations are shorter than familial generations.
See also[]
- List of generations
- Intergenerational equity
- Generationism
- Inter-generational contract
External links[]
References[]
- ↑ U.S. Census Bureau 2007, Facts for features: Mother's Day, retrieved November 30, 2007.
- ↑ "More women have a late pregnancy", BBC News, December 17, 2004, retrieved November 30, 2007.
- William Strauss and Neil Howe (1991) Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584-2069, ISBN 0-688-11912-3
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